Media Releases

Water Taste Testing at The Children's Museum
Posted by Children's Museum Admin (cmadmin) on Friday, 17th August, 2007 at 9:07 AM
Media Releases >>

Kitchener, ON - To help educate about the uses of fluoride in our drinking water the Museum is using its current traveling exhibition, SMILE: The Tooth and Nothing but the Tooth to raise awareness of the issue by tracking visitors - young and old - to be the judge on the best tasting water in our community.

The program, which serves to educate visitors on the controversy of adding fluoride to some Municipality's public water supply, will allow visitors to taste tap water from around the Region. For the past week participants have been testing the taste of tap water from Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo, in addition to one brand of bottled water, without knowing which is which. Kids and adults report which water tastes best to Museum staff who have been recording the results since Monday.

As people in and around the Region may or may not know, fluoride is added to the water supply in the City of Waterloo, but not to the water supply of the City of Cambridge or Kitchener. While some people praise the use of fluoride in the water supply as it aids in dental hygiene, others condemn its use.

"It's easy to see the points on both sides of the debate", said David Marskell, the Executive Director at the Museum. While fluoride is hugely important for good dental hygiene as shown by our exhibit, SMILE, some people worry about essentially medicating a mass water supply with a particular chemical. Our intent is to raise the issue with people and it will be interesting to see which one the public enjoys best in terms of taste."

Taste testing takes places every week day at 2:00 p.m. with the final poll being held Friday, August 24th. The recorded results will be released immediately following.

SMILE, the Museum's current traveling exhibit, runs through until Labour Day.