It seems that in Ohio, water supply officials accidentally dumped 40 pounds of hydrochloric acid into the city’s water supply. How do you do that accidentally, you might ask?

Apparently, you buy 40 pounds of fluoride, but the vendor instead gives you 40 pounds of hydrochloric acid. This raises a few questions, though:

• Is the supplier actually so careless in handling 40 pounds of hydrochloric acid that they were able to confuse it with fluoride?
• As the worker dumped what he thought was fluoride into the water system, he didn’t think, “Man, this really burns my hands?” Or did he just get dissolved by the acid and slowly dissolve into the water supply?
• We didn’t really get to play with hydrochloric acid in science class, but don’t you get some fairly nasty reactions if you just dump acid into water? Again, no one thought it was strange that the fluoride began hissing furiously?
• Does this vendor also supply “fluoride” to my dentist?”