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Honolulu Lite
THE trouble with water is that it doesn't have any additives. It's boring. It's tasteless. It has no calories. It has no color. Nothing as tasteless
as pure waterI was a judge in a water-tasting contest once. We had to taste water from all over the state. The judges acted as if they were sipping fine wines and issued flowery descriptions of the various samples. (Ah, this Wahiawa water is sassy and insolent yet sincere.) But trust me, it all tasted like water, which tastes like nothing.
Luckily, every few years, politicians come up with the idea of adding something to the water. They just can't stand water being unadulterated and I don't blame them. Where does water get off thinking it has a right to be so pure?
The weird thing is, the only additive politicians think about adding to water (other than dash of chlorine) is a substance called fluoride. Fluoride is a compound made up of fluorine and some other stuff. Fluorine, according to the dictionary, is "a corrosive, poisonous pale greenish-yellow gaseous chemical element, the most reactive nonmetallic element known."
That would seem to be an odd thing to put in drinking water. You don't see people take a swig of water and say, "You know, what this really needs is a corrosive, poisonous pale greenish-yellow gaseous chemical element."
Gov. Ben Cayetano is the latest proponent of adding fluoride to our drinking water. And I'm pretty sure he's not doing it because he wants to poison people. He just wants people to have better teeth.
FLUORIDE, in the amounts added to water, is not dangerous but it does keep your teeth from rotting. Obviously, the governor doesn't want to represent a state full of people with rotting teeth. Who would? Unfortunately, Hawaii residents don't brush their teeth as often as they should. Hawaii apparently is the rotten teeth capital of the country, the state with the worst dental health, according to statisticians.
The governor could have passed a mandatory tooth-brushing act, but that would have been hard to enforce. He could have suggested that fluoride be added to other types of food, such as tacos and beer, to see if that made a dent in our dental problems. Instead, he wants to fluoridate the water that everyone has to drink, whether they brush or not and even if they never had a cavity.
If the Legislature actually is going to consider adding stuff to our water to make our lives better, why limit it just to fluoride? Most people don't get enough vitamins, especially winos and people who eat out of dumpsters. Sure, they'll have great looking teeth once we dope up the water with fluoride, but what about their vitamin deficiency? Their unhealthy lifestyle is going to end up costing us money.
A lot of women and elderly don't get enough calcium, so we'd better dump some of that into the water, too. What good are great teeth if you have bones as brittle as dry spaghetti?
Once the government decides people are too dumb to take care of their own health and they therefore have to be force-fed chemicals via water, there are all kinds of health issues they could address. I don't know where Hawaii stands nationally on the eyeball front, but adding carotene to the water would probably help everyrone's eyesight.
Of course, carotene would make the water turn orange. No big deal. People would get used to drinking orange water. What other choice would they have?
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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