Page 2824 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 1991
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associated with the new equipment for fluoridation. So, that has already been purchased. All we are really looking at is time; so section 65 of the self-government Act, I think, is a red herring.
There are a number of things that can be done. Mr Berry suggested that you can mix something with the fluoride to halve the concentration but that he did not know what it was. Well, I will come up with two proposals. One, of course, is to put polymer beads, which are recoverable, in with the fluoride. They float to the surface, you skim them off and then put them back in your next batch of fluoride. That is a very easy, non-polluting way of overcoming the problem until this new equipment is installed.
The other way is to add it with lime, because lime is already put into the water supply to bring the pH level of the water down. When you put fluoride and chlorine in, the pH goes up, so we put potash or lime in. As I said, there are five basic chemicals added to a water supply - in fact, there are seven - and we do not drink water; we drink soup. The point is that the lime is put in; so all we would do is put some lime in with the fluoride, mix it in a cement mixer, if you like, and then pour that into the hoppers.
Mr Berry also stated that he was not sure why the knowledge about the 25-kilogram bags is important. Well, it is, because that shows you the handling ability of the bags of fluoride. You can, in fact, tip them into a cement mixer with another 25-kilogram bag of lime, throw the lot in the hopper, and your existing equipment will handle it very easily so that you can come in with your dosage rates.
Mr Berry: I do not know whether that would be within the manual handling limits.
MR PROWSE: It is only a temporary measure. Mr Berry interjects that handling it is a problem, and it certainly is. People have to don at this time full protective clothing and breathing apparatus when working with this chemical and loading it into the hoppers. It is a very dangerous chemical, as we all know.
Mr Berry also stated that the tolerance of the old equipment that we have at the moment, at 0.5 milligrams per litre, is 40 per cent and that that is not acceptable. I certainly agree that it is undesirable; but in the short term, and over the number of days of the year that this problem will exist, which is minimal - there are only a few days of the year when this would be at the 40 per cent level - I think it is acceptable, on the understanding, of course, that if I had my druthers it would be that none was put in. I am taking the debate back to the 0.5 parts per million. Twenty per cent is certainly acceptable. If 10 per cent is set as a world standard for water quality control, which it is, the 20 per cent is an extension of that one side or the other, and it is only a small amount.
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