Posted by Mike Field on March 14, 2008 at 22:41:58 from 203.129.59.231 user mikefield.
In Reply to: Re: Water in the bathroom. posted by John Nichols on March 06, 2008 at 14:13:32:
Melbourne's water was fluoridated in the 1970s, when it had been chlorinated pretty-well forever. The use of fluoride followed research that clearly pointed out the dental benefits of its use (at the right dosage, as John points out.)
The controversy surrounding the use of fluoride in this case was largely a civil libertarian one. Chlorine was added to the water to make it safer to drink (which is one thing,) whereas fluoride was added as as way of forcing medication on the entire population at large -- hardly the same motivation, and opening an in-principle way of legally forcing any other medication on the population in the future. Those disputing the use of fluoride in the water supply mostly simply wished to retain their freedom of choice about whether to use it or not, and objected to the patronising paternalism that told them that since it was good for them they had to have it.
At that time (and still,) the only alternative was to install rainwater tanks and to rely on those for drinking and cooking (and adding fluoride tablets if you wanted to have fluoridation while retaining control over it.) But the property rating system meant (and still means) that you paid for a certain quantity of water if was water was reticulated to the property whether you used it or not, which meant that following this Good Life approach required you to pay for your water twice, a luxury that few could afford. (Installing rainwater tanks was at one time actually illegal if you had reticulated water, if my memory serves me correctly.)
In any case, the wheel has now turned with the decade-long drought, and I'm glad to say that both the installation of freshwater tanks and of on-site grey-water recycling are now not only tolerated, but subsidised.