Ch. 5. General Groves's Solution: the fluoride deception by Christopher Bryson from archive.org

General Groves's Solution 

Dr. Harold Hodge and 

the University of Rochester 



The Manhattan Project had seen the danger from fluoride early. Before the 
war private industry had contained the legal dangers from factory 
pollution by forming the Air Hygiene Foundation at the Mellon Institute. 
Also fearing lawsuits, in 1943 General Groves established the Manhattan 
Projects Medical Section at the University of Rochester to strengthen the 
governments interests, placing Dr. Harold C. Hodge in charge of a secret 
unit studying fluoride and the other chemicals being used to make the 
atomic bomb. 

FROM His CORNER office window in the medical school at Strong Memorial 
Hospital that summer of 1943 Dr. Harold Hodge could see construction 
workers placing the finishing touches on a half million-dollar building at 
the University of Rochester known as the Manhattan Annex.' The heavily 
guarded structure, funded by the U.S. Army, would be home to the 
Manhattan Project's Medical Section. Orders had been placed for hundreds 
of experimental animals: Puerto Rican monkeys, dogs, mice, rabbits, and 
guinea pigs.' And an umbilical cord-like tunnel linking the military annex 
with the university hospital was urgently being readied. 

As the new Annex foundations were put down, so too was the keystone 
laid for the postwar practice of toxicology in the United States — and for the 
future career of the thirty-nine-year-old bioc hemist, Dr. Harold Hodge. 
The Annex would soon house the largest 



66 



CHAPTER FIVE 



medical laboratory in the nation, with a staff of several hundred scientists 
testing the toxicity of the chemicals being used to build the atomic bomb. 

Military pilots flew the exotic new compounds directly from the bomb 
factories to Hodges team at Rochester. "Harold would actually meet the 
pilots under [cover of] dark to get the material to test, said toxicologist 
Judith MacGregor, who befriended Hodge at Rochester, where she was a 
graduate student in the 1960s, and who was mesmerized by her mentors 
tales. It was unbelievable. 

That spring of 1943, Hodge had been placed in charge of the bomb 
programs Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology and given control of 
a secret biomedical research unit known as Program F to study fluoride 
toxicity.' The Manhattan Project had a whole section working on uranium 
and a whole section working on fluoride, explained Jack Hein, who 
worked with Hodge at Rochester during the early cold war as a young 
graduate student and remembers the scale of the fluoride studies. The 
toxicology studies were very comprehensive. They were looking for toxic 
effects on the bone, the blood, and the nervous system. . . . Without the 
Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb, we wouldnt know anywhere near 
as much as we do about the physiological effects of fluoride, Hein added . 4 
His research suddenly blossomed into an immense program, noted Paul 
Morrow, a uranium expert who also joined Hodge at Rochester in 1947 and 
who worked on some of the earliest experiments. 

Hodge's war work germinated into a career as the nation's leading 
expert on fluoride. Over more than half a century the tall, black-haired 
researcher published several books and some three hundred scientific 
papers. He was chairman of the National Research Councils Committee on 
Toxicology and first president of the Society of Toxicology. And a 
generation of Hodges Rochester colleagues and students — men such as 
Herbert Stokinger, Paul Morrow, and Helmuth Schrenk — went on to 
occupy leading positions in government agencies and universities after the 
war.' He was unarguably the dean of American toxicology, stated a 
former colleague and Rochester alumni, Ernest Newbrun, now a professor 
emeritus at the University of California at San Francisco." 

To several generations of colleagues, the soft-spoken scientist with the 
slicked-back hair was a gentleman scholar and tutor, advising 



GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION 



67 



them to play it straight, and regularly, in his early seventies, trounc 
ing graduate students at squash.' But Harold Hodge — grandfather, 
soft-spoken friend, and dean of American toxicology — shouldered 
dark secrets for much of his professional life. 

That summer of 1943, as Dr. Hodge stood at his office window, he 
confronted a terrible dilemma. Speed was essential in beating the 
Germans to full-scale production of the atomic bomb.' The fate of tens 
of thousands of American workers lay in his hands. His laboratory's 
evaluation of the toxicity of chemicals needed for the bomb, such as 
fluorine, beryllium, and trichloroethylene, would fix work conditions 
for the women and men inside the Manhattan Projects bomb factories, 
help determine how quickly the plants could achieve full 
production — and whether employers would be successfully sued for 
damages if those workers claimed injury from chemical exposure.' 
The questions were many and the answers few, wrote Hodge. There 
was no time to wait for months, or even weeks, while the accepted 
laboratory tests established the toxico-logical facts. Production had to 
proceed with no delays." 10 

People working in the atomic energy production plants were going 
to be chronically exposed, said Jack Hein. We didnt know too much 
about the toxicity of fluoride, other than the early studies saying a little 
too much in the water causes damage to teeth, he added." 

General Leslie Groves understood the dangers of such pell-mell 
production. He feared that personal injury lawsuits would be an 
Achilles heel for the entire nuclear program. Leading insurers, such as 
Aetna and Travelers, were providing health coverage for workers in the 
new bomb factories. 12 Successful claims for fluoride injury or for 
neighborhood pollution might hemorrhage compensation payments, 
create a public-relations disaster, risk jeopardizing the embryonic 
nuclear industry — and threaten the United States' unprecedented new 
military power. 13 

The army moved quickly to protect itself. Its first weapon was 
secrecy. The second weapon was seizing control of basic science. In 
particular the crucial toxicity studies on bomb program chemicals 
performed at the University of Rochester were sculpted and shaped 
to defend the Manhattan Project from lawsuits.' Those marching 
orders — conscripting science and law for military service — were 
drummed home in a July 30, 1945, memorandum titled Purpose 



68 



CHAPTER FIVE 



and Limitations of the Biological and Health Physics Research Pro -gram, 
written by the head of the Medical Section, Colonel Stafford Warren. 
According to Warren, The Manhattan District, as a unit of the U.S. Army ... 
has been given a directive to conduct certain operations which will be 
useful in winning the war. As such, medico-legal aspects were accorded 
a clear priority for scientists, he added, including the necessary biological 
research to strengthen the Governments interests. 15 

Scientists soon delivered courtroom ammunition. "Much of the data 
already collected is proving valuable from a medical legal point of view," 
noted a February 1946 memo to General Groves's deputy, Brigadier 
General K. C. Nichols. "It is anticipated that further research will also serve 
in this manner," the memo added. 16 

Colonel Warren had chosen his top fluoride expert carefully. The son of 
an Illinois schoolteacher, Harold Hodge was a biochemist whose specialty 
was the study of bones and teeth. He had arrived at the University of 
Rochester in 1931, where he was one of an elite cadre of men selected by 
the Rockefeller Foundation as dental research fellows. The Rockefeller 
Foundation was then funding basic research at selected dental schools in a 
bid to lift the standards of dental care in the United States. Hodge was also 
a pharmacologist and toxicologist who by 1937 had forged close links with 
corporate America.' By the summer of 1943 some of those corporations 
and institutions were taking a lead role in developing America's first 
nuclear weapon. Eastman Kodak, a Rochester company where Hodge had 
investigated chemical poisoning before the war, was now a leading 
industrial contractor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. 16 Rockefeller interests were 
also using fluoride to refine uranium at an undisclosed site in New Jersey 
and funding their own biomedical research at the University of 
Rochester."" 

Harold Hodge's role as gatekeeper at the wartime crossroads of law and 
medical science was spelled out in a 1944 letter introducing the Rochester 
scientist to the DuPont company. The letter, stamped confidential, again 
lays out a fundamental scientific bias in the Manhattan Districts medical 
program — a bias against workers and communities, and in favor of 
corporate legal interests. 

The Medical Section has been charged with the responsibility of 
obtaining toxicological data which will insure the Districts being 



GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION 



69 



in a favorable position in case litigation develops from exposure to 
the materials, Colonel Stafford Warren told Dr. John Foulger of 
DuPonts Haskell Laboratory in a letter dated August 12, 1944. 
Harold Hodge was to insure that information about the toxicity of 
certain fluoride compounds was coordinated between the 
government and its contractors, Warren explained. It would be 
desirable, he told Foulger, to have the work on the toxicity of 
fluorocarbons being done in your laboratory parallel the 
investigations being made on similar compounds elsewhere. For that 
reason it would be appreciated if Dr. Harold Hodge of the University 
of Rochester could visit your laboratory in the near future and an 
exchange of ideas be effected." 20 

Harold Hodge, Devil's Island, 
and the Peach Crop Cases 21 

Harold Hodge s diligence in defending the war industry can be seen 
in a 1946 court challenge from farmers living near a DuPont fluoride 
plant in New Jersey. Although not mentioned in any history of the 
Manhattan Project, the lawsuits were regarded by the military as the 
most serious legal threat to the U.S. nuclear program, requiring the 
direct intervention of General Leslie Groves. A closing chapter in the 
Manhattan Project, the aggressive use of secrecy, science, and public 
relations by Groves and Hodge, and at least a half dozen federal 
agencies battling the farmers, is an opening scene in the story of how 
fluoride was handled by our government following World War II. 

The gently rolling alluvial soil along the shore of the Delaware 
estuary in Southern New Jersey is some of the most bountiful farm- 
land in the United States. Its historic harvest of fruit and vegetables 
won New Jersey the accolade of The Garden State. The orchards 
downwind of the DuPont plant in Gloucester and Salem counties 
were especially famous for their high-quality produce; their 
peaches went directly to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. 
Campbell's Soup bought up their tomatoes. But in the summer of 
1943 the farmers began to report that their orchards were blighted 
and that "something is burning up the peach crops around here." 

Poultry died after an all-night thunderstorm, they reported. Fields 
were sometimes strewn with dead cattle, residents recalled, while 



70 



CHAPTER FIVE 



workers who ate the produce they had picked vomited all night and into the 
next day. I remember our horses looked sick and were too stiff to work, 
Mildred Giordano, who was a teenager at the time, told reporter Joel 
Griffiths. Some cows were so crippled that they could not stand up, and 
grazed by crawling on their bellies. The injuries were confirmed in taped 
interviews, shortly before he died, with the chemical consultant Philip 
Sadtler of Sadtler Laboratories in Philadelphia. On behalf of the farmers' 
crusading attorney, Counselor William C. Gotshalk of Camden, New 
Jersey, Sadtler had measured blood fluoride levels in laborers as high as 
310 parts per million. (Blood fluoride is normally well below i part per mil- 
lion. These levels are potentially lethal doses) 22 

Some of the farm workers were pretty weak, Sadtler noted. The New 
Jersey farmers organized a Fluorine Committee. They patriotically waited 
until the war was over, then sued DuPont and the Manhattan Project for 
fluoride damage. Thirteen claimants asked for a total of $430,000 in 
compensation. 

Little wonder the farmers reported health problems. Conditions on the 
other side of the DuPont fence were extraordinarily dangerous. More than a 
thousand women and men were employed on Manhattan Project contracts 
at the Chamber Works during the war, secretly manufacturing elemental 
fluorine, uranium hexafluoride, and several exotic new fluorocarbons. 23 
Chemical exposures were frequent, making the DuPont employees perhaps 
the most endangered and fearful of the wartime fluoride workers. By the 
end of January 1944 at least two DuPont laboratory workers had been 
killed and several scientists injured. Work conditions at the secret 
fluoride-producing East and Blue Areas of the Chamber Works were 
especially dreadful, with "gross violations of safety," inspectors noted. 24 

One unit was especially notorious, the government reported. "The plant 
frequently caught on fire, and the activators often burned out so the 
employees were frequently exposed to rather large amounts of fluorine 
compounds," Captain Mears of the Manhattan Project noted in October 
1945. "Medical hazards were attributed to fluorine in a gaseous state, silver 
fluorides in a powdered state and liquid 
2144 [code for fluorocarbon]. 25 

Injured workers paraded into the DuPont hospital. Doctors often 
reported "a fibrotic condition of both lungs" on X-rays; serious 



GENERAL GROVESS SOLUTION 



71 



chemical burns were seen very frequently. The mounting injury 
toll was blamed on fluoride. 20 In February 1945 doctors at the East and 
Blue Areas reported seventy-nine sub-par or so-called chronic cases. 
Sixteen of those workers had their condition detected in the last two 
months." 

A Manhattan Project medical investigator, Captain Richard C. 
Bernstein, warned his boss, Colonel Warren, that workers now feared 
assignment to the DuPont fluoride processing areas as "an exile to 
Devil's Island." 28 Another report warned of brewing labor unrest. "Fear 
of the physical consequences was becoming prevalent in the Areas, 
wrote Manhattan Project investigator First Lieutenant Birchard M. 
Brundage in February 1945. "This fear was being used by certain 
agitators to cause trouble in the personnel," he added. 

29 

The farmers lawsuits electrified the Manhattan Project. There had 
been no disclosure of the diabolical work conditions at DuPont. Now, a 
public lawsuit pointed a finger directly at the Chamber Works and 
fluoride. A once secret November 1945 memo measures the 
government's concern: "The most serious claim to neighboring 
properties of any operations of the [Manhattan Engineering] District is 
the litigation known as the "peach crop cases.' These are cases claiming 
damages to the fruit crop and to the peach trees themselves in and 
around the operation of the Chambers Works of the DuPont Company 
at Kearney, New Jersey. This damage is alleg edly caused by the 
release into the atmosphere, both unintentional and necessary as a 
result of the process [sic] of hydrogen fluoride. The claims against the 
District approximate $430,000. Part of the loss would be due to the 
private contractor and part to the operation of the contractor on behalf 
of the District." 30 

The military sprang into action. Dr. Hodge was dispatched to New 
Jersey to marshal the medical response to the farmers' rebellion. 
Although DuPont's smokestack fluoride had long been spilled into the 
environment and a great volume of new fluoride compounds were 
being made inside the wartime plant, he quickly reported back to 
Colonel Stafford Warren at Oak Ridge that the mottled teeth seen in the 
school near the DuPont plant could be attributed to natural fluoride in 
the ground water. 31 Such natural fluoride in the water supply meant 
that the dental markings could not be used as unequivocal proof of 
industrial poisoning. The situation was 



72 



CHAPTER FIVE 



complicated by the existence of mottled enamel as a result of fluoride in the 
drinking water, Hodge told Warren. 

Dr. Hodge had an idea for calming the citizen panic. His prescrip tion 
gives an early meaning to the term spin doctor — and provides a clue that 
the promotion by the U.S. government of a role for fluoride in tooth health 
has a powerful national-security appeal. 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? Hodge inquired of Colonel 
Warren. 32 Such lectures, of course, were indeed given, not only to New 
Jersey citizens, but to the rest of the nation throughout the cold war. 

A good cop-bad cop assault was launched against the farmers. Almost 
immediately their spokesperson, Willard B. Kille, a market gardener, 
received an extraordinary invitation: to dine with none other than General 
Leslie R. Groves, then known as the man who built the atomic bomb, at 
his office at the War Department on March 26, 1946. 33 Although Kille had 
been diagnosed with fluoride poisoning by his doctor, he departed the 
luncheon convinced of the governments good faith. The next day he wrote 
to thank 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." 

Behind closed doors however, General Groves had mobilized the full 
resources of the federal government and the Manhattan Project to defeat 
Kille s farmers and their Fluorine Committee. The documentary trail 
detailing the government's battle against the farmers begins with a March 1, 
1946, memo to top Manhattan Project doctor Colonel Stafford Warren, 
outlining the medical problem in New Jersey. There seem to be four 
distinct (though related) problems, Colonel Warren was told. 

1. A question of injury of the peach crop in 1944. 

2. A report of extraordinary fluoride content of veg- 

etables grown in this area. 

3. A report of abnormally high fluoride content in the 

blood of human individuals residing in this area. 



GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION 



73 



4. A report raising the question of serious poisoning of 
horses and cattle in this area. 

Under the personal direction of General 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. Armys Chemical Warfare Service 
and Edgewood Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, and DuPont 
lawyers.'' 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 Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B. 
Rhodes of the Manhattan Project in a memo dated August 27, 1945, 
and cc'd to General Groves.' The memo stated: 

SUBJECT: Investigation of Crop Damage at Lower Penns 

Neck, New Jersey T o : 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.A. 36 

"The Department of Justice is cooperating in the defense of these 
suits," General Groves subsequently wrote in a February 28, 1946, 
memo to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on 
Atomic Energy. 37 

General Groves, of course, was one of the most powerful men in 
postwar Washington, and the full resources of the military-industrial 
state were now turned upon the New Jersey farmers. The farmers' 
expert witness, scientist Philip Sadder, was singled out by the 
military. A handwritten note in General Groves's files in the National 
Archives demands to know: Col. Rhodes, Who is Sadtler ? 38 



74 



CHAPTER FIVE 



Groves learned that the Sadtler family name was one of the most 
distinguished and respected in American chemistry. The firm of Samuel P. 
Sadtler and Son was established in 1891 and routinely consulted for top 
industrial corporations, including Coca-Cola and John D. Rockefeller.' ' 
Philip Sadtler s grandfather, Samuel P. Sadtler, had been a founding 
member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, while his father, 
Samuel S. Sadtler, was one of the first editors of the venerable science 
publication Chemical Abstracts. (Today Philip Sadtler s Standard Spectra 
are a diagnostic tool used in laboratories around the world.) 

But back then, in New Jersey, counterespionage agents followed him 
and accused him of "dealing with the enemy," stated Sadtler. 40 He recalled 
one confrontation with two U.S. Army captains that ended in a South 
Jersey orchard when Gotshalk, the farmers lawyer, asked the military 
officials, Since when are the farmers of the United States the enemy? 

Why was there such a 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 law -suits were a serious 
roadblock to that strategy. In the case of fluoride, If the farmers won, it 
would open the door to further suits, which might impede the bomb 
programs ability to use fluoride, remarked 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. " 41 

Indeed, DuPont 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 regions produce because of 
"high fluoride content," DuPont dispatched its lawyers to the FDA offices 
in Washington, where an agitated meet ing ensued. According to a memo 
sent the following day to General Groves, DuPont s lawyer argued that in 
view of the pending suits 



GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION 



75 



any action by the Food and Drag Administration . . . would have a 
serious effect on the DuPont 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. 42 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 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. 43 

The farmers kept fighting. On February 2, 1946, Willard Kille wrote to 
the influential Senator Brian McMahon, Chairman of the Special 
Committee on Atomic Energy, on behalf of the Fluorine Committee, 
telling him about the peach trees and poisoning. General Groves quickly 
interceded, informing the Senator, I do not believe it would be of any 
value to your committee to have Mr. Kille appear before it. Groves assured 
Senator McMahon that I am keeping in close personal touch with the 
matter from day to day in order that I may be personally certain that while 
the government's interests are protected no advantage is taken of any 
injured farmer. 44 

The New Jersey farmers were ultimately pacified with token financial 
settlements, according to interviews with descendants still living the area. 45 
Joseph Clemente says that his father told him the family had been "paid 
off" by DuPont after the cattle died suddenly during the war. The Clemente 
farm lay just across the road from the Chamber Works. His grandfather had 
been a wartime manager inside the Chamber Works and his family owned a 
construction firm that had helped to build the plant; accordingly, his father 
accepted DuPont s cash settlement. It wouldnt have been very good if my 
family had caused a lot of stink about the episode, Clemente said. 

All we knew is that DuPont released some chemical that burned up 
all the peach trees around here, a second resident, Angelo 



76 



CHAPTER FIVE 



Giordano, whose father James was one of the original plaintiffs, told the 
medical writer Joel Griffiths, who visited the orchard country in 1997. 
The trees were no good after that, so we had to give up on 
the peaches. 

Their horses and cows also acted sick and walked stiffly, recalled his 
sister Mildred. "Could any of that have been the fluoride?" she asked. 
According to veterinary toxicologists, various symptoms she went on to 
detail are cardinal signs of fluoride toxicity. The Giordano family has been 
plagued by bone and joint problems, too, Mildred added. Recalling the 
settlement received by the Giordano family, Angelo told Griffiths that "my 
father said he got about $200. 

The New Jersey farmers were blocked in their legal challenge by the 
government's refusal to reveal the key piece of information that would 
have settled the case — the amount of fluoride DuPont 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." 

Gotshalk, the farmers' attorney, was outraged at the stonewalling. He 
called it a callous disregard for the rights of people and accused the 
Manhattan Project of using the sovereign power of the government to 
escape the consequences of what undoubtedly 
was done." 47 

Gotshalk was right. A once-secret memorandum sent to General 
Groves in Washington — which Gotshalk and the farmers never 
saw — reveals that the wartime DuPont plant was belching out mass 
quantities of hydrogen fluoride: at least 30,000 pounds, and perhaps as 
much as 165,000 pounds, was expelled over the adjacent farmland each 
month. 48 

The scale of the pollution was explained to General Groves. DuPont 
was then producing 1,500,000 pounds of HF each month for its 
commercial Freon-producing [Kinetics] plant, according to his deputy 
Major C. A. Taney. "Assuming that the losses were only 1 percent at 
Kinetics, the amount vented to the atmosphere would be about equal to the 
average loss from the Government facilities at the Chamber Works during 
the worst months of 1944," Major Taney wrote. But the pollution might be 
much worse, he added, in which case the lion's share of the blame would 
be attributable to DuPont's commercial operations. "If the losses at 
Kinetics ran as 



rGENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION 



77 



high as 10 percent, which is possible, the fumes produced at the 
Chamber Works would obviously be caused to the greatest extent by 
DuPonts own operations and not by the Government facilities, the memo 
stated. 

The memo to Groves is probably the smoking gun tying DuPont to the 
reported injuries. The emissions data would certainly have been crucial 
courtroom ammunition for the plaintiffs, according to the scientist 
Kathleen M. Thiessen, an expert on risk analysis and on the health effects 
of hydrogen fluoride" She notes that the amount of fluoride spilled over the 
orchards and farms in 1944 from the Chamber Works — at least 30,000 
pounds monthly — is consistent with the injuries reported within a 
ten-kilometer radius around the DuPont plant. The air concentrations 
could easily have been high enough to cause vegetation damage, and if they 
are high enough to cause vegetation damage they are high enough to cause 
damage to livestock eating that pasture," the scientist estimated. 

Could the fluoride have hurt the local citizens too? 

It is going to depend on where they lived and how much of that local 
produce [they ate], Thiessen explained. The reports of high blood fluoride 
levels in local citizens, and of badly contaminated local produce, were 
again consistent with human fluoride injury, she added. 

Denied the government data, the farmers settled their lawsuit, and 
their case has long since been forgotten. But the Garden State peach 
growers unknowingly left their imprint on history. Their complaints of 
sickness reverberated through the corridors of power in Washington and 
triggered Harold Hodge's intensive secret bomb-program research on the 
health effects of fluoride. 

"Because of complaints that animals and humans have been injured 
by hydrogen fluoride fumes in [the New Jersey] area," reads a 1945 memo 
to General Groves from a deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B. Rhodes, 
although there are no pending suits involving such claims, the University 
of Rochester is conducting experiments to determine the toxic effect of 
fluoride." 50 



6 



How the Manhattan 
Project Sold Us Fluoride 

Newburgh, Harshaw, and Jim Conant's Ruse