Nexus - 0207 - New Times Magazine-pages

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£ler a workout in the gym, a training ru~ or cycle, a game of squash.or a mountain hike, the thought of a refreshing drink of cool, clear water is often uppermost in our minds. ~¥r:~1;~,~/g,~ Adequately quenching that thirst is a vital . li:"" "'?'*'!"'., I aspect of maintaining fitness, hearth and even beauty. But how pure is the water we drink and are the chemicals used to purify it serving paradoxically to contaminate it? Unless we are fortunate enough to live in an unpolluted rural environment collecting our own water (or have affixed some type of water purifier to our tap), the peculiar odour and taste of the liquid in our glass stand as persistent reminders that the water we drink contains chemicals. Generally, the most noticeable of these is chlorine. We have come to accept the presence of chlorine in oQr drinking water as one of the necessary, though slightly unpleasant aspects of maintaining community health. Somewhere along the way, most of us have leamed that a number of contagious diseases such as typhoid and cholera have been virtually eradicated by filtering and chlorinating our municipal water supplies. The crucial question which many of us never learned to ask, however, is whether chlorinated water represents a health hazard in its own right. In what follows we shall urge that in the light of recent research on t.I1e subject, it is clear that water treated with chlorine should be regarded as potentially detrimental to the health of the community. WHAT IS CHLORINE AND HOW DOES IT WORK? Thee Australian bicentenary year, 1988, marked the centenary of water chlorination. In 1888 a patent on chlorination of w