[LINK] The true cost of bottled water

[Stewart Fist]

Kim makes many good points.


> Can you quote actual studies or are you just worrying?  Surely there
> must be enough evidence now to prove this one way or another.

I haven't looked for a few years, but there were major concerns by many
trustworthy scientists at one time.  The problem is always, in these areas,
that the real stuff gets mixed up with the irrational scaremongering that a
lot of health activists wallow in.

I wouldn't bet on the automatic accumulation of evidence, however.
The only real tool for testing these theories is epidemiology, and this
depends on clusters of anomoly standing out from a reasonably consistent
background.  The mountain peaks on the flat plain, idea.

But if everyone is exposed to moderate levels of fluoride, or to
radio-frequency waves, or to air pollution, or whatever, it takes enourmous
statistical studies to get any sort of statistical certainty - and even a
minimal one would cost a few million dollars.  Only governments and large
corporations have this sort of money.

We have passed through the era where our main concerns are clearly
identifiable critical diseases, like smallpox, measles, etc.  Now we are in
an era of increasing longevity where the major health concerns are insidious
and cumulative -- so we need to have a totally different approach to the
research.  That's something that governments still haven't appreciated.

> I have only anecdotal evidence but dentists I have talked to say
> there was a generation (let's call them generation x say) when
> everyone drank tap water with flouride that hardly have any fillings
> at all.

Anecdotal evidence is a useful trigger for further research, but that's all.
I think fluoride is an article of faith among dentists -- if one of them
dared criticise it, he would be hauled before the dental bishops and
excommunicated, if not burned.

There seem to be numerous cases of towns and regions without fluoride who
also have had a solid reduction in caries, but I don't have any trustworthy
evidence either way.

> And of course it's nothing to do with the fact that dentists were
> left out of medicare entirely ...

I suspect my dentist has a house with a gold-lined bathroom - just from the
fillings he'd removed and replaced with amalgam.  If, at his current prices,
he'd been included in on medicare, he would have broken the Treasury single
handed.


-- 
Stewart Fist, writer, journalist, film-maker
70 Middle Harbour Road, LINDFIELD, 2070, NSW, Australia
Ph +61 (2) 9416 7458