
The first mass chlorination of a city’s water supply - ghosh
http://www.howwegettonext.com/Article/VNyy5ScAACQA9Jr6/how-one-man-poisoned-a-citys-water-supply-and-saved-millions-of-childrens-lives-in-the-process#.VZRAXnNwbqA
======
clord
With what we know now about beneficial bacteria, I wonder if, in addition to
the pathogens, we're killing probiotics? And perhaps the lack of exposure to
mild bacteria mean we're more susceptible to immune diseases?

Of course getting rid of the pathogens is a great thing, but perhaps
chlorination plays a role in causing some modern problems that are related to
the immune system and the gut biome? Anyone have links to studies done on this
topic?

~~~
w1ntermute
_An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune
Diseases_ : [http://www.amazon.com/Epidemic-Absence-Understanding-
Allergi...](http://www.amazon.com/Epidemic-Absence-Understanding-Allergies-
Autoimmune/dp/1439199396)

Velasquez-Manoff on Autoimmune Disease, Parasites, and Complexity:
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/03/velasquez-
manof.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/03/velasquez-manof.html)

~~~
itsybitsycoder
"A new way of understanding allergies"? When I was growing up, my mother and
father were constantly saying that kids who didn't play in the dirt were the
kids who got allergies and got sick all the time. They encouraged us to play
with bugs, play in the mud, and run around the neighborhood getting into
things that would cause a 'concerned neighbor' to call CPS today. My
grandparents on both sides had the same philosophy, and I don't think they're
alone on this... pretty sure this was once considered common sense, before the
super helicopter parenting + antibacterial everything trend caught on. I get
that common sense isn't science, and it's great that someone is compiling the
evidence, but that title just comes off as so arrogant. Somewhere out there,
there's a book called "water is wet: a new way of understanding liquids".

------
timr
Note what _didn 't_ happen here: he didn't create a startup company to deliver
Luxury Water to rich people. He didn't patent the idea, and attempt to collect
royalties. He didn't discover the idea while attempting to get rich from some
tangentially related business.

Contrary to popular narrative, many of the technologies that make our lives
_livable_ came about because dedicated people devoted themselves directly to
solving some important problem, not serendipitously while pursuing personal
wealth.

~~~
maratd
Let's not kid ourselves, this wasn't some poor sap working for the common
good.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Leal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Leal)

He was professionally established in leadership positions, both in the private
and public sector. This man did well for himself.

And there are plenty of examples of men who are well off today and who do
selfless things _because they can afford to_.

There is nothing wrong with _earning a living_ and even, gasp, _turning a
profit_.

~~~
timr
If, by "professionally established in leadership positions", you mean to refer
to the fact that he had a medical degree, and had spent his prior career
working on these problems, then yes, I agree.

That's exactly my point. But nothing you've cited is evidence that the man was
rich (or even attempting to profit) from his work for the public good.

~~~
maratd
No, that is NOT what I mean. What I mean is that he:

1\. Established his own medical practice in Paterson, New Jersey.

2\. Was appointed City Physician.

3\. Founded the outpatient clinic at Paterson General Hospital.

4\. Became Health Inspector in Paterson.

5\. Became Health Officer in Paterson.

6\. Left the city's service and became the sanitary adviser to the East Jersey
Water Company.

7\. Became President of the Board of Health for Paterson.

He was also a member of "a large number of professional associations".

There is more in the wikipedia page, but I'm getting bored.

He sounds like an awesome guy and certainly somebody who specialized in public
health, but there isn't a shred of evidence that he wasn't a shrewd business
man.

On the contrary, everything points to him being just that.

As far as him not capitalizing on his invention ... he didn't invent it, by
his own admission. Also, let's not forget that he developed the delivery
device in the employ of the water company. It's theirs, even if there is
something to patent.

If you work at Microsoft and develop a piece of software in the process of
working for them, they own the fruits of your labor. That's not a foreign
concept to that era.

------
alricb
And what can happen if the people responsible for a water supply screw up:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak)
[http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/...](http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/walkerton/)

~~~
schiffern
>This contamination was due to farm runoff into an adjacent water well

Yet another victim of our universally awful water management in agriculture,
and in general. Why is a farmer allowed to discharge polluted water onto
someone else's property, whereas if a factory discharged that exact same water
it would be a crime?

Our land management (which in modern times mostly falls under the purview of
agriculture) needs to start treating the water cycle as the life-critical
biophysical process it is, not just as an inconvenience (rain is just
'weather,' and the answer to rain is always 'drainage')

In reality, 'drainage' leads to drought. Drainage is straight hard pipes that
shunt all rainfall to the ocean as fast as possible. This prevents aquifer
recharge or soil soaking. Buildings and parking lots are 100% runoff surfaces.
Even continuously mowed lawns are nearly so due to subsoil hardpan.

Here's a simple math equation. When looking at a continent as a whole:

    
    
      water_available_per_hectare (in megalitre/ha) = net_precipitation_per_hectare (ML/day/ha) * average_time_from_fall_to_ocean (days)
    

As you can see, minimizing the time it takes water to reach the ocean
_minimizes the water available on the land._ [1] And under climate change more
of the world is going to start looking like California.

But by using "drainage" as the de facto solution, we're driving the
optimization _in the exact opposite direction._ What we should be doing is
slowing down water, sending it on circuitous routes with lots of friction.
There are some designs that do exactly that,[2] but they are almost entirely
ignored in discussions of water use and policy.

This E. coli incident/mismanagement/market failure is tragic, but it's a
symptom of a larger structural problem. We're subsidizing both water addition
(huge dam projects and pipelines) and water removal (not making farmers clean
up their own mess^Wrunoff), with all the predictably bad results.

[1] _Ok, I cheated a bit here. There actually is something clever that you can
do - recycle the water. If you harvest and evaporate huge quantities of water
shortly after it falls, you can cause new rain a few hundred miles downwind
(and buffer floodwaters besides). This is quite absurd for an industrial
system, but nevertheless this system powers our modern day rain. And that 's
why_ trees _cause 80% of terrestrial rainfall:_
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v496/n7445/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v496/n7445/full/nature11983.html)

[2] _A few that come to mind: swales (i.e. contour following water soaking
ditches), the various techniques of Keyline design (farm scale dams /tanks,
altering the passive flow of water over land, and use of a deep ripping plow),
and productive literally-cheaper-than-dirt biofiltration systems like reed bed
ponds and banana circles. Google is your friend here, but a couple links:_
[http://www.cresswater.co.uk/pages/case-studies/whitsome-
hill...](http://www.cresswater.co.uk/pages/case-studies/whitsome-hill-
mains.php)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ima_ff5xVH4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ima_ff5xVH4)

~~~
alricb
The way the system was setup, the well that was contaminated was treated as a
"deep well" that _cannot_ get contaminated by surface water. Unfortunately, it
wasn't the case at all. They might have figured it out in time if they'd
followed proper procedure, but the guy in charge was completely incompetent,
being unaware of concepts they teach at the beginning of a water management
course (such as "turbidity").

It was compounded by the fact that they were trying to hide their improper
handling of another well; ironically, that other well was in fact a deep well
and did not cause the contamination.

I don't know about Ontario, but here in Quebec the rules on water management
in agriculture have become much more stringent in recent years. You need to
have a plan in place for all the land and all the animals you own.

~~~
schiffern
Wow, yeah that's really bad.

Good to hear that sane water management is prevailing! You're right, in
general the actual water authorities tend to do a pretty good job, because
they know their stuff and how complex it is (that guy excepted, obviously).
Most of the damage comes from outdated agricultural practices imo.

Fundamentally it's wealth concentration doing most of the damage, by gradually
replacing self-sufficient farmers invested in land stewardship with paycheck-
to-paycheck mortgage slaves on a tractor 18h/day. This is mainly via
regulatory capture leading to our [routinely] bass-ackwards farm bills.

------
tomjen3
Today he would be treated as a terrorist, which would probably have been for
the best. In this case it worked, but how many mad people are so convinced of
their own brilliance that they will simply think the public will adore them
when they see it works?

~~~
icebraining
Agreed; this guy was dangerous, he just got lucky.

------
Retric
That's not the orginal title. _How One Man Poisoned a City’s Water Supply (and
Saved Millions of Children’s Lives in the Process)_

~~~
ocb
Presumably clickbait titles are to be avoided

~~~
chris_wot
It was the original HN title only a little while ago. Only he didn't poison
anyone really. A good title rename.

------
mcherm
Is this the historical equivalent of Uber ignoring legal constraints in hopes
of later finding a work-around or a change in the law?

~~~
seszett
Maybe if Uber were convinced they were saving lives and if they did not expect
to financially benefit from working around the law.

I don't think that's the case though.

~~~
TTPrograms
When all you've got is a hammer everything looks like growth hacking.

