Ch. 6. How the Manhattan Project Sold Us Fluoride: the fluoride deception
by Christopher Bryson from archive.org
How the Manhattan
Project Sold Us Fluoride
Newburgh, Harshaw, and Jim Conant's Ruse For half a century assurances from the
Public Health Service that water
fluoridation is safe have rested on the results of the 1945 Newburgh-Kingston Fluorine-Caries Trial, in
which the health
of children from the
fluoridated town of Newburgh, New York, were
compared for ten years with children from neighboring
nonfluoridated Kingston. But recently
declassified documents link the wartime Public
Health Service's interest in fluoride to the Manhattan Project. And a
trail of papers showing how bomb-program
scientists from the University of
Rochester secretly monitored the Newburgh experiment, studying biological samples from local citizens — and
crudely manipulating at least one other
wartime study of fluoride's dental and toxic effects — suggests that Newburgh was simply another cold war
human experiment, serving the interests
of the nuclear industrial state. https://www.blogger.com/null THE VIEW FROM the Old Firehouse on Broadway
in the city of Newburgh, New York, is
one of the more majestic in the Empire State.
The boulevard climbs purpose-straight through the center of town
from the valley below, and whipped by a
January wind, a lone pedestrian can see
east across the mighty Hudson River to a spine of rolling hills in the Connecticut distance. In the spring of 1945
the wind carried the laughter of
hundreds of excited school children as they chattered their way to a free public-health clinic inside the Old
Firehouse. Doctors wanted to examine the
children. HOW THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
SOLD US FLUORIDE 79 Newburgh had become only the second place
in the United States to artificially add
fluoride to public water supplies. Last
week came news that fluorine is to be tried out with whole towns as guinea pigs, Time announced approvingly in
April '944 The magazine suggested that,
where fluoride was found naturally in the groundwater, "dentists' chief occupation is holding
citizens' mouths open to display their
perfect teeth. ' It wasn't just
teeth the doctors were interested in. The
New-burgh-Kingston Fluorine-Caries Trial, as it was formally known, was considered the most extensive of the several
fluoride experiments then being planned
around the United States. Over a period of ten years a team from the New York State Department of Health
would conduct a battery of psychological
exams and X-rays on the Newburgh children, plus
measuring their blood, urine, height, and weight. The information would
be compared with data from children in
the neighboring fluoride-free town of
Kingston, New York. The news that Newburgh would host the
experiment created a buzz among local
citizens. The gritty, blue-collar industrial town was home to a large population of immigrant
Italian Americans as well as African
Americans who had come from the South. Most considered themselves fortunate to be early recipients
of a new public-health measure. "I
can remember a lot of excitement as a young child," remembered a lifelong Newburgh resident and former Mayor,
Audrey Carey, who regularly attended the
Broadway clinic in 1945 as a child. Careys parents were poor, she explained. Her father became
only the second African American on the
Newburgh police force, and the family was grateful for the daughters free health checkups. In the front room there was a dental chair
and someone would check your teeth and
you would see the nurse," Carey recalled. "You would have your height, your weight [measured, and] they
would do some urine. I can remember that
occurring every month of the year for a very long time. The tests were designed to answer a simple
safety question — whether the chemical
produced nondental health problems (a medi cal agenda that, of course, was not publicized to local
citizens). Are there any cumulative
effects — beneficial or otherwise, on tissues and organs other than
the teeth — of long-continued ingestion
of 8o CHAPTER SIX such small concentrations ... [of
fluoride]? the doctors explained to their
colleagues in various academic publications and conferences on the
topic' Some of the most powerful voices
in the nation were asking similar
questions about fluoride's toxicity — with wartime urgency. Earlier in
the fall of 1943 President Roosevelt s
science adviser, James Conant, had
organized a major Conference on Fluoride Metabolism, secretly
convened on behalf of the Manhattan Project. The conference was held on January 6, 1944,
in New York City, and conference
transcripts and letters from Conant are among the first documents that connect the atomic -bomb
program to water fluoridation and to the
Public Health Service (PHS).' Weapon makers wanted to use the health service as a wartime camouflage, a fig
leaf for the atomic bomb. In a letter
dated September 25, 1943, Conant explained to the chief of the Division of Industrial Hygiene, J. J.
Townsend, that a "consultant" Dr. Stafford Warren would secretly provide the
conference financing. This consultant,
of course, was none other than Colonel Stafford Warren, the Manhattan Projects Medical Director. It is sincerely hoped that the Public Health
Service will be willing to sponsor the
conference and to send out the invitations to the contributors under its own letterhead, Conant wrote to
Townsend. All the arrangements such as
the selection of the speakers will be taken care of by Dr. Warren. The purpose of this letter,"
Conant added, "is to assure you of
the importance of this symposium and of the real need for the
information in connection with the war
effort. However, this picture of the purpose of
the meeting is for your information only, and it is desirable that the impression be given that the interest is in
industrial hazards only." Dr.
Townsend replied that if the Public Health service could review the agenda and "the qualifications of the
individuals who might be invited to
attend ... the Surgeon General would be very glad to call such a conference. 4 On January 6, 1944, a Whos Who of the
wartime fluoride industry passed through
the doors of New York's Hotel Pennsylvania. Mingling were the top medical men from the army and
from the companies and universities
building the atomic bomb, including DuPont, Union Carbide, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins. Also HOW THE MANHATTAN PROJECT SOLD US FLUORIDE
81 attending were Alcoa s top fluoride
expert, Francis Frary; Helmuth Schrenk
from the Bureau of Mines; the biochemist Wallace Armstrong from the University of Minnesota; and Edward J.
Largent from the Kettering
Laboratory. Dr. Paul A. Neal of
the National Institutes of Health outlined the critical importance of fluoride to the war economy —
and emphasized how little doctors knew
about health effects on workers. Aluminum, magnesium, refrigerants, aerosol propellants,
insecticides, phosphates for animal feeds,
hydrofluoric acid ("especially its use as a catalyst in oil
refining ), and the employment of
fluoride fluxes among an estimated 150,000 welders were just some of the burgeon ing uses for
fluoride in the war effort, Neal
reported. There was a " definite need," he added, "for
careful, thorough investigation on
workmen who have been exposed for many years to
fluorides. However, it has been postponed until after the war since such
an investigation could hardly be made at
this time without undue interruption of
the output of these industries." 5
The conference organizers had made what seemed to be a surprising addition to the guest list: Dr. David B. Ast,
chief dental officer of the New York
State Health Department. Dr. Ast was then preparing to add sodium fluoride to the drinking water of Newburgh,
New York, in a stated bid to improve
dental health in children. Although the conference had been secretly arranged by the Manhattan Project —
whose industrial contractors were
concerned that workers in bomb factories would be poisoned by fluoride — the dental researcher quickly
justified his attendance at the
conference. Military officials and industrial contractors heard a
conference report that animal tests were
of doubtful value" in studying fluoride
toxicity in humans, and that there was confusion over amounts that
"may cause deleterious effects in
adults." Dr. Ast then boldly volunteered a
solution.' He suggested that researchers could examine whether fluoride
in drinking water was harmful to people,
and thereby help to determine whether
the chemical posed a risk to workers in factories. The "accumulated effects of small doses of
fluoride in drinking water [could] be
studied in the U.S.... [and that] evidence of the effects of consumption of fluoride over that period of time might [
become apparent], Ast told the
conference.' Until such human
fluoride studies could be done, however, a
82 CHAPTER SIX temporary workplace standard had to be
fixed. Following the morning conference
session, the Manhattan Project had arranged a luncheon for ten persons who will meet to set standards."
It is not clear if the ten men who met
for lunch that day — including the Public Health Services H. Trendley Dean, the researcher who had reported that
fluoride found naturally in water in
some areas of the country was associated with fewer cavities — knew that their meal was paid for
by the Manhattan Project. But Harold
Hodge knew: he paid the tab with bomb-program funds. "It would be convenient if cash can be provided and
delivered here by Dr. Harold
Hodge," the Manhattan Projects Captain Ferry had ordered.' A sacrifice was needed from war workers, the
lunch team decided. Although earlier
that morning DuPonts Dr. A. N. Benning had described how i part per million of hydrogen fluoride
in air etched glass in two hours, the
diners determined that 6 parts per million of fluoride breathed in factory air would be the wartime fluoride standard
for an 8-hour workday, six days a week.
The existing 3-ppm threshold in several states was an arbitrary figure not based on any specific evidence,
stated Dr. Carl Voegtlin of the
University of Rochester, who chaired the lunch session. We do not want
to set up standards that are so extreme
on the lower side that it makes it hard to
operate the plants, Voegtlin added, We can say that in the absence
of definite evidence, we feel...
[emphasis in original]. Francis Frary
of the Aluminum Company of America doubted whether standards were even necessary. "The best
guide is the individual response,"
suggested Frary, explaining that "I doubt in the case of man
whether there is enough hydrofluoric
acid in the air that is comfortable to breathe that would cause any damage." Hodge finessed the problem, suggesting that
We can also say that men working in
plants where we know the atmosphere is varied at all times, should by certain screening methods, be
protected. A lone dissent drifted
across the lunch table. "I should think that someone is going to be hurt by the long
exposure to the irritant," interposed
Dr. Wallace Armstrong from the University of Minnesota.' Following the New York conference, as the
giant gaseous diffusion plant secretly
rose amid the virgin woodland at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, planning for the public-water-fluoridation
experiment HOW THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
SOLD US FLUORIDE 83 in Newburgh also proceeded apace. A
Technical Advisory Committee was
selected to guide the New York Health Department. The chairman of
that expert committee, it was announced,
would be a pharmacologist from the
University of Rochester, Dr. Harold Hodge. "Possible toxic effects
of fluoride were in the forefront of
consideration, the Advisory Committee
stated.'" On May 2, 1945,
the Hudson River city became the second community in the world to be artificially fluoridated.
Over the next ten years its residents
were studied by the New York State Health Department. Secretly, in tandem with the states public
investigation, Hodge's classified
"Program F" at the University of Rochester conducted its own
studies, measuring how much fluoride Newburgh
citizens retained in their blood and
tissues — key information sought by the atomic bomb program." Health Department personnel cooperated,
shipping blood and placenta samples to
the Rochester scientists. The samples were collected by Dr. David B. Overton, the Department's chief of
pediatric studies at Newburgh.' Hodge was not the only scientist associated
with the Newburgh experiment who had
ties to the bomb program. Dr. Henry L. Barnett, who joined the Technical Advisory Committee after
the war, was described as a
pediatrician. But Barnett had also been a Manhattan Project medical captain, sent to Japan following the nuclear
bomb ings as a leading member of the
Atomic Bomb Casualty Commis-sion. 13 And Dr. Joe Howland, who drew control samples of blood
from residents of Rochester, New York,
where no fluoride had been added to water supplies — for comparison with fluoride levels in the blood
of Newburgh citizens — was an especially
practiced human experimenter.' On April 10, 1945, for example, as chief of Manhattan Project
medical investigations searching for
information on the health effects of bomb program materials, Captain Howland had driven a plutonium-laden needle
into the arm of Ebb Cade, an
unsuspecting victim of a Tennessee car accident, who had the simple misfortune of landing in the Oak Ridge
hospital.' Although Dr. David Ast of
the New York State Health Department
clearly realized that water fluoridation could give industry useful information about fluoride s health effects
on humans — as evinced by his testimony
at the Manhattan Projects 1943 Conference on Fluoride Metabolism (above) — today he maintains that
he 84 CHAPTER SIX did not know about the Manhattan Projects
involvement at New-burgh. If I had known,
I would have been certainly investigating why, and what the connection was, Dr. Ast told me.' 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." Publicly
the safety verdict boosted federal efforts to promote water fluoridation. Privately the data was also
helpful to the nuclear weapons industry,
explained Hymer L. Friedell, the Manhattan Project's first medical director. Workers alleging harmful
exposure to fluoride would now find it
more difficult to sue the government or its industrial contractors, Friedell stated.' "Any claim about
fluorides — here was the evidence that it
was of no consequence," said
Friedell. 19 "Anything that was
evidence of a no-effect' level was important
information," agreed the former Rochester scientist and
historian, J. Newell Stannard. 20 Although he claimed no knowledge of the
Medical Section's role in the Newburgh
experiment, Hymer Friedell was not surprised that bomb-program scientists had been involved.
"There may have been some things
done that were not ever in the record," he admitted. But there were records. In the once-secret
archives of the Manhattan Projects
Medical Section, there exists an entire file on New-burgh. Inside the file — coded "G-lo by the U.S. Army
— is a startling revelation: The top
fluoride scientist for the U.S. Public Health Service, Dr. H. Trendley
Dean, the man who later became famous as
"the father of fluoridation," had
secretly opposed the Newburgh fluoridation experiment, fearing fluoride's toxicity. 21
Dean's opposition was a potential disaster. News that the leading fluoride scientist from the PHS was against
adding fluoride to Newburgh's water — on
the grounds of toxicity — would certainly have frightened the Newburgh citizens, perhaps aborted the
nations water-fluoridation program
entirely, and eventually have alerted nuclear workers to the danger of handling fluorides. But Deans dissent was never made public.
Instead, Harold Hodge passed the
troubling news on to Colonel Stafford Warren at Oak Ridge:
Dear Staff: Hodge wrote on September 15, 1944. Here is a copy of
the current file relating to the Kingston-Newburgh
study. If desired, I would be glad to
come down to your place and talk this problem over. Sincerely, Harold. (Scrawled on the letter in what may
be Warrens handwriting is a note: Return
to Medical Section files.")"
Enclosed with Hodge s letter are key documents detailing the
planning and protocol for the Newburgh
experiment. The Manhattan Project was,
indeed, deeply interested in public water fluoridation. The papers
include letters from Hodge to Newburgh
planners requesting additional "bone"
studies — key information sought by the bomb program — and an agenda
for a meeting of the Newburgh Technical
Advisory Committee, with the word Warren
scrawled across the top. 23 The G-io
file also records Dean's opposition to water fluoridation. His showdown with the Newburgh planners occurred
at 2:00 PM on April 24, 1944, at the
Department of Healths offices at 80 Centre Street in New York City, according to the Advisory Committee
meeting minutes sent to Colonel Warren.-
Dr. Harold Hodge chaired the meeting. Almost
immediately, a question of cumulative poisoning was raised. This is
the crux of the whole problem of
toxicity as it relates to this study," meeting minutes record. Dr. Dean took the floor. The PHS expert
explained that in parts of the country
with high levels of groundwater fluoride (8 ppm) he had seen evidence of "toxic effects" in local
residents, including " bone changes"
and "cataracts." He wanted more time "to study lower
concentrations to see at what level the
effects disappear," he told the committee. Dean worried that fluoride posed a special risk to the
elderly; he told the committee that he
feared Newburgh's citizens might experience "cumulative effects past middle age." The govern ment expert
explained that if, for example, a
persons kidneys did not work well, that person would be at greater risk
for poisoning as more fluoride
accumulated in their body. According to the
Technical Advisory Committee meeting minutes, an unanswered
question about the pending experiment
was what to look for in the way of
86 CHAPTER SIX evidences of early intoxication. Dr. Dean
recommended that both the child and the
past middle age groups be considered. With the renal impairment common to older age groups,
fluorine intake and output even in small
concentrations may not be balanced."
But Hodge and his Newburgh team were anxious to proceed. Much publicity had already been given to the
proposed experiment, recalled Dr. Edward
S. Rogers of the New York State Department of Health. Similarly, another Advisory Committee member, Dr. Philip
Jay from the University of Michigan, felt
this was the propitious time for such a study from a psychological standpoint. Another Committee
member alluded to pressure from
Washington policy makers. While her own feeling
was conservative, noted Dr. Katherine Bain of the U.S. Department
of Labor's Children's Bureau, "the
project had the approval of the Children s
Bureau. (The Children s Bureau was financing the Newburgh
experiment.) Chairman Hodge called a final
Advisory Committee vote at 4: 15 PM, on
whether to proceed with the experiment. Dean was the lone voice in opposition. Dr. Dean did not agree that the
proposed program could be considered a
perfectly safe procedure from a public health point of view," the meeting minutes record. Nevertheless, the
committee voted in favor of the experiment
to fluoridate Newburgh's water. Shortly
afterwards, as wartime pressures mounted in that summer of 1944 Dean performed an unreported but spectacular
flip-flop, transforming himself from foe
to friend of water fluoridation. Just three months after giving Newburgh the thumbs-down, Dean
announced that he now favored adding
fluoride to public drinking water in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He would be one of the lead
investigators, comparing children's
teeth for ten years with another neighboring nonfluoridated city,
Muskegon. Six months later, on January
25, 1945, America's great fluoride experiment
began. One hundred and seven barrels of sodium fluoride were delivered
to Grand Rapids, where, at 4:00 PM city
technicians gingerly began tipping it
into the citys drinking water supply.
Dean's wartime gyration was well rewarded. In 1948 he was appointed the first director of the National Institute
of Dental Research, and in 1953 he took
a senior position with the American Dental Association. Until now Deans dissent on Newburgh has how the Manhattan project sold us fluoride
87 never been made public. The
government has long dismissed claims
that any of its scientists ever endorsed water fluoridation despite reservations regarding its safety.' When the scientist and historian Newell
Stannard was told of the once-classified
correspondence between Hodge and his Manhattan Project bosses on Newburgh — as well as the military
s involvement in the public water
fluoridation experiment — he was surprised but saw the logic. I dont think [the military] was really
interested in water fluoridation. I think
they were looking for information on toxicity on fluorine, and
fluorides," he said. But former Newburgh Mayor Audrey Carey is appalled
at the news that medical officials from
the atomic weapons establishment secretly
monitored and studied her fellow citizens during the cold war. "It
is reprehensible; it is shocking; it
reminds me of the experiments that were
done regarding syphilis down in Alabama [in which African Americans were not told that they had the venereal
disease, so government doctors could
study them]," she said in an interview.' Now Carey wants answers from the government about the secret history
of fluoride and about 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." Did Harold Hodge and the Rochester bomb
scientists suppress or censor adverse
health findings from the Newburgh study? There is some indication that they did; however, as we
shall see, prying information from the
University of Rochester's cold war archive is no easy task, confounding the best efforts of a Presidential Commission
in 1994. (For a further discussion of
censorship and of Newburgh health effects today, see chapters 7 and 17.) Evidence that military censors did remove
information about fluoride's harmful
effects can be seen in another study performed by Rochester bomb-program scientists, published in the
August 1 948 issue of the Journal of the
American Dental Association. A comparison with the original, unpublished secret version found by the
medical writer Joel Griffiths in the
files of the Manhattan Projects Medical Section illustrates the ways
cold war authorities censored damaging
information on fluoride, to the point of
tragicomedy. 88 CHAPTER SIX In these files Manhattan Project Captain
Peter Dale at the University of Rochester
reported in the second half of 1943 on the preliminary results of two dental investigations, a study of oral
conditions among laboratory fluoride
workers at Columbia University, and a study of dental conditions among workers exposed to dilute and anhydrous
hydrofluoric acid in production. The results from Columbia, where scientists
at the War Research Laboratories were
using fluoride to enrich uranium, were disappointing, even worrying. Fluoride did not prevent
cavities, Captain Dale suggested. Of the
ninety-five laboratory workers examined, "the total number of tooth surfaces filled and attacked by caries was
not significantly altered by exposure to
hydrofluoric acid vapor," Dale reported. 29 The fluoride might have been producing a harmful effect. Dr.
Homer Priest, a leading fluorine
scientist, reported that his "teeth seemed to be deteriorating
rapidly." Dr. Priest also told the
Medical Section that his gums bled more freely and that there has been a progressive increase in the
degree of slowness of healing and of
pain in the period he has been doing
this work. 30 The Columbia data
were never published in the scientific literature. But the results of the second dental study, on
the laborers at the Harshaw Chemical
Company in Cleveland, became an important piece of evidence for the idea that fluoride reduced cavities.
31 The study is particularly
illustrative. As we saw earlier, work conditions at Harshaw
Chemical Company were appalling. Two
workers had been killed by fluoride acid in
1945. So much fluoride and uranium was escaping from the plant that
the FBI had been called in. And the
Atomic Energy Commission proposed
secretly tracking former workers, to discover the incidence of lung cancer. 32 None of that was made public,
however. All that the medical community
learned about Harshaw and fluoride was from a study published in the 1948 issue of the Journal of
the American Dental Association — a
study "based on work performed ... for the Manhattan Project at the Uni versity of Rochester at
the suggestion of Harold C. Hodge"
— that reported that the men had better teeth. When compared with the original secret study, the published
version reveals crude censorship and
data distortion, according to the toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix, who read both versions. 33 89
• The secret version states that most of the men had few or no teeth;
they were "in large proportion
edentulous [toothless] or nearly edentulous.
This information, however, was left out of the published version.
The published study merely notes that
the fluoride workers had fewer cavities
than did unexposed workers. • The
published version omits the suggestion that fluoride was actually harming the mens teeth. While the
secret version states, " There was
some indication [teeth] may have been etched and pol ished by [the acid], and that exposure of the
teeth to the acid may have contributed
to the attrition observed, the public version,
instead, concocts an observation seen nowhere in the original. It states that strangely enough, dental erosion
or decalcification of enamel and dentin
commonly seen in workers exposed to inor
ganic acids [fluoride] was not seen. The published version omits information about the harmful effect that
fluoride may have had on teeth, ignoring
physical evidence that indicated otherwise.
A lie, commented Mullenix. The published version had simply reversed the original medical observation
that fluoride may have corroded and
consumed the men's teeth, she said. •
The published version implies that the men were at fault for refusing to wear protective masks, instead preferring to
chew tobacco or gum for
protection." The secret study makes no mention of masks (and a
later Ohio State study criticized
Harshaw for not giving its workers protective
masks). • The published study
states that men "with clean mouths" had good teeth. Men "with neglected mouths" had
"a peculiar brownish deposit which
seemed to cover the enamel of the anterior teeth in large
quantities." The secret version,
however, makes no distinction in the mens oral hygiene, noting that all men, as a group, neglected
their mouths." The published report
therefore makes the bad, or discolored, teeth appear to be the workers fault. The dirty brown teeth were now
a function of the mens hygiene, Mullenix
remarked. In other words, [the censored study is] blaming the victim for not having a clean
mouth. 90 CHAPTER SIX The published Harshaw study helped to
shift the national medical debate over exposure
to industrial fluoride. Several studies during the 1940S had already shown that acid in an industrial
environment hurt workers teeth, and Dr.
Priests experience at Columbia University suggested that the same was happening with wartime fluoride workers.
Now, said Phyllis Mullenix, instead of
blaming fluoride for eroding teeth, with the help of "a clever editing job" the published study became
a piece of dental propaganda that buries
the American fluoride worker. It
totally changes the viewpoint, Mullenix told me. This makes me ashamed to be a scientist." Of other
cold war-era fluoride safety studies,
she asks, Were they all done like this?
Recently, in Cleveland, a roomful of surviving Harshaw fluoride workers erupted in grim laughter when told
about Harold Hodges censored dental
study. I showed Allen Hurt the once-secret results of the long-ago measurements of fluoride in his urine,
analyzed by AEC doctors at the
University of Rochester; the fluoride was recorded at the extraordinarily high levels of 17.8 mg/liter." Today he
is plagued with arthritis, he says,
while many of his Harshaw friends died young of cancer. Nevertheless, smiling a largely toothless grin, Hurt
commented on the published dental study:
They had to come up with something."
7 A Subterranean Channel
of Secret-Keeping
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