It's all about the water...

Well, it is at my place anyway.

Last week, higher than acceptable levels of E Coli were found in my suburb's water supply. They discovered them on Wednesday. The media were notified on Friday. We received a letter from a council worker - hand delivered - on Sunday. Something just doesn't add up, does it? Why weren't we advised on Wednesday? Two and a half thousand people's homes were affected. Not too many to warrant a phone call or sms advising us to boil our water until further notice. Sure, they put it on the news and over the radio, but what about those that don't listen or watch? E Coli infections cause severe cramping, fevers, painful bloody diarrhoea and vomiting. It can have serious complications in children and older people, or those with compromised immune systems. Surely, the council has a duty of care to uphold? We should have been advised earlier.

Also on the topic of water, my husband and I have been educating ourselves on the cons (there are no pros!) of water fluoridation. Those of us in Queensland had our freedom of choice taken away last year, when the Queensland government decided it was in every ones best interests for them to pump fluoride into our water systems. To save our teeth, they told us. Pfft...what a load of poppy cock! The mass fluoridation of water is the most expensive way to provide fluoride to the population, and also takes away our most precious of liberties - freedom of choice. Surely, a better idea would be to provide free fluoride tablets to those individuals who felt they required them?

Fluoride is a hazardous waste by-product of aluminium manufacturing. It is a common ingredient in rat and cockroach poisons, anesthetics, hypnotics, psychiatric drugs, and military nerve gas. Independent scientific evidence over the past 50 years reveals that this nasty substance allegedly shortens our life span, promotes cancer and various mental disturbances, and accelerates osteoporosis and broken hips in the elderly. Mass water fluoridation was also used as a tool by Hitler during the second world war, to control the masses, cause sterility in women and to keep the people docile. Nasty, nasty stuff!

Einstein's nephew, Dr E H Bronner who was a prominent chemist and prisoner of war, has been noted as saying, "Even in small quantities, sodium fluoride is a deadly poison to which no effective antidote has been found. Every exterminator knows that it is the most efficient rat-killer. ... Sodium fluoride is entirely different from organic calcium-fluoro-phosphate needed by our bodies and provided by nature, in God's great providence and love, to build and strengthen our bones and our teeth. This organic calcium-fluoro-phosphate, derived from proper foods, is an edible organic salt, insoluble in water and assimilable by the human body, whereas the non-organic sodium fluoride used in fluoridating water is instant poison to the body and fully water soluble. The body refuses to assimilate it."

There is no concrete proof that sodium fluoride reduces tooth decay. In fact, it is so toxic that it can actual cause it. The first sign of fluoride poisoning, or fluorosis, is the chalky white mottling of teeth. They can also fracture or become dark brown. This is irreversible damage, and will happen to 10% of our children. Dentists should be happy about this though as it costs, on average, $900 per tooth to hide this mottling!

So, on reflection of all this (and so much more - too much to blog about this time) we have decided to purchase a water purifier. The $350 outlay is piffle when we are talking about the health of our family. We were already considering it after our exploration into fluoride (the purifier we are looking at will remove 48% of fluoride), but the recent E Coli scare has nailed it for us. You can't put a price on health, can you?