I agree, on a blog called "the various stream" it seems only right to mention recent news on water quality:Chicago's 2009 water quality report just came out and it was notably silent on the matter of the various pharmaceuticals that lace the public agua supply. This pharmacopeia in the tap would seem to be something to worry about considering drugs are designed to have effects at low doses - what is it to have anti-depressants, cholesterol reducers, sex hormones, and nicotine all mixed up at the faucet? In the mind of health officials perhaps "no news is good news" for the public...
It makes me think of Osamu Tezuka's masterpiece Ode to Kirihito that I am now reading on an excellent recommendation from Xa. As of page 234 (granted it is over 800 pages so things may change) the diligent doctor Kirihito believes that an odd disease in remote villages turning people into dog-like forms is caused by water contamination - in that case from prehistoric mineral deposits with some strange substance in them. hmm....
Of course, just today a paper was published on the clever use of analytical chemistry to track patterns of illicit drug use among neighborhoods and towns in Oregon via testing the public water supply. Ironic but maybe unsurprising to think that the technology would be used to surveil the public's behavior in one instance and yet ignore its implication in another; alas the "war on drugs" doesn't include Glaxo Smith-Kline in our ice cubes...If you start feeling like a golden retriever, perhaps you have a jump on where to start looking for answers.
p.s. (7/18) It *was* the water after all (some rare earth mineral). Poor Kirihito got used being doggish in the end though...
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