Water & Oceans

By BETTE HILEMAN

 

Until very recently, the mere mention that fluoridated water might cause adverse health effects was likely to be met with deep skepticism, even derision. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention still calls water fluoridation the greatest health triumph of the past 50 years.

But those attitudes are beginning to change.

Researchers from California and Hawaii have analyzed 25 factors and developed a map that reflects the relative cumulative magnitude of their effects on the waters extending for about 250-350 miles off the shores of Washington, Oregon, California, and the Baja Peninsula.

 

 There we were, 21 environmental reporters, freelancers, students and professors, all huddled and shivering in an unheated blind on the Platte River.

We were waiting in the breezy, 20-degree cold for thousands of lesser sandhill cranes to return from feeding in the corn fields and roost for the night on protective sandbars. Each spring, the cranes leave their southwest wintering spots and stop in central Nebraska to rest and eat before heading out to their Arctic nesting grounds.