Bill Burch

Unhealthy interest in Cleveland sports. Views & opinions are my own. Jeremiah 17: 5-10

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

@AkronJackson Shedeur is still so awful.

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

@ESPNCleveland Sanders is STILL awful.

[Northern 8 Football Conference @8Northern]

State championship set for next Saturday at 6 pm from Carey! Fremont St. Joseph Central Catholic High School will face SMCC Panther Sports in the state final presented by @ohsfca @ohsfca_ !

[Albert Breer @AlbertBreer]

This is kinda what the Browns need ...

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

@AlbertBreer 100%!

[McNeil @REFLOG18]

Her: “It would take an act of god for the Browns to lose this game”

Him:

[Fluoride Action Network @FluorideAction]

Where the fluoride actually comes from

Here is the fact that reframes the whole story: nobody builds a plant to make fluorosilicic acid. It is recovered from the off-gas of fertilizer manufacturing, and the EPA’s own supply-chain profile lays out the chemistry in two steps.

Phosphate rock is mostly fluorapatite, and it carries roughly 3 to 4% fluoride. The primary reaction is the wet process — the same digestion of rock with sulfuric acid that makes phosphoric acid for fertilizer, and that produces an enormous quantity of gypsum as well:

Ca₅(PO₄)₃F + 5 H₂SO₄ → 3 H₃PO₄ + 5 CaSO₄ + HF

During that reaction the fluoride and the silicon in the rock are mobilised and leave as gases: silicon tetrafluoride and hydrogen fluoride. Those vapours are captured, and when they are scrubbed with water the second reaction happens in the scrubber itself:

SiF₄ + 2 HF → H₂SiF₆

Two consequences of being a scrubber product. First, the output is set by how much fertilizer someone else decided to make — not by how much fluoride water systems need. Second, it is not even a clean single compound: the EPA notes, citing AWWA, that fluorosilicic acid “is not a discrete compound, but rather an aqueous mixture of fluorosilicated compounds.” The EPA’s own profile describes the material as forming “as a waste stream” when the gases are scrubbed.

So the chain runs: sulfur becomes sulfuric acid, sulfuric acid digests phosphate rock, the rock gives up its fluoride as gas, the gas is scrubbed into fluorosilicic acid, and a tanker truck takes it to a water treatment plant.

Every link in that chain is somebody else’s business decision until the last one.

[Fluoride Action Network @FluorideAction]

What utilities have actually done

The useful thing about this shortage is that water systems are regulated, public bodies, so they announce what they are doing and why. The pattern across 2026 is consistent: first dose reduction to conserve, then, where deliveries failed outright, suspension.

Roughly 60% of the United States population receives fluoridated water, so the affected share of the country is not marginal. Dan Hartnett, chief policy officer at the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, and Matthew Garbark, director of Baltimore’s Department of Public Works, both described a market sourced from a very small pool of producers.

That is the part worth explaining, because it is not obvious why a chemical used by most of the country should be so thinly supplied.

[Fluoride Action Network @FluorideAction]

What You Need To Know About America’s Fluoride Shortage

The fluoride added to American drinking water is fluorosilicic acid (H₂SiF₆), and it is not manufactured on purpose.

It is a scrubber product: phosphate rock is about 3–4% fluoride, and when sulfuric acid digests that rock to make phosphoric acid for fertilizer, the fluoride leaves as silicon tetrafluoride and hydrogen fluoride gas. Scrub those gases with water and you get fluorosilicic acid. In 2025 the US recovered an estimated 45,000 tons of it from just three phosphoric acid plants.

In 2026 both ends of that supply tightened at once: overseas production at a leading exporter was interrupted, and US phosphate producers curtailed output at sites that are themselves named fluorosilicic acid producers.

Because the acid has a shelf life of about one month, nobody can stockpile through it.

This article is about where that chemical actually comes from, why its supply has almost no slack in it, and why two separate things went wrong in 2026 at the same time.

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

@8Northern Saturday scores?

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

@CLEsportsTalk This is an indictment on ownership. 31 other owners having a good chuckle we are still paying this d-bag his massive contract. Great message to send to the locker room.

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

https://t.co/RpOO3HqnT7

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

@NFLonCBS @PriscoCBS Watch him go to the Jets?

[Barstool Cleveland @BS_Cleveland]

And we only got ONE 1st, Jared Verse, Future 2nd and 3rd for Myles Garrett

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

@RapSheet @nflnetwork Then one would think the Browns were in the driver’s seat and could command much more in compensation than what has been initially reported, right?

[Joshua Morgret @JoshuaMorgret]

HS BASEBALL: SMCC 2, St. Paul 1, FINAL/9. Toby Gibson retires all five batters he faces as the Panthers move on to Saturday's district final at 2 p.m. back at Margaretta. @RegisterSports @SCCS_Ath @SMCC__Baseball

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

@EMichaelJones1 NOPE

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

@OasisArchives Be Here Now

[Bill Burch @bburch115]

@OleTimeHardball 💯