>By "propaganda" you mean, this: President Clinton's Clean Water Initiative ?
FWIW... I worked for the Clinton White House at the time... and the initiative was in part a response to my own inputs.>
You worked on the Clean Water Act which applies to polluters of water bodies. Drinking water is regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). Although they have a couple of links - watershed protection being one and discharge quality standards are vaguely derived from drinking water regulated levels under SDWA.
Drinking water is regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Originally from 1974 (President: Gerald Ford) and most of the amendments in 1986 (Reagan was the President then) and 1996 (Under Clinton but diluted after Gingrich attack). And EPA was started when Nixon was President. Environment was a bipartisan issue. Bush Senior wanted to be the Environment President. The process of making drinking regulations continued through both republican and democrat presidents.
epa.gov
Clean Water Act was very successful in cleaning up the water bodies in United States. And just like SDWA, it was not a partisan issue as many of the laws and amendments came during Republican presidents. So picking on Clinton’s Clean Water Initiative – I don’t find the point in it, unless you can tell me.
From Wikipedia
>Technically, the name of the law is the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. [3] The first FWPCA was enacted in 1948, but took on its modern form when completely rewritten in 1972 in an act entitled the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. [4] [1] Major changes have subsequently been introduced via amendatory legislation including the Clean Water Act of 1977 [5] and the Water Quality Act (WQA) of 1987. [
>So... why not just prescribe magnesium ? It's literally dirt cheap... and it works BETTER ? Dietary deficiencies are an under-studied risk factor ? And, the cause of recent increases... is most likely to be tied to recent changes... like the changes made during the Clinton Administration that altered quality standards for water systems...>
How does Clean Water Initiative by Clinton (which never got converted to a Law) result in dietary deficiencies in drinking water to the consumer? Please illuminate.
> I worked my way through college... including 2+ year of upper level organic chemistry... in part by working at a water treatment company... and later, provided the scientific and engineering validation for my own community's water system improvement plans... as we worked to implement our program to attain full compliance with the Clinton's changed standards ? And, it was that very same system that had made me aware enough of the nature of the problem... to highlight the nature of the problem to others ?>
Which Clinton’s standards? Clean Water Initiative, which you claim to have worked on in Clinton’s White House does not seem to have resulted in any amendments to the Clean Water Act.
>So, now we strip the minerals out of the water in our water systems ? No. Not quite. The two choices you have in solving "water quality problems" are "flocculation"... precipitating the minerals... or else... you add other things as "clarifiers" that instead make the minerals better dissolved... so they don't precipitate ?>
What can I say? You simply do not understand the goals of treatment as well as physical and chemical processes that happen in water treatment. I hope you are not making any conclusions based on this understanding.
>All that junk that used to deposit on the pipes and clog them over time ? That's not a problem any more. But, that means that instead of depositing on the pipes... it's depositing whatever is in that crust... in your head ?>
You simply do not understand the corrosion treatment process that is being implemented in distribution systems. Corrosion inhibitors form a thin protective coating on the pipe walls that prevent pipe material to leach into drinking water. So less metals (lead, copper) should be going to deposit in your head. Which is a good thing.
>Worse, the chemicals used as clarifying agents... are phosphates... so the mineral phosphate complexes formed... might tend to preferentially find their way into.... cellular energy metabolism ?>
Phosphates added in treatment process or distribution systems are so insignificant compared to what is added in food stuff. Read the ingredients list on labels and look for orthophosphate.
Water chemistry is not that easy to understand, even for someone who actually worked at a water treatment plant. Biochemistry is at least an order of magnitude more complex than drinking water chemistry. No offense, but if your water chemistry knowledge is so weak, you should not trust any gut feel you have about biochemical pathways and explanations with a different discipline's word salad, (as abuelita remarked about your writing).
>The Clinton's improvement plans were, as is often true of government programs, overly "one size fits all"... initially based in assuming "water is water"... when water is inconveniently non-uniform.>
Water is inconveniently non-uniform. That is a correct observation.
> But the motivation in the implementation was driven primarily by terrorism concerns... having identified water sources as an obvious weak point, they proceeded to "fix it"... which was mostly a very good idea. >
The primary motivation was control of non-point source pollution. Because previous Clean Water Act had done a wonderful job in controlling end-of-the-pipe or point pollution. You may be too young to remember how bad the water bodies were in early 1970s. Terrorism was starting to be a concern to be addressed in water systems but was not primary motivation.
>The issues with water treatment chemistry... vs. upgraded physical infrastructure... not unlike others in which unintended consequences might prove problematic. None of that is a function of an upgraded physical infrastructure ?>
Word-salad again. What is the point you are trying to make?
>You also seem to suffer under the illusion that minerals in biochemistry are "alchemy"... ?
That's deranged... probably an artifact of too much fluoride in your toothpaste... but, OK.>
Alchemy is a philosophy of looking for the magic bullet, a cure-all, a panacea. I mean that in a positive way. Alchemists are full of hope. They dream of solving problems with one cure, one substance or one philosophy. Jay Chen loves his gold. Maurice Winn loves his Qualcomm (although his gold trade was better), Bernie Sanders loves his socialism. And at certain times they have been or could be rewarded for their belief.
-Arun |
