Fluoride,
Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb
by Joel
Griffiths and Chris Bryson
© July 1997
[ The below article has been reprinted with permission and can
also be found at http://www.iahf.com/flouride.html ]
Some fifty years after the United States
began adding fluoride to public water supplies to reduce cavities in children's
teeth, declassified government documents are shedding new light on the roots of
that still controversial public health measure, revealing a surprising
connection between fluoride and the dawning of the nuclear age.
Today, two thirds of U.S. public drinking
water is fluoridated. Many municipalities still resist the practice,
disbelieving the government's assurances of safety .
Since the days of World War II, when this
nation prevailed by building the world's first atomic bomb, U.S. public health
leaders have maintained that low doses of fluoride are safe for people, and
good for children's teeth.
That safety verdict should now be re-examined
in the light of hundreds of once-secret World War II documents obtained by
Griffiths and Bryson--including declassified papers of the Manhattan Project,
the U.S. military group that built the atomic bomb.
Fluoride was the key chemical in atomic
bomb production, according to the documents. Massive quantities of
fluoride--millions of tons--were essential for the manufacture of bomb-grade
uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. One of the
most toxic chemicals known, fluoride rapidly emerged as the leading chemical
health hazard of the U.S. atomic bomb program--both for workers and for nearby
communities, the documents reveal.
Other revelations include:
Much of the original proof that fluoride
is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists, who
had been secretly ordered to provide "evidence useful in litigation"
against defense contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The first lawsuits
against the U.S. A-bomb program were not over radiation, but over fluoride
damage, the documents show.
Human studies were required. Bomb program
researchers played a leading role in the design and implementation of the most
extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoridating public drinking
water--conducted in Newburgh, New York from 1945 to 1956. Then, in a classified
operation code-named "Program F," they secretly gathered and analysed
blood and tissue samples from Newburgh citizens, with the cooperation of State
Health Department personnel.
The original secret version--obtained by
these reporters--of a 1948 study published by Program F scientists in the
Journal of the American Dental Association shows that evidence of adverse
health effects from fluoride was censored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
(AEC)--considered the most powerful of Cold War agencies--for reasons of
national security.
The bomb program's fluoride safety studies
were conducted at the University of Rochester, site of one of the most
notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War, in which unsuspecting
hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium. The
fluoride studies were conducted with the same ethical mind-set, in which
"national security" was paramount.
The U.S. government's conflict of
interest--and its motive to prove fluoride "safe"---has not until now
been made clear to the general public in the furious debate over water
fluoridation since the 1950's, nor to civilian researchers and health
professionals, or journalists.
The declassified documents resonate with a
growing body of scientific evidence, and a chorus of questions, about the
health effects of fluoride in the environment.
Human exposure to fluoride has mushroomed
since World War II, due not only to fluoridated water and toothpaste, but to
environmental pollution by major industries from aluminum to pesticides:
Fluoride is a critical industrial chemical.
The impact can be seen, literally, in the
smiles of our children. Large numbers of U.S. young people--up to 80 percent in
some cities--now have dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive
fluoride exposure, according to the U.S. National Research Council. (The signs
are whitish flecks or spots, particularly on the front teeth, or dark spots or
stripes in more severe cases.)
Less-known to the public is that fluoride
also accumulates in bones--"The teeth are windows to what's happening in
the bones," explains Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry at St. Lawrence
(N.Y.) University. In recent years, pediatric bone specialists have expressed
alarm about an increase in stress fractures among U.S. young people. Connett
and other scientists are concerned that fluoride--linked to bone damage by
studies since the 1930's--may be a contributing factor. The declassified
documents add urgency: Much of the original proof that low-dose fluoride is
safe for children's bones came from U.S. bomb program scientists, according to
this investigation.
Now, researchers who have reviewed these
declassified documents fear that Cold War national security considerations may
have prevented objective scientific evaluation of vital public health questions
concerning fluoride.
Information was buried," concludes
Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, former head of toxicology at Forsyth Dental Center in
Boston, and now a critic of fluoridation. Animal studies Mullenix and
co-workers conducted at Forsyth in the early 1990's indicated that fluoride was
a powerful central nervous system (CNS) toxin, and might adversely affect human
brain functioning, even at low doses. (New epidemiological evidence from China
adds support, showing a correlation between low-dose fluoride exposure and
diminished I.Q. in children.) Mullenix's results were published in 1995, in a
reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal.
During her investigation, Mullenix was
astonished to discover there had been virtually no previous U.S. studies of
fluoride's effects on the human brain. Then, her application for a grant to
continue her CNS research was turned down by the U.S. National Institutes of
Health (NIH), where an NIH panel, she says, flatly told her that "fluoride
does not have central nervous system effects."
Declassified documents of the U.S.
atomic-bomb program indicate otherwise. An April 29, 1944 Manhattan Project
memo reports: "Clinical evidence suggests that uranium hexafluoride may
have a rather marked central nervous system effect.... It seems most likely
that the F [code for fluoride] component rather than the T [code for uranium]
is the causative factor."
The memo--stamped "secret"--is
addressed to the head of the Manhattan Project's Medical Section, Col. Stafford
Warren. Colonel Warren is asked to approve a program of animal research on CNS
effects: "Since work with
these compounds is essential, it will be necessary to know in advance what
mental effects may occur after exposure... This is important not only to
protect a given individual, but also to prevent a confused workman from
injuring others by improperly performing his duties."
On the same day, Colonel Warren approved
the CNS research program. This was in 1944, at the height of the Second World
War and the nation's race to build the world's first atomic bomb. For research
on fluoride's CNS effects to be approved at such a momentous time, the
supporting evidence set forth in the proposal forwarded along with the memo
must have been persuasive.
The proposal, however, is missing from the
files of the U.S. National Archives. "If you find the memos, but the
document they refer to is missing, it's probably still classified," said
Charles Reeves, chief librarian at the Atlanta branch of the U.S. National
Archives and Records Administration, where the memos were found. Similarly, no
results of the Manhattan Project's fluoride CNS research could be found in the
files.
After reviewing the memos, Mullenix
declared herself "flabbergasted." She went on, "How could I be
told by NIH that fluoride has no central nervous system effects when these
documents were sitting there all the time?" She reasons that the Manhattan
Project did do fluoride CNS studies--"that kind of warning, that fluoride
workers might be a danger to the bomb program by improperly performing their
duties--I can't imagine that would be ignored"--but that the results were
buried because they might create a difficult legal and public relations problem
for the government.
The author of the 1944 CNS research
proposal was Dr. Harold C. Hodge, at the time chief of fluoride toxicology
studies for the University of Rochester division of the Manhattan Project.
Nearly fifty years later at the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, Dr. Mullenix
was introduced to a gently ambling elderly man brought in to serve as a
consultant on her CNS research--Harold C. Hodge. By then Hodge had achieved
status emeritus as a world authority on fluoride safety.
"But even though he was supposed to
be helping me," says Mullenix, "he never once mentioned the CNS work
he had done for the Manhattan Project."
The "black hole" in fluoride CNS
research since the days of the Manhattan Project is unacceptable to Mullenix,
who refuses to abandon the issue. "There is so much fluoride exposure now,
and we simply do not know what it is doing," she says. "You can't
just walk away from this."
Dr. Antonio Noronha, an NIH scientific
review advisor familiar with Dr. Mullenix's grant request, says her proposal
was rejected by a scientific peer-review group. He terms her claim of
institutional bias against fluoride CNS research "farfetched." He
adds, "We strive very hard at NIH to make sure politics does not enter the
picture."
Fluoride and National Security
The documentary trail begins at the height
of World War II, in 1944, when a severe pollution incident occurred downwind of
the E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company chemical factory in Deepwater, New Jersey.
The factory was then producing millions of pounds of fluoride for the Manhattan
Project, the ultra-secret U.S. military program racing to produce the world's
first atomic bomb.
The farms downwind in Gloucester and Salem
counties were famous for their high-quality produce--their peaches went
directly to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Their tomatoes were bought
up by Campbell's Soup. But in the summer of 1943, the farmers began to report
that their crops were blighted, and that "something is burning up the
peach crops around here."
Poultry died after an all-night
thunderstorm, they reported. Farm workers who ate the produce they had picked
sometimes vomited all night and into the next day. "I remember our horses
looked sick and were too stiff to work," these reporters were told by Mildred
Giordano, who was a teenager at the time. Some cows were so crippled they could
not stand up, and grazed by crawling on their bellies.
The account was confirmed in taped
interviews, shortly before he died, with Philip Sadtler of Sadtler Laboratories
of Philadelphia, one of the nation's oldest chemical consulting firms. Sadtler
had personally conducted the initial investigation of the damage.
Although the farmers did not know it, the
attention of the Manhattan Project and the federal government was riveted on
the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret documents obtained by these
reporters. After the war's end, in a secret Manhattan Project memo dated March
1, 1946, the Project's chief of fluoride toxicology studies, Harold C. Hodge,
worriedly wrote to his boss, Colonel Stafford L. Warren, Chief of the Medical
Division, about "problems associated with the question of fluoride
contamination of the atmosphere in a certain section of New Jersey. There seem
to be four distinct (though related) problems," continued Hodge:
"1. A question of injury of the peach
crop in 1944. "2. A report of extraordinary fluoride content of vegetables
grown in this area. "3. A report of abnormally high fluoride content in
the blood of human individuals residing in this area. "4. A report raising
the question of serious poisoning of horses and cattle in this area."
The New Jersey farmers waited until the
war was over, then sued du Pont and the Manhattan Project for fluoride damage -
reportedly the first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program.
Although seemingly trivial, the lawsuits
shook the government, the secret documents reveal. Under the personal direction
of Manhattan Project chief Major General Leslie R. Groves, secret meetings were
convened in Washington, with compulsory attendance by scores of scientists and
officials from the U.S. War Department, the Manhattan Project, the Food and
Drug Administration, the Agriculture and Justice Departments, the U.S. Army's
Chemical Warfare Service and Edgewood Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, and du
Pont lawyers. Declassified memos of the meetings reveal a secret mobilization
of the full forces of the government to defeat the New Jersey farmers:
These agencies "are making scientific
investigations to obtain evidence which may be used to protect the interest of
the Government at the trial of the suits brought by owners of peach orchards in
... New Jersey," stated Manhattan Project Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B.
Rhodes, in a memo c.c.'d to General Groves.
"27 August 1945
"Subject: Investigation of Crop
Damage at Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey
"To: The Commanding General, Army
Service Forces, Pentagon Building, Washington D.C.
"At the request of the Secretary of
War the Department of Agriculture has agreed to cooperate in investigating
complaints of crop damage attributed... to fumes from a plant operated in
connection with the Manhattan Project."
Signed, L.R. Groves, Major General, U.S.
Army
"The Department of Justice is
cooperating in the defense of these suits," wrote General Groves in a
February 28, 1946 memo to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on
Atomic Energy.
Why the national-security emergency over a
few lawsuits by New Jersey farmers? In 1946 the United States had begun
full-scale production of atomic bombs. No other nation had yet tested a nuclear
weapon, and the A-bomb was seen as crucial for U.S leadership of the postwar
world. The New Jersey fluoride lawsuits were a serious roadblock to that
strategy.
"The specter of endless lawsuits
haunted the military," writes Lansing Lamont in his acclaimed book about
the first atomic bomb test, "Day of Trinity."
In the case of fluoride, "If the
farmers won, it would open the door to further suits, which might impede the
bomb program's ability to use fluoride," said Jacqueline Kittrell, a
Tennessee public interest lawyer specializing in nuclear cases, who examined
the declassified fluoride documents. (Kittrell has represented plaintiffs in
several human radiation experiment cases.) She added, "The reports of human
injury were especially threatening, because of the potential for enormous
settlements--not to mention the PR problem."
Indeed, du Pont was particularly concerned
about the "possible psychologic reaction" to the New Jersey pollution
incident, according to a secret 1946 Manhattan Project memo. Facing a threat
from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to embargo the region's produce
because of "high fluoride
content," du Pont dispatched its lawyers to the FDA offices in Washington,
where an agitated meeting ensued. According to a memo sent next day to General
Groves, Du Pont's lawyer argued "that in view of the pending suits... any
action by the Food and Drug Administration... would have a serious effect on
the du Pont Company and would create a bad public relations situation."
After the meeting adjourned, Manhattan Project Captain John Davies approached
the FDA's Food Division chief and "impressed upon Dr. White the
substantial interest which the Government had in claims which might arise as a
result of action which might be taken by the Food and Drug
Administration."
There was no embargo. Instead, new tests
for fluoride in the New Jersey area would be conducted--not by the Department
of Agriculture - but by the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service--because
"work done by the Chemical Warfare Service would carry the greatest weight
as evidence if...lawsuits are started by the complainants." The memo was
signed by General Groves.
Meanwhile, the public relations problem
remained unresolved - local citizens were in a panic about fluoride.
The farmer's spokesman, Willard B. Kille,
was personally invited to dine with General Groves--then known as "the man
who built the atomic bomb"--at his office at the War Department on March
26, 1946. Although he had been diagnosed with fluoride poisoning by his doctor,
Kille departed the luncheon convinced of the government's good faith. The next
day he wrote to the general, wishing the other farmers could have been present,
he said, so "they too could come away with the feeling that their
interests in this particular matter were being safeguarded by men of the very
highest type whose integrity they could not question."
In a subsequent secret Manhattan Project
memo, a broader solution to the public relations problem was suggested by chief
fluoride toxicologist Harold C. Hodge. He wrote to the Medical Section chief,
Colonel Warren: "Would there be any use in making attempts to counteract
the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents of Salem and Gloucester
counties through lectures on F toxicology and perhaps the usefulness of F in
tooth health?" Such lectures were indeed given, not only to New Jersey
citizens but to the rest of the nation throughout the Cold War.
The New Jersey farmers' lawsuits were
ultimately stymied by the government's refusal to reveal the key piece of
information that would have settled the case - how much fluoride du Pont had
vented into the atmosphere during the war. "Disclosure... would be
injurious to the military security of the United States," wrote Manhattan
Project Major C.A. Taney, Jr. The farmers were pacified with token financial
settlements, according to interviews with descendants still living in the area.
"All we knew is that du Pont released
some chemical that burned up all the peach trees around here," recalls
Angelo Giordano, whose father James was one of the original plaintiffs.
"The trees were no good after that, so we had to give up on the
peaches." Their horses and cows, too, acted stiff and walked stiff,
recalls his sister Mildred. "Could any of that have been the
fluoride?" she asked. (The symptoms she detailed to the authors are
cardinal signs of fluoride toxicity, according to veterinary toxicologists.)
The Giordano family, too, has been plagued
by bone and joint problems, Mildred adds. Recalling the settlement received by
the Giordanos, Angelo told these reporters "my father said he got about
$200."
The farmers were stonewalled in their
search for information, and their complaints have long since been forgotten.
But they unknowingly left their imprint on history - their claims of injury to
their health reverberated through the corridors of power in Washington, and
triggered intensive secret bomb-program research on the health effects of
fluoride. A secret 1945 memo from Manhattan Project Lt. Colonel Rhodes to
General Groves stated: "Because of complaints that animals and humans have
been injured by hydrogen fluoride fumes in [the New Jersey] area, although
there are no pending suits involving such claims, the University of Rochester
is conducting experiments to determine the toxic effect of fluoride."
Much of the proof of fluoride's safety in
low doses rests on the postwar work performed by the University of Rochester,
in anticipation of lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury.
Fluoride and the Cold War
Delegating fluoride safety studies to the
University of Rochester was not surprising. During World War II the federal
government had become involved, for the first time, in large scale funding of
scientific research at government-owned labs and private colleges. Those early
spending priorities were shaped by the nation's often-secret military needs.
The prestigious upstate New York college,
in particular, had housed a key wartime division of the Manhattan Project, studying
the health effects of the new "special materials," such as uranium,
plutonium, beryllium and fluoride, being used to make the atomic bomb. That
work continued after the war, with millions of dollars flowing from the
Manhattan Project and its successor organization, the Atomic Energy Commission
(AEC). (Indeed, the bomb left an indelible imprint on all U.S. science in the
late 1940's and 50's. Up to 90% of federal funds for university research came
from either the Defense Department or the AEC in this period, according to Noam
Chomsky's 1996 book "The Cold War and the University.")
The University of Rochester medical school
became a revolving door for senior bomb program scientists. Postwar faculty
included Stafford Warren, the top medical officer of the Manhattan Project, and
Harold Hodge, chief of fluoride research for the bomb program.
But this marriage of military secrecy and
medical science bore deformed offspring. The University of Rochester's
classified fluoride studies--code-named Program F--were conducted at its Atomic
Energy Project (AEP), a top-secret facility funded by the AEC and housed in
Strong Memorial Hospital. It was there that one of the most notorious human
radiation experiments of the Cold War took place, in which unsuspecting hospital
patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium. Revelation of
this experiment in a Pulitzer prize-winning account by Eileen Welsome led to a
1995 U.S. Presidential investigation, and a multimillion-dollar cash settlement
for victims.
Program F was not about children's teeth.
It grew directly out of litigation against the bomb program, and its main
purpose was to furnish scientific ammunition which the government and its
nuclear contractors could use to defeat lawsuits for human injury.
Program F's director was none other than
Harold C. Hodge, who had led the Manhattan Project investigation of alleged
human injury in the New Jersey fluoride-pollution incident. Program F's purpose
is spelled out in a classified 1948 report. It reads: "To supply evidence
useful in the litigation arising from an alleged loss of a fruit crop several
years ago, a number of problems have been opened. Since excessive blood
fluoride levels were reported in human residents of the same area, our
principal effort has been devoted to describing the relationship of blood
fluorides to toxic effects."
The litigation referred to, of course, and
the claims of human injury were against the bomb program and its contractors.
Thus, the purpose of Program F was to obtain evidence useful in litigation
against the bomb program. The research was being conducted by the defendants.
The potential conflict of interest is
clear. If lower dose ranges were found hazardous by Program F, it might have
opened the bomb program and its contractors to lawsuits for injury to human
health, as well as public outcry.
Comments lawyer Kittrell: "This and
other documents indicate that the University of Rochester's fluoride research
grew out of the New Jersey lawsuits and was performed in anticipation of
lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury. Studies undertaken for
litigation purposes by the defendants would not be considered scientifically
acceptable today," adds Kittrell, "because of their inherent bias to
prove the chemical safe."
Unfortunately, much of the proof of
fluoride's safety rests on the work performed by Program F Scientists at the
University of Rochester. During the postwar period that university emerged as
the leading academic center for establishing the safety of fluoride, as well as
its effectiveness in reducing tooth decay, according to Dental School
spokesperson William H. Bowen, M.D. The key figure in this research, Bowen
said, was Harold C. Hodge--who also became a leading national proponent of
fluoridating public drinking water.
Program F's interest in water fluoridation
was not just "to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of
residents," as Hodge had earlier written. The bomb program needed human
studies, as they had needed human studies for plutonium, and adding fluoride to
public water supplies provided one opportunity.
The A-Bomb Program and Water Fluoridation
Bomb-program scientists played a
prominent--if unpublicized--role in the nation's first-planned water
fluoridation experiment, in Newburgh, New York. The Newburgh Demonstration
Project is considered the most extensive study of the health effects of
fluoridation, supplying much of the evidence that low doses are safe for
children's bones, and good for their teeth.
Planning began in 1943 with the
appointment of a special New York State Health Department committee to study
the advisability of adding fluoride to Newburgh's drinking water. The chairman
of the committee was Dr. Hodge, then chief of fluoride toxicity studies for the
Manhattan Project.
Subsequent members included Henry L.
Barnett, a captain in the Project's Medical section, and John W. Fertig, in
1944 with the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Pentagon
group which sired the Manhattan Project. Their military affiliations were kept
secret: Hodge was described as a pharmacologist, Barnett as a pediatrician.
Placed in charge of the Newburgh project
was David B. Ast, chief dental officer of the State Health Department. Ast had
participated in a secret wartime conference on fluoride held by the Manhattan
Project, and later worked with Dr. Hodge on the Project's investigation of
human injury in the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret memos.
The committee recommended that Newburgh be
fluoridated. It also selected the types of medical studies to be done, and
"provided expert guidance" for the duration of the experiment. The
key question to be answered was: "Are there any cumulative
effects--beneficial or otherwise, on tissues and organs other than the
teeth--of long-continued ingestion of such small concentrations...?"
According to the declassified documents, this was also key information sought
by the bomb program, which would require long-continued exposure of workers and
communities to fluoride throughout the Cold War.
In May 1945, Newburgh's water was
fluoridated, and over the next ten years its residents were studied by the
State Health Department. In tandem, Program F conducted its own secret studies,
focusing on the amounts of fluoride Newburgh citizens retained in their blood
and tissues--the information sought by the bomb program: "Possible toxic
effects of fluoride were in the forefront of consideration," the advisory
committee stated. Health Department personnel cooperated, shipping blood and placenta
samples to the Program F team at the University of Rochester. The samples were
collected by Dr. David B. Overton, the Department's chief of pediatric studies
at Newburgh.
The final report of the Newburgh
Demonstration Project, published in 1956 in the Journal of the American Dental
Association, concluded that "small concentrations" of fluoride were
safe for U.S. citizens. The biological proof--"based on work performed ...
at the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project"--was delivered by
Dr. Hodge.
Today, news that scientists from the
atomic bomb program secretly shaped and guided the Newburgh fluoridation
experiment, and studied the citizen's blood and tissue samples, is greeted with
incredulity.
"I'm shocked--beyond words,"
said present-day Newburgh Mayor Audrey Carey, commenting on these reporters'
findings. "It reminds me of the Tuskegee experiment that was done on
syphilis patients down in Alabama."
As a child in the early 1950's, Mayor
Carey was taken to the old firehouse on Broadway in Newburgh, which housed the
Public Health clinic. There, doctors from the Newburgh fluoridation project
studied her teeth, and a peculiar fusion of two finger bones on her left hand
she had been born with. Today, adds Carey, her granddaughter has white
dental-fluorosis marks on her front teeth.
Mayor Carey wants answers from the
government about the secret history of fluoride, and the Newburgh fluoridation
experiment. "I absolutely want to pursue it," she said. "It is
appalling to do any kind of experimentation and study without people's
knowledge and permission."
Contacted by these reporters, the director
of the Newburgh experiment, David B. Ast, says he was unaware Manhattan Project
scientists were involved. "If I had known, I would have been certainly
investigating why, and what the connection was," he said. Did he know that
blood and placenta samples from Newburgh were being sent to bomb program
researchers at the University of Rochester? "I was not aware of it,"
Ast replied. Did he recall participating in the Manhattan Project's secret
wartime conference on fluoride in January 1944, or going to New Jersey with Dr.
Hodge to investigate human injury in the du Pont cases as secret memos state?
He said he had no recollection of these events.
A spokesperson for the University of
Rochester Medical Center, Bob Loeb, confirmed that blood and tissue samples
from Newburgh had been tested by the University's Dr. Hodge. On the ethics of
secretly studying U.S. citizens to obtain information useful in litigation
against the A-bomb program, he said, "that's a question we cannot
answer." He referred inquiries to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),
successor to the Atomic Energy Commission.
A spokesperson for the DOE in Washington,
Jayne Brody, confirmed that a review of DOE files indicated that a
"significant reason" for fluoride experiments conducted at the
University of Rochester after the war was "impending litigation between
the du Pont company and residents of New Jersey areas." However, she
added, "DOE has found no documents to indicate that fluoride research was
done to protect the Manhattan Project or its contractors from lawsuits."
On Manhattan Project involvement in
Newburgh, the spokesperson stated, "Nothing that we have suggests that the
DOE or predecessor agencies--especially the Manhattan Project--authorized
fluoride experiments to be performed on children in the 1940's."
When told that these reporters had several
documents that directly tied the Manhattan Project's successor agency at the
University of Rochester, the Atomic Energy Project, to the Newburgh experiment,
the DOE spokesperson conceded her study was confined to "the available
universe" of documents. Two days later spokesperson Jayne Brody faxed a
statement for clarification: "My search only involved the documents that
we collected as part of our human radiation experiments project--fluoride was
not part of our research effort."
"Most significantly," the
statement continued, relevant documents may be in a classified collection at
the DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory known as the Records Holding Task Group.
"This collection consists entirely of classified documents removed from
other files for the purpose of classified document accountability many years
ago," and was "a rich source of documents for the human radiation
experiments project," she said.
The crucial question arising from this
investigation is: Were adverse health findings from Newburgh and other
bomb-program fluoride studies suppressed? All AEC funded studies had to be
declassified before publication in civilian medical and dental journals. Where
are the original classified versions?
The transcript of one of the major secret scientific
conferences of World War II--on "fluoride metabolism"--is missing
from the files of the U.S. National Archives. Participants in the conference
included key figures who promoted the safety of fluoride and water fluoridation
to the public after the war--Harold Hodge of the Manhattan Project, David B.
Ast of the Newburgh Project, and U.S. Public Health Service dentist H. Trendley
Dean, popularly known as the "father of fluoridation." "If it is
missing from the files, it is probably still classified," National
Archives librarians said.
A 1944 World War II Manhattan Project classified report on
water fluoridation is missing from the files of the University of Rochester
Atomic Energy Project, the U.S. National Archives, and the Nuclear Repository
at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The next four numerically
consecutive documents are also missing, while the remainder of the
"MP-1500 series" is present. "Either those documents are still
classified, or they've been 'disappeared' by the government," says
Clifford Honicker, Executive Director of the American Environmental Health
Studies Project in Knoxville, Tennessee, which provided key evidence in the
public exposure and prosecution of U.S. human radiation experiments.
Seven pages have been cut out of a 1947 Rochester
bomb-project notebook entitled "Du Pont litigation." "Most
unusual," commented chief medical school archivist Chris Hoolihan.
Similarly, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by
these authors over a year ago with the DOE for hundreds of classified fluoride
reports have failed to dislodge any. "We're behind," explained Amy
Rothrock, chief FOIA officer at Oak Ridge National Laboratories.
Was information suppressed? These
reporters made what appears to be the first discovery of the original
classified version of a fluoride safety study by bomb program scientists. A
censored version of this study was later published in the August 1948 Journal
of the American Dental Association. Comparison of the secret with the published
version indicates that the U.S. AEC did censor damaging information on
fluoride, to the point of tragicomedy.
This was a study of the dental and
physical health of workers in a factory producing fluoride for the A-bomb
program, conducted by a team of dentists from the Manhattan Project.
The secret version reports that most of
the men had no teeth left. The published version reports only that the men had
fewer cavities.
The secret version says the men had to
wear rubber boots because the fluoride fumes disintegrated the nails in their
shoes. The published version does not mention this.
The secret version says the fluoride may
have acted similarly on the men's teeth, contributing to their toothlessness.
The published version omits this statement.
The published version concludes that
"the men were unusually healthy, judged from both a medical and dental
point of view."
Asked for comment on the early links of
the Manhattan Project to water fluoridation, Dr Harold Slavkin, Director of the
National Institute for Dental Research, the U.S. agency which today funds
fluoride research, said, "I wasn't aware of any input from the Atomic Energy
Commission," Nevertheless, he insisted, fluoride's efficacy and safety in
the prevention of dental cavities over the last fifty years is well-proved.
"The motivation of a scientist is often different from the outcome,"
he reflected. "I do not hold a prejudice about where the knowledge comes
from."
After comparing the secret and published
versions of the censored study, toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix commented,
"This makes me ashamed to be a scientist." Of other Cold War-era
fluoride safety studies, she asks, "Were they all done like this?"
Archival research by Clifford Honicker
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Joel Griffiths is a medical writer who
lives in New York City. Author of a book on radiation hazards, he has
contributed numerous articles to medical and popular publications.
Chris Bryson, who holds a masters degree
in Journalism, is an independent reporter with ten years' professional
experience. He has worked with BBC Radio and Public Television in New York,
plus numerous publications, including the Christian Science Monitor and the
Mansfield Guardian.
Additional notes: Harold C. Hodge and the
U.S. Army
Dr. Hodge is deceased. However, in 1979
his chapter in a book titled "Continuing Evaluation of the Use of
Fluorides" set the record straight. With regard to the "safe"
dosage of fluoride for children, Hodge wrote: "The most important and
widely disregarded fact about dental fluorosis is this: no safe established
daily intake exists, i.e., the maximal amount in mg fluoride which consumed
daily does NOT produce cosmetically damaging extensive white areas or brown
stain in some individuals has not been fixed."
In the same publication, Dr. Hodge also
corrected his figures for crippling skeletal fluorosis. In his calculations
made during the early 1950s it appears, although not spelled out, that Hodge
had neglected to convert pounds to kilograms. As a result, most reviews which
contain the "crippling daily dose of fluoride," including the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services 1991 document, Review of Fluoride: Benefits
and Risks, as well as the current Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) and the
new Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI)--another document from the Institute of
Medicine--use 20-80 mg/day figures. (Although these documents refer to Hodge,
and the first two specifically refer to Hodge 1979, they completely ignore
Hodge's 1979 correction of the older erroneous figures.)
Sandra Schlicker, study director for the
DRI, has acknowledged her understanding of Hodge's error, as well as the
correction in 1979; yet, offers no explanation for using the older erroneous
figures. In addition, this latest report dismisses the correction made by
another NAS/NRC panel in 1993, falsely claiming the corrected figures for
"Crippling" were meant to apply only to the earlier non-crippling
stages of the disease.
The bottom line is this: At currently
reported intake levels, excess fluoride from multiple sources has surpassed the
quantity known to cause serious adverse health effects within about forty
years. (i.e., 5 mg/day will cause crippling deformities of the spine and major
joints)
Within about twenty years, with a daily
intake of 5 mg, the symptoms to be expected include chronic joint pain as well
as brittle bones.
Knowing full well that five milligrams of
fluoride daily would be expected to produce phase 3 crippling skeletal
fluorosis in the average individual after about 40 years, the committee has
determined that 10 milligrams of fluoride daily is "tolerable." The
question, "Tolerable to whom?" remains unanswered.
More about the Army
Although facilities had been constructed
to provide fluoride in the drinking water system at Ft. Detrick, key components
corroded to the point that the system was shut down. Reinstating fluoridation
became subject to regulations involving an environmental assessment.
On 11 December 1996 Commander, Colonel
Henry O. Tuell, III, wrote to U.S. Army Medical Command, Fort Sam Houston,
Texas. In this memo Colonel Tuell states: "...recent research and findings
regarding efficacy of fluoridation and the adverse health effects, could be
serious."
In other words, drinking fluoridated water
may be unsafe.
As yet, the Army post at Fort Detrick,
(Frederick, Maryland) remains unfluoridated.
* *
*
The above article has been reprinted with permission and can also
be found at http://www.iahf.com/flouride.html
Jock
Doubleday
Director
Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc.
http://www.SpontaneousCreation.org
director@spontaneouscreation.org