Drink More Coke

By Jim Hightower

August 21, 2001

In Mark Pendergast’s engaging book, For God, Country, and Coca Cola, he notes that this global purveyor of caffeinated sugar water once tried to pitch its drink to Cubans with a skywriting ad. But a wind gust distorted the Spanish word Tome to Teme, so instead of saying “Drink Coca Cola,” Cubans were implored to “Fear Coca Cola.”

All of the world’s people, including you and me, might want to reflect on this revealing slip of a verb, for Coke is a corporation on a mission. According to an excellent article by Sonia Shah in Progressive magazine, its mission is to replace drinking water with Coke as the world’s primary beverage.

This is no idle threat. The company asserts that “right now, in the United States, people consume more soft drinks than any other liquid – including ordinary tap water.” The company has big plans. A Coke executive has declared that soon, “we will see the same wave catching on in market after market, until, eventually, the number one beverage on Earth will be soft-drinks – our soft drinks.”

In her article, Shah reports that, rather than simply pushing this ambition in terms of its own corporate profits, Coca Cola wants to be credited with a humanitarian motive: “We’re redefining how consumers get hydrated,” the corporation brags in its annual report. Rationalizing this push into Third World poverty regions, Coke’s former CEO noted that “fluid replenishment is a key to health,” then he asserted: “Coca-Cola does a great service because it encourages people to take in more and more liquids.” Yeah, Bucko, and more and more of a liquid that causes rotting teeth, obesity, diabetes, and other health problems.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Coke wants to do more hydrating of U.S. consumers, too. Shah informs us that current CEO Doug Daft (yes, that’s his real name) envisions a Coke-on-tap system that will provide an endless stream of Coka Cola through the cold-water tap on your kitchen sink

Gazette’s Fair Use Statement

Milk Sucks, or Bossie’s Revenge

by Gene Franks

Editor’s Note: This article appeared originally in the July/Sept.1991 issue of the Pure Water Gazette. Since then, it has become popular to trash milk, although it still surprises us to learn that some people still drink it and seem to really believe that it’s “good for you.”

The amazingly successful and expensive advertising campaigns of the dairy industry not only got our mothers to feed us formula instead of breast milk, but seem to have convinced us that it is “natural” for people to drink cows’ milk. Nothing could be less natural. No species drinks milk beyond infancy and none consumes the milk of other species. –Neal Barnard, M.D.

When I was young, they packed me off to school,
And taught me how not to play the game. – Jethro Tull.

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity.–George Bernard Shaw.

It’s hard to give up the myths we grew up with. My mother taught me that cold, white cows’ milk was pure and wholesome and good for me. She learned that from those she trusted:  her mom, the schools, the doctor, Good Housekeeping. In every issue of Good Housekeeping, tucked neatly among the chocolate cake mix ads and the casserole recipes, was a doctor-approved weight-loss diet that let you start the new day with half a slice of enriched-bread toast, half a cup of stewed prunes, half a pat of butter, a poached egg, and some skim milk–the “Basic Four” foods that God intended us to eat.

When I drank cold, white milk as a child, I always imagined I was ingesting pure, healthful calcium and that it was solidifying right away into strong white bones and teeth. It would have been more realistic to imagine I was drinking glassfuls of chilled snot, because I’ve since learned, from research and from experience, that the bovine glandular secretion that we commonly call “milk” is a far more dependable source of mucous than of usable calcium.

The selling of milk is one of the great advertising coups. It has been so successful that almost no one objects that our taxes lavish subsidies on a fat-laden dairy industry whose cynicism and destructiveness equal the tobacco industry’s. Not long ago seven large milk companies quietly agreed to repay Texas schools over $15 million to settle charges of overcharging through bid-rigging and price-fixing conspiracies. It hardly made the papers that Borden’s, Cabell’s, Oak Farm and others were picking our pockets while their ads were telling us how much they loved our kids. Health writer Victoria Moran says, “Milk is so sacred in this country that living without it is a personal affair that should not be shared with everyone.” A Milwaukee school, she explains, reprimanded her for failing to include milk in her daughter’s lunch. thus denying her child one of the “basic 4.” Beware of the Milk Police.

Here are several things about milk that the ads don’t tell you:

1. Milk is “a natural” only for baby calves. Calves have fours stomachs and double their body weight in 47 days. Human babies have only one stomach and a much slower rate of growth. It takes human babies 180 days or so to double their weight, so they don’t need nearly as much protein as calves. Cows’ milk is 15% protein (it has 15% of its calories as protein); human breast milk is 5 % protein. Much of the rationale for believing that cows’ milk is an ideal food for human babies was based on research done with rats early in this century. The milk of mother rats is 49% protein and baby rats double their weight in just 4 days. This is yet another example of the difficulties we create for ourselves by trying to imitate rats.

2. Continuing to drink milk into adulthood is unnatural to all species. Only man could rationalize such weird behavior and learn to view it as “natural.” “Custom,” Shaw said, “will reconcile people to any atrocity. ”

3. Decades of meat and dairy propaganda have made Americans the world’s most outrageous protein gluttons. The most frequent question vegetarians hear is, “Where do you get your protein?” The answer is, “Where do horses, cows, gorillas, elephants, and giraffes get their protein?” Corpse-milk-egg protein is secondhand protein, inferior in quality to plant protein. And all plants, even lettuce, have protein. Here again is George Bernard Shaw: “Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into a giant oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay! ”

4. Although the officially recommended daily requirement for protein is probably more than double what we really need, government and university experts regularly advise that we take in an extra 30% or so just to be safe. More is better. When asked who needs this extra 30%, Dr. David Reuben, who popularized the importance of dietary fiber, replied:

The people who sell meat, fish, cheese, eggs, chicken, and all the other high prestige and expensive sources of protein. Raising the amount of protein you eat by 30% raises their income by 30%. It also increases the amount of protein in the sewers and septic tanks of your neighborhood 30% as you merrily urinate away everything that you can’t use that very _ day. It also deprives the starving children of the world of the protein that would save their lives. Incidentally, it makes you pay 30% of your already bloated food bill for protein you will never use [and] puts another $36 billion a year into the pockets of the protein producers. 

5. Question: Where do people who don’t drink milk get their calcium?

Answer: Where do cows get their calcium?

6. Question: Who needs the excess calcium that experts recommend?

Answer: The people who sell milk, cheese, and other high prestige and expensive sources of calcium. Raising the amount of calcium you eat by X amount raises their income by X amount.

7. Nutrition writer Frieda Kabelac says:

We have been thoroughly mis-educated about calcium and proteins, thanks to the dairy and meat interests, which have penetrated the school systems with their propaganda. So ingrained is the idea that we need milk after the weaning period for calcium that people doubt that we can get enough calcium from plant foods.

8. Calcium deficiency usually does not arise from too little calcium but from too much protein. Dr. John Scharffenberg writes:

A very high calcium intake is necessary in the United States diet because a high-protein diet increases  excretion of calcium. In one study, men 18-20 years of age were given protein ranging from 48-141 gm. daily. The higher levels of protein doubled the urinary excretion of calcium when both calcium and phosphorus intake were held constant…. A diet high in meat with its high protein content will therefore increase urinary excretion of calcium…. Vegetarians have significantly greater bone density than omnivores; thus vegetarians appear to be less prone to osteoporosis.

9, The dairy industry has spent millions funding a variety of research schemes aimed at proving that milk is good for us. Meanwhile, what is probably the most extensive epidemiological study ever undertaken in the field of nutrition found, decisively, that the opposite is true.

In 1983 a joint British-Chinese-American study known as the “Study of Diet, Nutrition and Disease in the People’s Republic of China” was begun for the purpose of studying the relationship between selenium and other nutrients and death rates from all forms of cancer. Because of its scope and the unique opportunity it offered, the study was expanded to examine many other health issues. It took exhaustive data–367 items per person were followed–on the lifestyle nutritional intake, and health status of 6,500 adults, half men, half women, spread throughout mainland China, over a six-year period.  I want to emphasize that this was not an American-style survey in which “researchers” phoned a lot of people and asked them  what they had for supper last night. It involved urine  and blood analyses, extensive questionnaires, measurements of foods consumed, and detailed examination of a broad spectrum of data that would have been impossible before the age of computers.

Although it will be years before all the China study information is analyzed and available, the earliest reports have been shocking, although not unexpected by many. Dr. T. Colin Campbell of Cornell University, who directed the massive study, told Jane Brody in a New York Times interview (May 8, 1990) that the study affirms that “we’re basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant foods and  minimizing our intake of animal foods.” On the question of osteoporosis, Dr. Campbell said:

“Ironically, osteoporosis tends to occur in countries where calcium intake is highest and most of it comes from

protein-rich dairy products. The Chinese data indicate that people need less calcium than we think and can get adequate amounts from vegetables.”

Specifically, Dr. Campbell told the Times that the Chinese study found an average daily calcium intake of  of 544 mg. in China, almost  none of this from animal products, and “there was basically no osteoporosis in China.” In the U. S., by contrast, where there is an average calcium intake of 1,143 mg per day, mostly from dairy products, “osteoporosis is a major public health problem.”

The most interesting findings of the China study, however. surface in the area of dietary fat and cholesterol and their relation to disease. U. S. studies have always failed to ask the real questions about animal vs. non-animal diets. Typically, they compare lean meat vs. choice cuts, or skim milk vs. whole milk, so the results fail to address the real impact of animal foods on humans. The China study takes a much broader view and allows comparison of a large base of plant eaters vs. animal eaters. The clear-cut conclusion is that for real-world human beings the greatest single influence on degenerative diseases such as cancer. diabetes. and coronary heart disease seems to be the amount of protein. particularly animal protein. in the diet. Here are some eye-opening facts from the China study as explained by Registered Dietician and nutrition writer Bob LeRoy-SiBrava:

The range of plasma cholesterol values found in U.S. populations is said to be 155-274 mg/dl (though a group of U. S. vegans, if identified, should show lower figures than this). Almost all of the China-group values,  88-165 mg/dl, are lower than the lowest in the U.S. range. Thus all of China equals or improves upon what would be an ideal target cholesterol level for just about any person in the U.S.

You might expect that cholesterol is therefore irrelevant in this study, and that every Chinese group would have the same monotonously low rate of heart disease, right? Wrong. [According to Dr. Campbell,] “Coronary heart disease risk in China continues to decline to an almost negligible level when plasma cholesterol levels are low.”  Colon cancer risk correlates in exactly the same way.

Likewise, the percentage of animal protein in the total protein consumed ranges from 0 percent to 20 percent among the Chinese groups, compared to an average of  70 percent in the U.S.  Even though the Chinese eat only a fraction of the animal protein eaten by Americans, the study found less risk for disease among those Chinese who eat the least amount of animal protein.

In other words, there is no “safe” amount of animal protein, and the more you eat the greater the risk. Remember, too, that from a nutritional standpoint, as Dr. John McDougall (The McDougall Plan) likes to say, “Milk is just liquid meat.”

10. If you plan to “cut down” on the fat overdose by drinking “low fat” milk, consider Bob LeRoySiBrava’s advice: “Healthwise, shifting from fattier meats to ‘leaner’ meats, cutting skin off poultry, reducing the number of times per week you eat egg yolks, and substituting 1% milk products for most whole milk products, is comparable to cutting smoking down to one pack per day.”

11. If cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis aren’t enough, here are a few more health problems that have been associated in medical literature with milk and excessive calcium:  kidney stones, gallstones aging and wrinkling of the skin, “frozen shoulder,” tendonitis, bursitis, heel spurs, otosclerosis ( which leads to deafness), bloating, cramping, diarrhea (of various types), colic, runny nose, bronchitis, asthma, inflammatory arthritis, eczema, ulcerative colitis, lymphatic leukemia, Hodgkins disease, multiple sclerosis, iron deficiency (due to milk-induced gastrointestinal bleeding), and even crime. [An article in the Journal of Orthomological Psychiatry  (8:149, 1979)  reported that the juvenile offenders studied drank twice as much milk as the control group.]

I’ll end this by adding the Gazette’s support to three very worthy boycott appeals that are outlined in a recent issue of the  Bunny Huggers’ Gazette. You can support all three of these boycotts simply by ignoring the dairy section at the supermarket as you would ignore other junk food sections.

One is a Greenpeace boycott of milk in cartons because of the presence of dioxin in cartons and the dioxin pollution caused by the manufacturing process. Dioxin in cartons is only one of many environmental concerns connected with dairy farming. Cows, according to John Robbins’ Diet for a New America, emit excrement in our country alone at the rate of 250,000 pounds per second, and a full 90% of our harmful waste water pollution is directly attributable to cattle. U. S. Water News reports frequently upon dairy-related water pollution. Two recent articles have described the “brown ice” problem in Vermont, a state that is home for more cows than people. In the winter of 1989, for example, the ice of Lake Champlain,, drinking water source of the Vergennes-Panton water district, turned “a distinct shade of brown” because of runoff from dairies. U. S. Water Newsexplains Vermont’s problem:

All of the runoff contaminants, manure, commercial fertilizers, milkhouse wastes, pesticides, are defined as non-point-source pollutants because they enter watersheds through natural channels instead of pipes. This natural seepage makes control difficult [and] the prime agricultural land is located in close proximity to Vermont’s most valuable rivers and streams.

A single farm discussed in the article produces 20,000 pounds of manure each day. That’s 7,300,000 every year, and 7,320,000 every Leap Year!

There’s another milk boycott sponsored by Farm Sanctuary of Watkins Glen, NY because of the widespread use by milk producers of BST, or Bovine Somatotrophin, a growth hormone used on dairy cows to increase milk production. Although there is a record surplus of milk and our tax dollars are being outrageously wasted to buy surplus milk, producers are milking cows for all they are worth by pumping them with health-endangering drugs and hormones. We also pay for pointless and cruel research in quest of genetically altered “super cows” to push surpluses even higher. Few people know that the greatest concentrations of pesticides in the human diet are from meat products, not fruits and vegetables. John Robbins’ figures for percentages of pesticides in the U. S. diet are 1% from grains, 4% from fruits, 6% from vegetables, 23% from dairy products, and 55% from animal flesh. It shows you how effective propaganda can be when you consider that most of us think of pesticides as something you try to scrub off of broccoli and apples!

A third boycott of milk products is sponsored by the Disabled and Incurably Ill for Alternatives to Animal Research (DIIAAR), Dona Spring of DIIAAR says the boycott is imposed because of “the suffering inflicted on dairy cows and the resulting veal industry. Their plight is worse than ‘beef’ cows.”

Some drink milk who do not eat animals, considering milk production less cruel because “they don’t have to kill the animal.” There was a time when that argument had validity, but today’s factory dairy farmers have equaled or surpassed the refined cruelties of factory meat farms. The image of Old Bossie the milk cow grazing in pastoral peace at Sunny Acres Farm, visited now and again by some amorous Ferdinand and surrounded by frolicking offspring, is a cruel fiction. Today’s factory-farmed Bossie knows Ferdinand only through artificial insemination,  and her many calves are taken from her at birth. Her relatively short life (most dairy cows become fast-food burgers as soon as their production drops) is spent in the confines of a metal and cement stall. Drugged, dehorned, and degraded, she is treated like a machine rather than a sentient creature. Her female calves follow in her footsteps, and their brothers are less fortunate. Except for the few who are designated to be “milked” for semen in their own chamber of horrors, male calves become the raw material of the veal factory. Their lives are, mercifully, short–about 14 weeks. They are kept in painful confinement and fed an antibiotic-rich, iron-deficient ” milk replacer” designed to produce the pale, anemic flesh that sophisticated eaters crave.

Veal is a by-product of the dairy farm. The only effective way to protest the cruelties of veal farming is to wean oneself from the bizarre and unnatural practice of cross-species milk consumption.

 What Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson Said about All This

Abraham Lincoln said: “I do not care much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”

Gandhi said: “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way it treats its animals.”

Thomas Jefferson said: “I tremble for my species when I reflect that God is just.”

The Pure Water Gazette says: It is time that people of good faith stop deluding ourselves with the self-serving nonsense about having “dominion” over the other animals. We also claim “dominion”–whatever that means–over our children, but, except for an occasional primitive throwback practice like circumcision, we do not assume the right to lop off parts of their bodies to suit our convenience, dissect them, fry them, or imprison them for fourteen weeks in cages so narrow they can’t lie down. We must also rid ourselves of the great falsehood that Descartes imposed upon us. It has clouded our thinking since his time. This is the notion that animals–except humans, of course–are merely instinct-driven machines that have no feelings. Anyone who has heard the heart-rending bawling of cows whose young are being trucked away to slaughter knows in his heart that Descartes was a liar or a fool.

Bossie’s Revenge

Like Thomas Jefferson, I believe that God is just. By that I mean I believe that there is an inexorable law of the universe that says that sooner or later the fiddler has to be paid. Call it the Law of Karma, reaping what you sow, ” what goes around, comes around,” or whatever you like. .

We jokingly call the unpleasant “turista” ailment we suffer in Mexico “Moctezuma’s Revenge,” acknowledging our sins against the native Mexicans. It would be more  fitting to lump most of our great health problems together under the single heading of “Bossie’s Revenge.”  Heart disease, cancers, kidney stones, ear infections, osteoporosis, asthma–all merely symptoms of “Bossie’s Revenge.”

Our sins against Bossie are many. The perfect model of passive resistance to evil, Bossie patiently chews her cud, as we dig our graves with our teeth. Bossie does not get mad. She gets even.

Waste water from the North Texas area becomes Houston’s drinking water. Wastewater from the Dallas-Ft. Wroth Metroplex flows downstream 250 miles in the Trinity River and into Lake Livingston, where Houston gets most of its water. Read the details.

The drought in Texas could have worldwide effects.

Residents of South Alamo, TX were warned by the EPA to not eat fish from the Donna Reservoir and Canal.“The principal pollutants in the reservoir are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). PCBs are a group of synthetic organic chemicals that can cause a number of different harmful effects in humans. The primary risk to human health from PCBs is from suspended sediment in the water and the consumption of contaminated fish. Effects of consumption of contaminated fish may include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, skin rashes, acne, and cancer.”

Did you know that too much acidity in your body can cause pain, weight gain, fatigue, and other health problems? According to author Michelle Schoffro Cook ( The Ultimate pH Solution), there are many ways to combat excess acidity and to start feeling great. One is “Squeeze the juice of half a lemon into a tall glass of water and drink immediately. This one step will help you to quickly reset your body chemistry.”More information. Consideration that consuming low-pH lemon water can correct an acidic condition in the body casts serious doubt on the belief that humans can thrive only if they drink “alkalized” water from an expensive electrical gadget. “While lemons are acidic they interact with the body’s metabolism to have an alkalizing effect on the bodily fluids helping to restore balance to the body’s pH.”

The Azusa, Texas water treatment plant is being buried in its own sludge. Removing sediment from the water of the San Gabriel River is piling up sludge faster than the city’s water treatment plant can get rid of it.

Although the spectacular BP leak caught the world’s attention, the Gulf of Mexico is continually plagued by persistent, slow but devastating oil leaks that don’t make the news. “Aided by satellite imagery and research conducted by SkyTruth and aerial observation by SouthWings, the Waterkeeper Alliance and its local Waterkeeper organizations learned that an offshore platform and 28 wells belonging to Taylor Energy Company LLC have been quietly leaking oil into the Gulf for years.”

Work crews in Portland,OR replaced a sewer pipe that collapsed and caused a minor cave-in. The ancient cement pipe was installed in 1860. (Who says US infrastructure needs updating?)

Your Old Well Could Be Worth $300,000

“They become conduits, or straws, which draw down potentially hazardous materials into the groundwater,” said Cheryl Wong, a land use program manager with Santa Cruz (CA) County. She is speaking of unused water wells.

According to Ms. Wong, there are some 1000 abandoned wells around Santa Cruz County, “. . .ranging from dozens to hundreds of feet deep, tucked into backyards and agricultural fields throughout the county,” and these pose a significant threat to groundwater. The county is offering grants of up to $300,000 to encourage owners to close off these unused well to protect the county’s water supply. More.

Knoxville’s Aging Sewage System

About 175 miles of Knoxville’s wastewater system has been replaced or rehabilitated in a massive project intended to stop sewage overflows, improve waterways and help the city cope with growth. Cities face a never-ending battle to keep up with the expense of replacing aging piping systems.

In what could prove to be one of the great advances in knowledge of our age, Russian scientists breached Lake Vostok in the Antarctic on February 5. It is the first time one of Antarctica’s subglacial lakes has been penetrated.

For more information on the Lake Vostok project, see“Mysteries of Lake Vostok on brink of discovery.”

Week killer makers, with profits in the billions, expend enormous amounts of money to control press coverage of their products and avoid paying for cleanup of the mess their products leave behind.

The federal government is building a new national center that will improve the forecasting and reporting of droughts, floods and other water crises to improve policy and safety. The $18.8 million National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Water Center will be located on the campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa

Residents of a mobile home park in the Great Falls, Montana area have been warned not to drink their tap water because it contains arsenic four times higher than what is considered safe for human consumption. And that isn’t the only problem. The resident in the picture shows what the perpetual sludge in the water does to his sediment filter in only a month. The source of the arsenic at the trailer park is unknown. According to the EPA, “Significant or prolonged exposure to arsenic can cause a thickening or discoloration of the skin, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, numbness in the hands and feet, partial paralysis and blindness. Arsenic also has been linked to cancer of the bladder, lungs, skin, kidney, nasal passages, liver and prostate.” The recommended limit for arsenic in drinking water is only 15 parts per billion. Reverse osmosis and a variety of specialty filter media can reduce arsenic.

National Drinking Water Week is only 3 months away!

The former owner of a southwestern Pennsylvania wastewater firm has pleaded guilty to dumping millions of gallons of water containing natural gas drilling wastewater, sewage sludge and restaurant grease into streams and mine shafts in a six-county area.

The EPA says that more testing needs to be done on Marcellus Shale fracking operation discharge into rivers.See video. 

A grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will help improve the drinking water treatment system in Andrews, Texas. The grant for $388,000 will be used by the city to install a filtration and reverse osmosis system to reduce arsenic and fluoride levels in drinking water provided to municipal customers. Exposure to high levels of arsenic can result in kidney disease as well as lung and liver cancer, and excessive levels of fluoride in drinking water can result in abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting.

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn hosted a free guided tour for couples that was billed by the city as an “unforgettable” way to celebrate Valentine’s Day. The complex is the largest of New York City’s 14 sewage treatment plants, processing 1.5 million gallons of waste every day.

The Environmental Protection Agency posted the final health assessment for tetrachloroethylene — also known as perchloroethylene, or perc — to EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) database. Perc is a chemical solvent widely used in the dry cleaning industry as well as in the cleaning of metal machinery and the manufacturing of some consumer products and other chemicals

An issue to ponder– 

Banning the Bottle

by Kate Cline, Editor of Water Quality Products magazine.

Several bottled water bans have made it into the headlines in the last few weeks—first, the National Park Service announced it would ban sales of bottled water at Grand Canyon National Park, then the University of Vermont announced it would ban sales of bottled water on its campus. Both organizations cited the environment as the reason behind the bans. Both also will sell cheap reusable bottles and offer bottle filling stations instead.

As with past bottled water bans, the International Bottled Water Assn. quickly responded in opposition, citing EPA statistics that bottles make up a miniscule portion of U.S. waste, and that in the absence of bottled water, consumers are likely to opt for bottled sodas or sports drinks rather than carrying and refilling reusable water bottles.

Do you think these bans are justified? Is there a way for bottled water to peacefully coexist alongside tap water or filtered water?

Occasional Comment: Bottled water is another of those thorny many-sided issues. First, there’s the rights angle, and it seems to us that banning anything usually isn’t a very good idea. Then there is the “lesser evil” consideration, unless the U. of Vermont is also banning sugar/chemical drink machines from its campus. We would certainly not want students to waste money on mere water when for the same price they could be making themselves fat and unhealthy with Pepsi. It isn’t often that the International Bottled Water Association says something sensible, but here’s a video where they make some interesting points.–Hardly Waite, Pure Water Gazette.

Trash-dumping citizens in Edmond, OK are damaging the area’s drinking water. See Video and Pictures.

After the amazing participation of  300,000 persons worldwide in 2011, Water Monitoring Day is being launched for 2012 with high hopes.

Winners of the 2012 Water Prize have been announced, and again we were bitterly disappointed at being passed over.

The EPA  plans to install 30 wells in the Glendale-Burbank, CA area in March to monitor levels of chromium 6 in underground water in order to get a fuller picture of how extensive the contamination is.

An Italian woman died of Legionnaires’ Disease contracted in a dental office.

The foul smell in Eight Mile, AL may be coming from the water.

THMs High In A Florida Town’s Water Supply

The water supply system at Mims (Brevard County) FL has struggled for some time to meet EPA standards for THMs (trihalomethanes) in its drinking water. Trihalomethanes and other byproducts form when disinfecting chemicals such as chlorine are added to kill the much more acute health threat from viruses, bacteria and other microbes.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates drinking a half-gallon of water containing 100 parts per billion of trihalomethanes daily for 70 years could result in three more cases of cancer per 10,000 people.

The EPA requires community water plants to limit TTHMs to 80 parts per billion, as measured by the running annual average of periodic tests.

The average result for the Mims plant in 2010 was 190.25 parts per billion. One test last year reached as high as 536 parts per billion.

In December, TTHMs measured at 34 parts per billion, bringing the running average to 95 parts per billion. Full Story.

Why is the CDC Covering Up a Fifty Year Old Mistake?

See Gazette Fair Use Policy

Water and Human Metabolism

Water acts as a healing agent in our body. Around 70% of our body weight is due to water. The quantity is high in organs such as lungs and brain and fluids such as blood, lymph, saliva and secretions by the organs of the digestive system.

Metabolism can be defined as the sum of the chemical reactions that take place within each cell of a living organism and that provide energy for vital processes and for synthesizing new organic material. Energy obtained from the metabolic nutrients is utilized for various growth and other maintenance processes.

Water is the medium for various enzymatic & chemical reactions in the body. It moves nutrients, hormones, antibodies and oxygen through the blood stream and lymphatic system. The proteins and enzymes in our body function more efficiently in solutions of low viscosity. Water is the solvent of the body and it regulates all functions, including the activity of everything it dissolves & circulates.

Living organisms are unique in that they can extract energy from their environments and use it to carry out activities such as movement, growth and development and reproduction.

The carrier of chemical energy

At any given time, a neutral molecule of water dissociates into a hydrogen ion (H+) and a hydroxide ion (OH-). Under normal conditions (neutrality), the concentration of hydrogen ions (acidic ions) is equal to that of the hydroxide ions (basic ions); each are at a concentration of 10-7 moles per litre, which is described as a pH of 7.

In case of shortage of water in our house, we try to prioritize the use of water for essential purposes. Similarly, when the body receives less water, histamine – a chemical compound present in all cells – initiates a system of water regulation. Histamine directs some neurotransmitters to operate sub-systems to regulate water intake. The ratio of the water content in and outside the cells of the various organs is very important. As age advances, water content in the cells decreases. Since the water content in each cell plays a vital role in maintaining its normal function, inadequate water can lead to loss of some functions resulting in specific symptoms.

The waste products of metabolism and surplus salts get removed from your body through urine. The human kidneys normally produce 0.9-1.5 litres of urine per day, containing some 50-70 g of solids – mostly urea, uric acid, and inorganic salts. Thus water plays a crucial role in our metabolic reactions.

Editor’s Note:  The article above is from an excellent website called Everything About Water.  Unfortunately, the website has been taken down.  See our Fair Use Policy.

How Siphon Filters Work

Siphon filters rely on the simple natural force of gravity to purify water.

The filter above is capable of making safe water from water contaminated with bacteria. It does this without the need of any external energy source or chemical additives.

The filter itself is a ceramic candle. It is attached to a simple adapter made of plastic tubing.

The filter is placed in the upper container, which is filled with contaminated water. The user sucks on the end of the tube until a flow is established, then quickly lowers the tube to a position lower than the container. From that point the siphoning action pulls water through the tube. The end of the tube is placed into a second container to catch the product water. The filter will continue to produce water until the upper container is empty.

More about siphon filters

Siphon filter make excellent emergency filters because they operate without an outside energy source and without water pressure. No elaborate equipment is needed.

They can also be used as camping or hiking filters, to purify water from a lake or stream, and even as everyday water filters. They work best with ceramic cartridges, which remove bacteria and cysts, or with certain carbon filters, which remove chemicals.

The simple filter shown above can treat up to 70 gallons a day if the water is warm, or less than half that if the water is cold. In terms of volume, it easily outperforms expensive canister-style pour-through filters.

Siphon filters are among the least expensive water filters to purchase and to operate.

Here is more information, and an excellent emergency siphon filter to examine.

Simplify, simplify!–Henry David Thoreau.

Humming is Good For You

 by Hardly Waite, Gazette Senior News Analyst

What Are the Odds of Dying?

The table below was prepared in response to frequent inquiries, especially from the media, asking questions such as, “What are the odds of being killed by lightning?” or “What are the chances of dying in a plane crash?”

The table has four columns. The first column gives the manner of injury such as motor-vehicle crash, fall, fire, etc. The second column gives the total number of deaths nationwide due to the manner of injury in 1999 (the latest year for which data are available). The third column gives the odds of dying in one year due to the manner of injury. The fourth column gives the lifetime odds of dying from the manner of injury. Statements about the odds or chances of dying from a given cause of death may be made as follows:

• The odds of dying from (manner of injury) in 1999 were 1 in (value given in the one-year odds column).
• The life-time odds of dying from (manner of injury) for a person born in 1999 were 1 in (value given in the lifetime odds column).

For example, referring to the first line of the table below:

• The odds of dying from an injury in 1999 were 1 in 1,805.
• The lifetime odds of dying from an injury for a person born in 1999 were 1 in 24.

The odds given below are statistical averages over the whole U.S. population and do not necessarily reflect the chances of death for a particular person from a particular external cause. Any individual’s odds of dying from various external causes are affected by the activities in which they participate, where they live and drive, what kind of work they do, and other factors.

Source: National Safety Council estimates based on data from National Center for Health Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau. Deaths are classified on the basis of the Tenth Revision of the World Health Organization’s “The International Classification of Diseases” (ICD). Numbers following titles refer to External Cause of Morbidity and Mortality classifications in ICD-10. One year odds are approximated by dividing the 1999 population (272,820,000) by the number of deaths. Lifetime odds are approximated by dividing the one-year odds by the life expectancy of a person born in 1999 (76.7 years).

Odds of Death Due to Injury, United States, 1999

Go here to see the extensive table of death statistics:

Fifty years after it was introduced to prevent tooth decay

Is Fluoride in our Water a Mistake?

by Philip Frazer

White splotches, most noticeable on the front teeth, the enamel sometimes pitted or striped as if with flat white paint. Sometimes the discoloration is brown. If you haven’t seen this on people’s teeth in your neighborhood, your water is probably not fluoridated.

It’s called dental fluorosis and it’s caused by ingesting too many fluoride compounds (usually called simply “fluoride”) while the teeth develop. Someone with this mottling of the enamel could also have suffered bone damage or skeletal fluorosis And a child with these problems will have them forever because fluorosis is irreversible.

How could it be that after fluoride has been promoted for 50 years as a benefit to every one of us, it turns out to be a bad idea? Haven’t the people who question fluoridation been cranks and paranoids?

Today, those lining up against fluoride in tap water and toothpaste include reputable medical and dental researchers and doctors, dentists, public health officials and the governments of most European countries including Sweden, the Netherlands, France and Germany.

Of the nearly 250 million people worldwide who drink fluoridated water, about 130 million are Americans. Out of our 50 largest cities, 41 have fluoridated water.

Does It Work?

Having kids drink fluoridated water was supposed to cut the incidence of dental cavities.Most researchers, politicians and dental professionals say it does just that, but equally qualified people are questioning that conclusion as well as the data gathered over the past 50 years (see, for example, the Health Canada Protective Branch Report, July 2, 1994). While conspiracy theories persist, most critics are raising serious questions such as, whether reduced cavities are due to fluoride or other things, like better education about tooth care.

The establishment and the critics throw epidemiological studies at each other. Fluoride proponents have many more studies, going back to the 1940s, but many reputable scientists have revisited the classic fluoride studies and concluded that they were fatally flawed.

News on Earth does not pretend to have reviewed all the studies, but we believe the fast-rising epidemic of dental fluorosis, coupled with the fact that most countries on Earth have decided against fluoridation, means it’s high time to reconsider fluoridation. Certainly we shouldn’t increase the percentage of Americans getting compulsory fluoridation via tap water from 62% now to 75% by 2000, a stated goal of the Clinton administration.

Though the administration parrots the reassurances of the dental establishment, we found more critical and independent thought coming from the government of a town just outside of Boston.

Last year the town of Natick, Mass. put together a panel of experts with no axes to grind to decide whether the community should add fluoride to its water. Chairman Norman Mancuso, Ph.D., has been a chemical engineer, a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a project scientist at NASA on the Apollo Program. The other four panelists all had advanced degrees and extensive experience in chemical risk assessment, in three cases, with the US Army.

Their report concluded “unanimously and emphatically” that fluoridation was a bad idea, in part because “there is little or no difference between . . . the incidence of cavities in children [in] fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities.”

Worldwide research suggests that tooth decay rates have gone down just as much where there is no fluoridation. Some examples:

British Columbia, with 11% of its population drinking fluoridated water, compared with 40-70% in other Canadian regions, has the lowest rate of tooth decay in Canada.

Many recent studies published in Caries Research and the Journal of Dental Research conclude that dental decay rates in Western Europe, which is 98% unfluoridated, have declined as much as or more than they have in the US. In 1986-87, the National Institute of Dental Research conducted the largest study on fluoridation and tooth decay ever, tracking 39,000 US schoolchildren between the ages of 5 and 17. A third lived in fluoridated areas, a third were partially fluoridated, and a third were unfluoridated. The study, concludes the Natick report, showed no statistically significant differences in dental decay between fluoridated and unfluorfidated areas.

Recently, fluoride proponents have revised their claims: Since 1988, the American Dental Association (ADA) has asserted that fluoridation can only reduce cavities by 18-25%, which is down from its previous claim of 40-60%.

The Natick report cites new research suggesting that any cavity-preventive action of fluoride comes from it being in saliva and not by hardening enamel as was long theorized. That would mean that it should be applied directly to the mouth, not pumped into the body via tap water.

Fluorides Are a Major Industrial Waste Product

Fluoride is a toxic pollutant. It’s part of the smokestack emissions from the manufacture of iron, steel, aluminum, copper, lead, and zinc. It’s released in the production of phosphates (used in all agricultural fertilizers); plastics; gasoline; brick, cement, glass, ceramics and the many other products made from clay. It’s emitted by coal-burning electrical power plants and uranium processing facilities. And fluoride is dumped into waterways by factories producing and processing glass, pesticides, fertilizers, chemicals and metals.

All these industries would have trouble disposing of their waste fluoride if they were not able to dump it or sell it to municipalities for adding to tap water.

The EPA’s 1989 estimate was that at least 155,000 tons a year are released into the air by US industrial plants, and as much as 500,000 tons a year are released into lakes, rivers and oceans. And because fluoride compounds are not biodegradable, they gradually accumulate in the environment, in the food chain and in people’s bones and teeth.

Even so, the EPA still says fluoridation is “an ideal environmental solution to a longstanding problem.” The “problem” is not so much tooth decay, but the huge amount of fluoride compounds produced as waste in industry. “By recovering by-product fluosilicic acid from fertilizer manufacturing, water and air pollution are minimized and water utilities have a low-cost source of fluoride available to them,” enthuses the EPA.

Fluoride Poisoning

What damage can fluoride do? In the worst case, fluoride poisoning can be fatal:

• In May 1992, 260 people were poisoned, and one man died, in Hooper Bay, Alaska, after drinking water contaminated with 150 ppm [parts per million] of fluoride. The accident was attributed to poor equipment and an unqualified operator at the fluoridation plant.
• In July 1993, three dialysis patients in Chicago died and five experienced toxic reactions to the fluoridated water used in the treatment process.

But these accidents are extreme cases. People at high risk from lower levels of fluoride poisoning include children, the elderly, people with impaired kidney function (including many people with AIDS), people with immunodeficiencies, diabetes and heart ailments, as well as anyone with calcium, magnesium and vitamin C deficiencies.

In nature, fluoride mostly occurs as calcium fluoride while what’s added to water supplies is mostly sodium fluoride or sodium silicofluoride (hydrofluorisic acid). Sodium fluoride is lethal in doses 50 times smaller than naturally-occurring fluoride.

Fluorosis

The ADA and the government consider dental fluorosis only a cosmetic problem. That’s no consolation to people whose teeth are blemished forever. But by designating it merely “cosmetic,” the feds are propping up the fluoridation enterprise. If fluorosis were redefined as an “adverse effect,” as many dental and medical professionals urge, the EPA would have to cut in half the admissible levels and that would radically reduce tap water fluoridation.

Furthermore, the American Journal of Public Health says that “brittleness of moderately and severely mottled teeth may be associated with elevated caries [cavities] levels.” in other words, fluoride can cause the exact problem it’s supposed to prevent.

What it does to bones

About half of the fluoride you drink or eat is absorbed in calcified tissues, like bones and teeth. The National Academy of Sciences and other authorities agree that a lifetime’s accumulation from large daily doses of fluoride can produce crippling skeletal fluorosis. This bone damage is widespread among older people in parts of the world where there are high concentrations of naturally occurring fluorides in the water, but few cases of skeletal fluorosis have been reported in the US. Critics claim we are missing diagnoses of skeletal fluorosis because most doctors in the US have not studied the disease.

The Natick report, several articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and EPA scientists all agree that fluoride increases the rate of hip fracture in people aged 65 or older.

Fluoride makes bones denser, which is why it is used in the treatment of osteoporosis, but it also makes bones more brittle (osteosclerosis).

Cancer

Recent research links fluoridation to a variety of cancers.

In 1977 Congress instructed the National Toxicology Program to investigate fluoride’s effects on lab animals.

But when its report was released in 1990, Dr. Robert Carton of the EPA’s Toxic Substances Division cried foul: “Four years ago, NFFE Local 2050, which represents all 1,100 professionals at EPA headquarters [said] that the scientific support documents for the fluoride in drinking water standard were fatally flawed…. The fluoride juggernaut proceeded as it apparently had for the last 40 years—without any regard for the facts or concern for public health.

“[The] EPA raised the allowed level of fluoride before the results of the rat/mouse study ordered by Congress in 1977 [were] complete….

“[The] currently existing data . . . show fluoride causes genetic effects, promotes the growth of cancerous tissue, and is likely to cause cancer in humans.”

The Natick report concluded that most studies of fluoride and cancer are flawed. . “Given the widespread deliberate exposure of. humans to water fluoridation and the suggestive animal data regarding cancer, especially osteosarcoma, it is incomprehensible why a large case-control epidemiological study. . . has not been initiated.”

Lead and arsenic

Meanwhile, other research has examined fluoride by-products from aluminum and phosphate (fertilizer) production, since the fluoride gets contaminated by lead and arsenic.

On top of that, fluorides in the water supply eat away the protective hydroxide coating in lead pipes in older homes, and then the pipes can and do leach lead.

Today one in nine children in the US under the age of 6 has unacceptably high blood lead levels, which some researchers believe may come from lead contamination in fluoride added to tap water consumed by pregnant women and passed on to their developing fetuses.

The EPA concedes that 10-20% of the lead in children comes from tap water, but that, they say, is too small to be of regulatory concern. Critics again point to its concentration over time in body tissue and the fact that we consume additional fluoride from products processed with fluoridated water.

Enzymes, brains and Alzheimer’s

The Natick report found that fluoride can “seriously disturb the balance of enzymatically activated biochemical reactions,” for example, “the metabolism of a number of common oral bacteria (e.g., Streptococcus mutans)….” The Natick panelists saw this as an area needing new study.

Another such area is damage to the brain or the central nervous system. In a recent article in the peer-reviewed journal Brain Research on the effects of aluminum on brain tissue, researchers reported that it was not aluminum but low levels of fluoride that caused damage to the tissue of the brain similar to the damage found in humans with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

An earlier study by Mullenix et al., reported in Nevrotoxicology and Teratology, in 1995, found that animals exposed to fluoride at various stages of gestation suffered either permanent hyperactivity if exposed prenatally, or became “the rat version of couch potato” if exposed after birth, though there was no elaboration of exactly what that is.

The Natick folks say “there is good evidence that fluoride . . . affects the IQ and behavioral patterns of the developing fetus at doses that are not toxic to the mother.”

The International Society for Fluoride Research has also reported studies implicating fluoride in the rising rates of Down’s syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome and sleep disorders.

How much are YOU Consuming

Even though no “optimal” fluoride intake has ever been established, the EPA set a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for fluoride in 1986, at 4 mg per liter of tap water. The recommended doses for kids were revised in 1995, downward to 2 mg., and less for infants, to prevent fluorosis. It’s estimated that the average person consumes between 5 and 7 mg. per day in “optimally fluoridated” areas, from drinking water, dental products, and food and beverages made with fluoridated water. But a heavy coffee and tap water drinker, drinking 4 liters a day, is at risk for crippling bone fluorosis after 10 years, according to National Academy of Science figures, or 20 years, says the US Public Health Service.

Children can consume enough to develop fluorosis if their tap water is fluoridated and they drink reconstituted juices. Grape juice, for example, has been tested at almost 6.8 mg. of fluoride per liter..

The Natick report concluded that, if their town water was fluoridated, children under 3 would be likely to ingest “between 2 and 3.5 times as much fluoride as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Dental Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians.”

Cooking with tap water can greatly increase a food’s fluoride content, and Teflon- and Tefal- coated items (such as frying pans) transmit very small amounts of fluoride into food.

Today, fluoride levels in toothpaste have risen to 4,000 ppm, and the warnings on the tubes are back, much to the annoyance of the ADA.

Children and adults commonly ingest up to 0.5 mg. of fluoride a day from toothpaste. Small children are now told to use no more than a pea-size amount, but young kids have less control over swallowing, and how many are sticking to the pea rule is impossible to say, especially when they’re enticed by bubble-gum-flavored brands.

Fluoride treatments commonly administered in the dentist’s chair contain between 10,000 to 20,000 ppm and there is no regulated dose requirement. In recent years, several deaths have been attributed to dental office treatments.

Why the juggernaut?

The scientific establishment in the US is largely united in support of fluoridation, but this show of unanimity may come in part from reluctance to admit to a gigantic mistake (the “whoops factor”), and it sometimes comes at a cost to scientific accuracy.

Dr. William Marcus, the dissenting senior science advisor in the EPA’s Office of Drinking Water, says that when the rat studies were released, “every one of the cancers reported by the contractor (Botel Northwest) had been downgraded by the National Toxicology Program.” A congressional investigation found that NTP scientists were coerced by their superiors to change their findings.

Anti-fluoride crusader John Yiamouyiannis believes that government policy is designed, above all, to protect industry, and that the motivating force behind fluoride use is the need of certain businesses to dump their toxic waste products somewhere. “As is normal, the solution to pollution is dilution. You poison everyone a little bit rather than poison a few people a lot. This way, people don’t know what’s going on,” he said in the journal Fluoride.

It would cost companies such as Exxon, US Steel and Alcoa many millions, perhaps billions, of dollars to handle fluoride properly. Marcus says that “it would require a class-one landfill [which] would cost …. about $7,000-plus per 5,000- to 6,000-gallon truckload to dispose of it. It’s highly corrosive.”

As Ralph Nader once said, if they admit they’re wrong on fluoridation, people would ask, and legitimately so, “What else have they not told us right?”

How to avoid it, how to get it out of your system

Public pressure has got fluoride out of the water throughout Europe, as well as in Los Angeles, Newark, Jersey City, and Bedford, Mass.

You can get some of the fluoride out of your tap with either reverse osmosis filters or water ionizers. Check toothpaste labels for fluoride. Dabur, Natures Gate, Weleda and Higher Ideals make fluoride-free toothpaste.

Mottled teeth cannot be repaired except by cosmetic dentistry, but fluoride damage to the soft tissues, such as liver, kidneys and reproductive organs, is reversible with vitamins. When lab mice who had reproductive-organ damage induced by fluoride were given vitamin C and calcium (and no more fluoride), they recovered significantly. In another experiment with mice, vitamins E and D repaired the damage that fluoride did to liver and kidneys.

To see the full Natick Report, go to http://www.cadvision.com/fluoride.