Gee, Oldie, it seems you only have to post a few words showing you've some experience of life and human nature, and bang, Bugsy's right on your case! 'No fool like and old fool.' Dear dear.

If it makes you feel any better, I don't find it hard to imagine how something might go wrong and contaminating substances get into a recycled water supply. It could happen as follows:

Go to this link that Bugsy gave us all, http://www.qwc.qld.gov.au/How+is+it+made , and look at the stages labelled 'barrier 3' and 'barrier 4'. Each of these stages involves some sort of filter element or high-tech membrane. These sort of things tend to be relatively expensive consumables in any recycling that ultimately has as its aim recovery of effluent for human consumption. The replacement of these consumables is the area within the system in which, unless the whole operation is run as an open-book contract, profitability is likely to be concealed.

With human nature and commerce involved, there is going to be a motivation for some supplier or user of consumables to insert a cheaper substitute. Unlike with desalination, where their taste buds could tell anyone testing water quality straight away that something is wrong, the tendency will be to rely upon materials specifications as providing ongoing guarantees of product quality. Product testing regimes can be costly, and can themselves become subjected to cost-cutting. A combination of such circumstances could see contaminants that are effective at only parts per trillion making their way into a water supply and remaining undetected for quite some time. Then, upon eventual discovery, after the inevitable disbelief, will come the denial and subsequent cover-up in what will, by then, be an adversarial relationship between contractor and regulatory authority.

Consumers, all the while, remain exposed to the risks such contamination may pose.

For other reasons why introducing recycled effluent into the water supply might not be a good idea, see this link and thread: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5616#75748 .

All I can say Forrest is that you are good at dreaming up scenarios that have no real basis in reality. Chemicals that are "active at parts per trillion" are active at those concentrations inside the human body. Most of them aren't even part of our wastewater! They are environmental pollutants from plastics, pesticides and other things we generally do not flush down our sewage system. But keep at it man, one day you might actually get somewhere, maybe when you get elected, who knows?

But really, willful ignorance is not be to applauded nor encouraged. Take the AIDS sufferer example, I guess many years of AIDS awareness have passed this old guy by. HIV is one of the less transmissible viruses and cannot live outside of the human body very long, in fact it it needs to be transmitted directly by vital fluids like semen and blood, i.e. having unprotected sex and sharing hypodermic needles. It cannot be transmitted through waste fluids like urine and fecal matter. As viruses go, this is a pretty fragile one. You cannot even get it by directly kissing an AIDS carrier!

But oldie probably wanted to use it because it can conjure up all sorts of stigmas attached to it, especially those associated with gay men and drug users, eww yuck. If this is the level of "debate" that many of the willfully ignorant want to stoop to, then I will waste no time in unloading my 2 cents on them.

That big concrete tank on the hill, you will find them in every town or city.
Each week, day in some cases you can see tests taken back to the lab,it has always been so.
And everything that rain Wash's into our water oil even blood from accident sites continues to be filtered from that water.
Things far worse than human waste.
Can anyone think our water comes from those rare clean mountain streams only?
Facts will remain while the mindless fears continue to be just that.