As one goes down the Table, the size of elements increases while the reactivity decreases.
Wrong. Throw some Francium in water. See if it or Lithium is 'more reactive' - this is a common demonstration in any freshman-level general chemistry course. Of course, since the word 'reactive' is not really meaningful in the sense that he used it, he can get away with this statement.
From Merriam-Webster:
Reactive:
1 : of, relating to, or marked by reaction or reactance
2 a : readily responsive to a stimulus b : occurring as a result of stress or emotional upset <reactive depression>
Thus, we can infer that HF is more reactive than HCl. HCl (Hydro Chloric acid) was the strongest acid we used in school. But HF is so reactive, and so deadly that it was never seen or used in any of the 10 years of chemistry demonstrations and labs I took part in.
More untruthitudes. HCl is extremely reactive, as is HF. They simply react with different things. This is why HF is stored in plastic containers, while HCl is stored in glass containers. HF will eat right through glass but doesn't bother most organic polymers. HCl will eat right through most organic polymers but doesn't bother glass. Reactivity, therefore, is not any quantitative measure of anything - he simply wields it as a weapon against the ignorant. Don't get me wrong - HF is the last thing you want to spill on your hand. However, claiming what he does based on this is a gross non sequitur.
This photograph shows what the fluorine added to Calgary, Alberta's drinking water has done to a thick and "corrosion resistant" steel water supply valve.
Fluoride is used extensively in computer chip and Aluminum and steel manufacture, causing a staggering amount of environmental damage.
In fact, in May, 2000, 3M Corporation announced it was discontinuing a whole family of fluorinated compounds, including Scotchgard, due to their incredible destructiveness to the environment.
These are all completely immaterial. I can throw a barrel of human blood in the water and it will corrode steel and damage the environment. However, that does not mean that it's harmful to humans. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone alive without human blood.
Fluorine is also found in mind-affecting drugs like Prozac and the "date rape" drug Rohypnol. Click here for a more complete list of drugs containing fluorine.
More appeal to ignorance. This guy is obviously out to scare people into believing his viewpoint, wielding irrelevant facts as weapons.
Many of us are already aware of something similar to this regarding the Chlorine that is sometimes added to municipal water supplies -- that it forms families of compounds in the water. Well, Fluorine is much more reactive than Chlorine, so one can only imagine the range of deadly compounds it is capable of creating when it is added to drinking water.
:thumsbup; That's some great logic there. 'X is worse than Y, so we can only imagine how terrible X+A is for you!' :roll: I guess this kind of specious logic is all you have to fall back on in the absence of real evidence. I agree that free radicals in your body are bad, but he failed to connect the formation of free radicals with the presence of fluorine in the water supply.
Bottom line: I'm a chemical engineer. BS in 2003, MS in 2004, and (assuming I get the dissertation done in time...) PhD in 2007. I know just about no chemistry. Anyone with a bachelors degree in chemistry will know much more chemistry than myself, yet even I know enough to call shens on this guy's work. If people want to be up in arms about their bodies being 'poisoned' with various substances, their time would be much better spent looking in the direction of phosphoric acid, present in dark sodas (Coke especially). It accelerates aging, joint degeneration, and has other harmful side effects. The body tightly controls the amount of phosphorus running around, so changing the amount is very bad. But I digress. People will believe what they want to believe. I suggest reading up on how fluoride was first discovered to have dental benefits before you buy into any of these conspiracy theories.
edit: And there are processes by which fluorine can be removed from water. Reading his bottom part of the page is making my head spin. This guy is more clueless than I thought. :disgust: Ethanol and water form a minimum boiling azeotrope, yet they can still be distilled. He also neglected liquid-liquid extraction techniques, reactive distillation, and hosts of other well-known separation techniques that any undergrad chemical engineer is very much familiar with. He also doesn't understand that there are many types of membrane separations that can differentiate between water and ionic species. He only mentions size-exclusion membranes, which are probably not the most common for reverse-osmosis water filtration units. But anyway, enough for now.
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