The population of Antwerp receives its drinking water from the Albert canal which contains water derived from the river Neuse near Liege, Belgium. Because of a discharge of fluorides from a fertilizer factory near Liege, the fluoride content of Antwerp water varies according to season, usually within the legally acceptable range of 1 mg/1. During a particularly dry season in the fall of 1971, the legal limit of 1.5 mg/1 was considerably exceeded. The responsible authorities quickly diluted the Meuse water at the purification plant with water of low fluoride content from subsidiary canals, thus avoiding a serious public health crisis. It was later made known that the fertilizer plant possessed a purifying system which enabled it to recover 3/4 of the fluorides in its discharge water, but this equipment was not used because the factory could not find a buyer for its fluorides. In the spring of 1973 they finally found a customer for fluorides, so that a drop in river Meuse fluorides could soon be expected. Actually, fluoride measurements did not bear out this optimistic prediction, and the desirability of public intervention is suggested.