15. BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS: the fluoride deception by Christopher Bryson from archive.org

15. BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS: the fluoride deception by Christopher Bryson from archive.org

BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 



185 



By February the Kettering Laboratory director had drawn up a game 
plan, focusing on the Achilles heel that had tripped up Reynolds 
Metals in the Martin trial. The Public Health Service was providing 
medical information about the health effects of swallowing fluoride, 
via its water-fluoridation safety studies. But the Martin trial had hinged 
on the accusation that air pollution had hurt the family, and Kehoe saw 
a clear need for fresh human experiments.' 

There seems to be no documentary information on the mat-ter of 
human safety in relation to such exposure, Kehoe told the TVA's Dr. 
Derryberry. "In any case, we are about ready to initiate the 
experiments on animals, and while these are in progress, we can design 
and construct the facilities for the investigation of human subjects," he 
added. 

Kehoe pointed to another goal: creating an unassailable medical 
orthodoxy that would block scientists from serving as effective expert 
witnesses in future court cases. His laboratory s earlier efforts to control 
scientific information about fluoride had almost borne fruit in the Martin 
trial, he remarked, but the surprise appearance of the Englishman, Dr. 
Donald Hunter, had upset the apple cart. Opposing counsel overcame this 
obstacle by the importation of an expert who, with some charity, may be 
judged to have been susceptible to the thrill of participating in a grandstand 
play or, perhaps, of aiding an aggrieved family, wrote Kehoe.' 

The only solution was a fresh batch of medical experimentation and 
scientific data, so overwhelmingly persuasive, both in itself and its 
dissemination, as to render futile any efforts to combat it." The new 
Kettering research would pile negative evidence upon negative 
evidence, said Kehoe. This would result in such difficulty in finding a 
competent and credible expert witness as to thwart the attempts of 
counsel to make a case for a potential plaintiff, he added.' 

The Kettering foot soldiers were given their marching orders at a 
planning session in the fall of 1956. They were under no illusions 
about their mandate. The sponsor group is concerned with the 
litigation questions that may arise in the future as demonstrated by 
those that have occurred in the past, noted the scientists who attended 
the meeting, according to the recorded minutes. Its purpose is not 
altruistic, they added. The threat of litigation would be their North 
Star, guiding research and experiments. 



186 



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"The sponsors are interested not only in what happens to persons in the 
plant but also in whether they will be sued or not. They are interested 
particularly in finding out if the absence of deleterious effects of the 
absorption of the fluoride ion can be demonstrated, the minutes record. 
Specifically, what industry needed to learn — sixteen years into the 
fluoridation of water supplies — was the physiological effects on the 
various organ systems of the continued absorption of fluorides. The 
scientists noted that something is known about mottled enamel and 
skeletal changes but [there is] no information concerning effects on other 
organ systems.'" 

The Martin ruling had exposed the tip of a very dangerous iceberg, 
Kehoe told an invited audience of government dental researchers and 
industry lawyers, who had gathered in the Ballroom of the Cincinnati Club 
for a Fluoride Symposium in Cincinnati in December 1957. 9 The primary 
threat facing industry, Kehoe explained in his opening remarks, was that 
workers could use the Martin verdict to buttress lawsuits claiming injury 
from exposure to airborne fluoride inside factories. The problem, he went 
on, was that the court verdict had set the stage for the greater threat of 
claims for illness among employees in the industries in which exposure to 
fluoride is greater than that of any group of persons 
outside of industry." 70 

In the ballroom sat Harold Hodge from the University of Rochester and 
Alcoa s Frank Seamans, head of the Fluorine Lawyers Committee. No two 
people were in a better position to know the risk from airborne fluoride 
pollution. Twenty-five thousand people worked in aluminum smelting 
plants in the United States, and tens of thousands toiled in the giant gaseous 
diffusion plants at Oak Ridge, Paducah, and Portsmouth." 

The presentations were biased in favor of industry. Frank Sea-mans 
gave a presentation titled The Medical Aspects of Fluoride Litigation. 
While the Director of the National Institute of Dental Research, Francis 
Arnold, discussed the Present Status of Dental Research in the Study of 
Fluorides, there were no criticisms of water fluoridation; nor were experts 
such as Dr. Capps from Chicago or Dr. Hunter from England (both of 
whom had testified in the Martin trial on the human health consequences of 
industrial fluoride air pollution) in attendance.' 



BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 



187 



The papers were further culled when it came to their publication. 
Readers of the American Medical Associations journal Archives of 
Industrial Health (edited by Kehoes Harvard friend, Philip Drinker), 
never learned of the symposium remarks on fluoride litigation by 
Kehoe and Seamans. Nor did they read the paper by D. A. Greenwood 
from Utah State University, spelling out the stupendous scale of the 
fluoride lawsuits facing U.S. Steel in Utah." 

The Symposium was just one front in industry s campaign to shape 
a scientific consensus about fluoride. Another was opened that 
summer of 1957, when industry committed $179,175 to a new 
fluoride research program at the Kettering Laboratory. It was a down 
payment on a three-year investigative program that would eventually 
cost almost half a million dollars. Air pollution would be the major 
focus of the research. The centerpiece would be an experimental 
chamber from which forty-two beagle dogs would inhale fine 
particles of calcium fluoride dust, for six hours a day, five days a 
week. Alcoa s lawyer, Frank Seamans, handled the money for the new 
experiment, acting as intermediary between Kehoe, the Fluorine 
Lawyers, and the Medical Advisory Committee. 

On April 16, 1957, Seamans sent a letter to the Fluorine Lawyers, 
titled Re: Kettering Research re Human Beings." He laid out how 
much each corporation would contribute. Checks would be sent on a 
quarterly basis directly from the companies to the Kettering 
Laboratory. U.S. Steel, Alcoa, Kaiser Aluminum, Reynolds Metals, 
and Alcan paid the lions share, each putting up $30,535 for the first 
year; Olin Revere Metals, Monsanto Chemical, West Vaco Chemi cal, 
TV A, and Tennessee Corporation made smaller commitments. 
Seamans enclosed a variety of documents. They illustrate the key role 
the Fluorine Lawyers had in shaping Ketterin gs medical research, and 
the importance industry attached to the efforts of the National Institute 
of Dental Research and other parties on behalf of public water 
fluoridation. 

Enclosures were listed by Seamans as follows: 

• Letter from Dr. Irwin under date of March 13, 1957, 
enclosing a letter from Dr. Leone of the National 
Institute of Dental Research dated March 5, 1957. 



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• A publication entitled Our Children s Teeth. This is the best 
collection of material dealing with the association between 
fluorides and human beings that I have seen. 

■ Lastly, a letter which I am sending to the Medical Advisory 
Committee, in which an attempt is made to more specifically 
advise just what the lawyers group wishes them to do. 

I am sorry that it has taken so long to develop matters to this 
point. However, I am glad to say that all parties are now in 
complete agreement and that the work can now go forward. 
Very truly yours, Frank Seamans." 

The crucial inhalation experiments, in which researchers were to 
simulate ... occupational exposure to particulate fluoride, began on 
October 6, 1958. The forty-two beagles were divided equally into three 
groups: a control group that received no fluoride; a second group that 
inhaled a small dose, 3.5 mgs of calcium fluoride per cubic meter of air; 
and a group that received 35.5 mgs of calcium fluoride per cubic meter. 

Kehoe had assembled an expert team of scientists to supervise the dog 
experiment, according to Eula Bingham, who became head of the Kettering 
Laboratory in the 19705 and later served as President Jimmy Carters head 
of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). They 
included Robert K. Davis, Klaus L. Stemmer, William P. Jolley, and Edwin 
E. Larson. Robert Davis was always the boss," said Bingham. "I really 
didn't have much contact with him, but he always seemed to be pretty 
substantial, she added. A pathologist, Klaus Stemmer, "was very well 
trained in what I would call the old European school of pathology. [He] 
came over from Germany after the war," said Bingham. "Larson was a very 
fine person when it came to exposure assessment, and he knew how to put a 
chamber together so that you could put a dose of whatever the contaminant 
was in there by inhalation. It was a very substantial training [Larson had], I 
tell you." The results of the 
Kettering beagle experiment were startling 

— and not at all what the scientists had predicted. It was 

anticipated 



BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 



189 



that there would be little or no injury to the lungs of experimental animals, 
the report noted, and that the demonstration of the innocuous effects of the 
respiratory exposure . . . would pave the way for similar experiments with 
human subjects. 

But there could be no human experiments now: the fluoride injured 
the dogs. Autopsy revealed wounds to their lungs and lymph nodes. 
The damage had occurred in both groups of animals that were exposed 
to fluoride, with inflamed lesions on the lung surface and a fibrosis, 
or a thickening of the lungs, that was so marked in some cases that the 
researchers called it emphysema" Unexpected, the researchers said, 
"was the injurious effect exerted by calcium fluoride in the lungs and 
lymph nodes of the dogs. 16 

The corporate sponsors were quickly informed. It seems likely that we 
have produced a dust lung using calcium fluoride as the particulate, 
Kettering s scientist Albert A. Brust wrote Alcoa s Dudley Irwin in a letter 
dated February 10, 1960. The fluoride had wreaked havoc with biological 
tissue, the report explained, when the fluoride ion had attacked the lungs 
surface. The calcium fluoride had disassociated inside the lung, 
transforming the dust into a corrosive acid deep inside the body, the report 
stated. Some degree of solvent action was exerted locally, and the fluoride 
ion in the resultant solution reacted with the tissue, the report added. The 
results also showed that fluoride traveled quickly from the lung into the 
blood stream. "These data appear to confirm beyond all question the 
efficacy of pulmonary absorption of fluoride, Brust told Irwin." 

Frighteningly, long after the dogs had been removed from the 
inhalation chamber, dust particles remained lodged in their lungs. 
These particles continued to wreak havoc on the body, dissolving and 
freeing fluoride ions to mount fresh assaults on the pulmonary tissue, 
the report recorded. The results obtained in this experiment are of 
more than casual interest, especially to investigators in the fields of 
pulmonary physiology and pathology," the Ketter-ing report noted. 

The health effects of airborne fluoride should be studied in 
workers, the results suggested. They point to the desirability of 
conducting systematic investigations of the pulmonary function of 
representative groups of industrial employees who are being 



190 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 



subjected to various types and intensities of exposure to particu-late, 
inorganic fluorides, the authors wrote. 

The Fluorine Lawyers understood the frightening legal and health 
implications of the study. The Kettering data pointed an arrow directly at 
the heart of key modern industrial enterprises, where the extraordinary 
incidence of emphysema in workers potentially dwarfed even the silicosis 
crisis of the 19305. 18 The steel, aluminum, phosphate, gasoline refining, 
uranium enriching, fluorocarbon, and plastics industries, to name a few, 
were especially at risk. The general counsel for the TVA, Charles 
McCarthy, wrote to Kehoe on July 9,1962, shortly after he received his 
copy of the report. Its findings were clear, he agreed: workers might be at 
risk. "The pulmonary findings suggest the need for further investigation of 
the pulmonary function of exposed workers," noted 
McCarthy. 19 

Industry's top lawyers received copies of the Kettering dog study — but 
nobody told America's workers, or their doctors. Instead, the research was 
buried. Although industry had spent almost half a million dollars on 
fluoride research at the Kettering Laboratory following the 1955 Martin 
verdict, the fate of the fluoride-breathing beagles was never made public. 
The study lay hidden for almost forty years, until, in the course of 
researching the topic, I found a copy in a basement archive of the old 
Kettering Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati. 

I sent it to the toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix and to an air-pollution 
expert at the University of California at Irvine, Dr. Robert Phalen. 20 Both 
suggested that the nonpublication of the study had hurt American workers 
and misshaped the modern debate over air pollution. Dr. Phalen had written 
a 1984 book on inhalation experiments and is also a graduate of the 
University of Rochester. He took his job studying air pollution in Southern 
California on the recommendation of none other than Harold Hodge. After 
reading the study, Phalen remarked that he was impressed at the quality of 
the forty-year-old research. 

"It was a very good study," Phalen said. "It was state of the art. I am 
amazed at how good a job they did. The scientists conclusions were blunt. 
It is likely that American workers have inhaled too much fluoride in the 
workplace for several decades, Phalen told 



BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 191 

me. This study is sufficiently strong to cause a reconsideration of the 
industrial standard, he said. 

Thats a staggering statement. Many hundreds of thousands of women 
and men have breathed fluoride in their workplaces since the Kettering 
study was conducted. Had the threshold for unsafe exposure been set too 
loosely because the dog research was not published? Occupational 
standards for workplace exposure to chemicals in the United States are 
guided by an influential private group known as the American Conference 
of Government and Industry Hygienists (ACGIH). The group s scientists 
set what is known as a Threshold Limit Value (TLV) for different 
chemicals, which is then used by regulatory agencies in setting legal 
exposure standards, Phalen explained.' 

The people who set standards in industry, said Phalen, review 
everything they can get their hands on, and then they say, What shall we 
recommend for dusty air in industry for fluoride?' for example. Phalen is 
baffled at how ACGIH could have left the nation's industrial fluoride 
standard unchanged since 1946 — if it had seen the Kettering beagle study. 
As I look at the level that is set today, 2.5 milligrams per cubic meter, it 
sure looks to me like if [ ACGIH] had access to this April 13, 1962 study, 
they would have recommended a lower level. 

Phalen was especially startled to learn that today federal regulatory 
agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease 
Registry (ATSDR), cannot locate any published animal stud ies on fluoride 
dust inhalation to cite for the current occupational standard. 22 "I tend to not 
be a conspiracy-type person," Phalen said, "I was surprised when they said 
there had been no studies. Why this study wasnt published, I dont know. 

Did the standard-setters have access to the Kettering data? I contacted 
Dr. Lisa Brosseau at the University of Minnesota; she heads ACGIH's 
standard-setting committee. The beagle study had not been listed as one of 
the documents ACGIH scientists had consulted in setting the current 
fluoride TLV. 23 And Dr. Brosseau did not know if past ACGIH review 
committees had seen the Ketter-ing study. However, she explained, if the 
1962 research is not listed on ACGIH s current TLV report for fluoride, 
then it had not been used in its most recent review. We will only list those 
things that 



X92 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 



we did use, Brosseau said. 21 "It is very possible that we didnt see it," she 
added. 

According to the toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix, the fact that the 
Kettering data were never published, or made available, is a crime against 
American workers — with profound health consequences for the rest of the 
nation. The buried data points at a clear cause-and-effect relationship 
between an industrial pollutant and an injury widely seen in factories and 
the general population, according to the scientist. That study is key, said 
Mullenix, because it directly links fluoride with emphysema. And that is 
mind-boggling in terms of public health, because no one has ever made that 
connection. 

Suppressing the 1962 study was a gross dereliction of scientific 
responsibility, says Mullenix, a medical cover-up that has lulled doctors 
and federal regulators to sleep for forty years. I regard it as absolutely 
being hidden, she said. It was a good study; the results were clear. The 
memos that went along with it certainly stated that it should be followed 
up." 

Thousands of men and women are stalked by fluoride in the modern 
workplace yet blinkered to its toxic potential, according to Mullenix. In 
1998 she met former aluminum workers from Washington State whose 
health had been ruined by fluoride. These men are between thirty and fifty 
years old and have replaced knees and shoulders; they have leukemias, 
thyroid problems, and soft tissue diseases. I've never seen such a bunch of 
young pathetic people with such health problems. I just dont see the 
outrage. They are just putting them out as old men, and bringing in younger 
men, over and over again," she said. "Fluoride has impacted the work span 
of many of our workers, and this is in aluminum factories, petroleum 
companies, brick, tanneries, steel, glass, plastics, and fluorinated plastics 
manufacturers. I think that it has had a big impact on our industries that we 
are not recognizing.' 

Eating Country Ham 

PERHAPS THE FLUORIDE workers most badly treated have been the 
women and men who won the battle of the cold war, who did our dirty 
work, laboring in the satanic mills that were Americas nuclear bomb 
factories. Since 1949, an estimated 600,000 worked in 



BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 



193 



government atomic plants, with tens of thousands more employed by 
private industrial corporations who built the bomb during the early 
years of the Manhattan Project. But while the U.S. spent an estimated 
$5.5 trillion to build nuclear weapons, we hid the health risks of 
working in those factories, denied workers additional hazardous pay, 
and then fought those very same men and women in court if they 
became injured or ill and filed for compensation. 26 

The government told these workers that they had no illnesses, 
noted Clinton-era Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. "These were 
heroes and heroines of the Cold War that built our weapons . . . and we 
turned our backs on them. 

Paducah Joe Harding was one of those workers, toiling in the 
Kentucky fluoride gaseous-diffusion plant from 1952 until 1971 — 
when he was fired, without insurance, disability, or benefits.' A voice 
in the wilderness, Harding fought to tell the world that the United 
States' nuclear-bomb plants were poisoning their workers. In 1950 one 
of the federal plutonium injectors, Dr. Joseph Hamilton, had worried 
that proposals to use U.S. prisoners in more human radiation 
experiments had a little of the Buchenwald touch. Joe Harding had a 
similar thought. In a letter written shortly before his death in 1980, and 
entered into the Congressional Record twenty years later, Harding 
wrote to the Department of Energy about the nations nuclear weapons 
program: It seems that Union Carbide Nuclear Co., all other 
Corporations that are involved, AEC, Department of Energy, Federal 
Security, FBI, Justice Department, etc, can do as they please, trample 
on the public and not be touched, Harding noted. He concluded, The 
Germans had a name for this kind of setup. They called it Nazism.' 

Harding died of cancer the same morning a Swedish TV crew 
arrived for an interview. At the end weeping sores marched across Joe 
Harding s body. He struggled to breathe. His stomach and two feet of 
his intestines had been removed. Bony outgrowths — classic symptoms 
of extreme fluoride poisoning — sprouted painfully from Harding s 
palms and joints. The Department of Energy lawyers fought Joe 
Harding until the end, at one point blaming his sickness on a 
combination of smoking cigarettes and eating country ham. 30 After 
Harding died, the government battled his widow, Clara, in court.' 



1 94 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 



Pressured by union groups and shamed by an ocean of tears, Congress 
finally enacted legislation in October 2000 that set up a mechanism for 
compensation of up to $150,000 per injured atomic worker." But the 
Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act largely 
sidestepped the issue of fluoride poisoning. Although a federal study of 
former bomb-program workers health found that respiratory diseases and 
mental disorders were widespread in the Oak Ridge K-25 
gaseous-diffusion plant, there was no mention of a medical link to fluoride, 
at least for the purposes of worker compensation." (Remember, the buried 
Kettering dog study had specifically linked fluoride to such serious lung 
problems, while Kaj Roholm and Harold Hodge had each suspected 
fluorides role in central-nervous-system disorders, a link confirmed in 
animals by the laboratory studies of Dr. Phyllis Mullenix at the Forsyth 
Dental Center in the early 1990s. n I am not aware of any [nuclear worker] 
cases that have successfully been compensated for fluoride exposures, said 
Dr. Ekaterina Mallevskia, a scientist at the Department of Energy-funded 
Worker Health Protection Program at Queens College in New York, which 
helps to diagnose the illness of former atomic workers. We did not pay any 
particular attention to fluoride; we are concentrating on asbestos, radiation, 
uranium, plutonium. Fluoride was good for workers, the scientist even 
suggested, unconsciously mouthing a role written for her a generation 
earlier by Harold Hodge, Robert Kehoe, and Edward Bernays. It is more 
like an insufficient supply than an overexposure. Thats why it was initially 
added to toothpaste, Mallevskia explained." 

"No one has ever asked that question" 

ITS NOT JUST workers who are getting hurt by a chemical they never 
suspected. The Kettering study on beagle dogs is very likely a smoking 
gun, linking fluoride to the extraordinary toll taken by air pollution in the 
general population, according to Phyllis Mul-lenix. Air pollution causes 
the early deaths of an estimated sixty thousand people in the United States 
each year — thats 4 percent of all U.S. deaths, and a hundred times the total 
number of deaths caused by all the other pollutants the EPA regulates." 
Thirty thousand of these deaths from air pollution are attributed to 
emissions 



BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 



95 



from electric power plants, which contain fluoride. Countless thou- 
sands of additional Americans suffer from other illnesses linked to air 
pollution, including heart attacks, lung cancer, and breathing disorders 
such as bronchitis and asthma. 37 Air pollution especially hurts children 
and inner city residents.' 

Mullenix once worked as an air-pollution consultant for industry. 
For eleven years during the 1970s and 1980s she helped the American 
Petroleum Institute (API) — the oil companies lobbying group — battle 
new federal air pollution standards. She had advised corporations such 
as Monsanto, Amoco, 3-M, Boise Cascade and Mobil Oil, jetting 
around the country, staying in fabulous hotels, all expenses paid. It 
was mind-boggling the amount of money that went into it," says 
Mullenix. 

Her specialty was ozone. In the late 1970s the EPA used the Clean 
Air Act to order a reduction in ozone levels. Industry s lawyers fought 
back, opposing the new standards and arguing that EPA had the facts 
wrong. On industry s behalf Mullenix attacked EPAs scientific 
justification for the proposed ozone policy changes, the so-called 
criteria document. It was a shoddy piece of scientific material, she 
recalls. Every time EPA came out with another criteria document, I 
would look for the errors and compare it back to the [scientific] 
literature. That is what I did for over ten years. Mullenix used her 
training as a toxicologist to fight what she saw as the EPA s inadequate 
scientific basis for its attack on ozone pollution. 

The efforts to regulate ozone had a fundamental scientific weakness, 
Mullenix remarked. Laboratory experiments with pure ozone were 
unable to replicate the many serious injuries and health effects 
associated with air pollution, she stated. Study after study, year after 
year, it was extremely difficult to link ozone with asthma, ozone with 
emphysema. It just didnt match. That is one of the reasons that I could 
work for industry. 

During her years working for industry, fluoride was never discussed, 
she told me. "At the time, I didn't know anything about fluoride," she 
added. "Never, ever was fluoride mentioned as a cause of respiratory 
distress. 

Had the nonpublication of the 1962 Kettering study thrown a 
generation of scientists off the scent of a key villain, responsible, at 
least in part, for air pollution s terrible health toll? 



196 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 



"This study, the dog study, I think might have at least triggered some 
investigators to look at fluorine-containing compounds as a suspect, said 
Robert Phalen, of the University of California. Instead, most experts today 
habitually ignore fluoride s role in air pollution. Whether something like 
fluoride contributes more than its share, because of an additional irritancy? 
I would say no one has ever asked that question," he added. 

It is a startling oversight, because there is a much greater quantity of 
fluoride in our air than we once knew. In 1998 the Clinton administration 
forced several key industries to report the volumes of toxic chemicals they 
were spilling into the environment. Previously the EPA had allowed 
industrial sectors, such as the electric utilities and the mining and chemical 
wholesalers, to avoid reporting that data. The updated information was 
shocking. Overnight the amount of reported toxic pollution in the United 
States soared by 300 percent. Estimate of Toxic Chemicals Is Tripled, 
headlined the New York Times. 39 

Even more dramatic was the increase in the amount of hydrogen fluoride 
gas that industry now admitted was being spilled into the nations air. 
Before the new requirements industry reported that 15 million pounds of 
HF pollution escaped into the air each year. When the additional industries 
were added, however, that figure rocketed to almost 78 million pounds, an 
increase of over 500 percent. 40 Of the almost 63 million pounds of 
additional HF, 53 million pounds (or 84 percent) came from electric power 
companies, and most of that came from the burning of coal. 

The EPA is studying how the fine particles in air pollution can cause 
human injury. Does this hydrogen fluoride gas bind with those tiny carbon 
particles in the atmosphere, contributing to the health damage seen from 
such particles? What are the synergistic health effects on humans of 
fluoride and sulfur compounds? ( Fluoride dramatically increases the 
toxicity of sulfur compounds on vegetation and animals, according to 
recent studies in Russia and work performed by the Atomic Energy 
Commission.)" 

"You have a good point," said scientist Maria Constantini from the 
Health Effects Institute (HRI), a shared project of EPA and industry to 
fund air pollution research. HRI has never funded a fluoride study, she 
said. Why is it not being measured? People 



BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 



197 



just sometimes look for what they think is there and not for new 
things. 

HF [hydrogen fluoride] should be looked at, she added. It could 
be coating some of the particles and ... it could be more likely to go 
down into the deep lung because the particle is carried down in the 
lung. If it has properties that are toxic properties, depending on the 
dose, obviously it could be of concern. 

The befuddlement of todays air pollution experts is staggering, 
given the toll of destruction that fluoride has wrought throughout the 
twentieth century. 42 Fluoride has been the nation s most damaging air 
pollutant, and almost certainly its most expensive. From 1957 to 1968, 
fluoride was responsible for more damage claims than all twenty other 
major air pollutants combined, according to former U.S. National 
Academy of Sciences fluoride expert Edward Groth. 4, The U.S. 
Department of Agriculture reported in 1970 that " airborne fluorides 
have caused more worldwide damage to domestic animals that any 
other pollutant." 44 And in 1982, L. H. Wein-stein of Cornell 
University s Boyce Thompson Institute reported, There has been more 
litigation on alleged damage to agriculture by fluoride than all other 
pollutants combined ... of the major airborne pollutants, inorganic 
fluoride [is] clearly the most toxic, he added. 

Weinstein noted fluoride s extreme toxicity to vegetation. While 
ozone or sulfur dioxide hurt plants at a threshold level of 0.05 parts per 
million, hydrogen fluoride gas produced lesions on some plant leaves 
at concentrations of one part per billion, according to Wein-stein 46 
(That suggests fluoride can be up to 50 times more toxic than sulfur 
dioxide or ozone.) 

Despite this manifest chemical danger and extraordinary legal 
expense — or perhaps because of it — federal regulators have long 
turned their backs on fluoride air pollution. In 1957, the same year 
Judge Denman issued his devastating legal ruling of human harm in 
the Martin case, Washington abruptly terminated monitoring of 
fluoride levels in the nation s air. 47 

That decision came none too soon. Industry's hunger for fluoride 
grew more voracious in the years following the Martin trial. Hydrogen 
fluoride use alone more than tripled from 1957 through 1974, from 123 
thousand tons to 375 thousand tons. 48 By the end of 



198 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 



the 196os industry was discharging 150 thousand metric tons of fluoride 
pollution directly into the nations air. 40 

There is little doubt that the federal decision to end air monitoring 
helped industry. The feared tsunami wave of fluoride litigation from 
workers and communities did not break, as industry worried it might, 
following the Martin verdict. 50 And despite several expensive lawsuits 
during the 196os, according to Keith Taylor, an attorney who represented 
industry in alleged fluoride pollution cases, "We were all comfortable. 
There were no crises. 61 

Federal aid for fluoride polluters continued. In the early 1970s the EPA 
elected not to include the chemical on a bad-boy list of so-called criteria air 
pollutants that are hazardous to human health. Chemicals such as sulfur 
dioxide, although more voluminous, yet which are only a fraction as toxic 
as the hydrogen fluoride gas in air pollution, were included on the list. 
Instead, fluoride was categorized in the new Clean Air Act as a welfare 
pollutant, blamed primarily for economic damage, such as injuring crops, 
rather than human health effects — a chemical favoritism that allowed 
individual states a permissive flexibility to set emission standards for them- 
selves, instead of adhering to one federal policy. 62 This ruling was based 
largely on a 1971 National Academy of Sciences report that concluded 
fluorides presented no direct hazard to human health. According to the 
logic of the National Academy, cattle were felled, glass was etched, and 
crops were decimated by a chemical that in similar doses failed to injure 
people. It was all a grisly farce, of course, a cruel dictate that flew, quite 
literally, in the face of the sick Americans who lived near fluoride-spewing 
industrial plants, and of the lessons learned from the Martin trial. Closer to 
the truth was the observation of top EPA air pollution expert D. F. Walters: 
fluoride was so toxic a chemical that some form of environmental damage 
was inevitable, and industries therefore needed the freedom to pollute. 
Mandating "standards stringent enough to insure complete protection 
against any welfare effects may require closure of major sources of fluoride 
emissions." 53 

The Kettering Laboratory's long-ago suppression of the dog study 
helped to perpetuate a cover-up of fluoride s potential for harm as an air 
pollutant, says Phyllis Mullenix. You have a study back in 1962 that says 
fluoride caused emphysema and there are no studies 




The Mellon Institute for Industrial Research in Pittsburgh, founded by leading Alcoa 
stockholder Andrew W. Mellon, which assisted industry in fighting lawsuits alleging air 

pollution. CARNEGIE LIBRARY OF PITTSBURGH 



MELLON INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH 

PITTSRU&GM PA 





GERALD J COX 



Gerald |. Cox. a researcher at the Mellon Institute who had worked on a 
fellowship from Alcoa and who, in 1939. made the first suggestion that 
fluoride be added to public water supplies, mellon institute collection, 

COURTESY OF THE CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES 



P. 0. Bn M7. Mtt«l«i station 
tmhmif, 7, !t. T. 





k >9 *rU ly44 



■akJaaAi kHM fa# AUatl ^aaaxlaaatatlca to m*m1m 
Cwtlll fcniM Srataa Effaota. 



Oal. IWfart u «*xna, 3. 3. -ocIami offlaa, 
ca* tU«a. T«— 




Tha ArM aaglnaar, M aalao n «uui Ana* M.T. ) 

la aa — bltaa oX • projoaad 
• HUM u tliaaa a/atac arraota 



MM ;tl6 a; ba ra a 
aa axataa arr«ct alu. -wall) 
au4 laailtuea aa tf.a inn an lag—a 
■ . Xt Inm a»at likaij tLat tha T aocyoa—t rattar 
• T la baa oauaattT* f««V>r. 

1. Slaoa) ton »lta t&aaa JC*.jouiia« la acaaatlal. it 
■ Hi ba na a aaa arj to <ao« 1a aaveaaa wtat _»nial aTfooia 
:xa/ Mm kfM axpooura, IT aer/aaa era to ba noaarlr bm> 
boat at. Tfcla 4a laaartaat mi ouljr to (rataat a *I*aa la- 
AlTlabaU, baft Um to eraraut a caoruaac teruu from lajui» 
las ataaaa ba- laaaropari;- parfosalas ala autiaa. 

4. Tula lati»r la balaj roatad bora taa «m iaala«>r, 
— «l M a c ^uara ana, beat aaamal ci ale.*,. t^t«i or taa ta-> 
faraaaiaa aa b lUaa- a bora aa/ »a laalaataa b/ 

tar baa Dlatrlab 



tal. I DLSTSIBOTICII ^ * * * y ' /( 

Oaillaa - plaint raaaaxaa Cpjr 1 ft, 2' -vWdraaaaa. 
anjaat-< m ana afreeba 0/ * % - %J7^C^7m\¥^ 
pajJB) 





Manhattan Project document warning that fluoride (coded "F") rather than uranium 
(coded "T") likely caused central-nervous-system injury in nuclear workers. 

NATIONAL ARCHIVES 



University of Rochester's Strong Memorial Hospital, c. 1946. where plutonium was 
ed into patients in military experiments that were partly orchestrated by Dr. Harold C. 

. EDWARD G. MINER LIBRARY ARCHIVES, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND DENTISTRY, 
IVERSITY OF ROCHESTER 





Dr. Harold C. Hodge, senior 
toxicologist for the Manhattan 
Project, and America's leading 
scientific promoter of water 
fluoridation during the cold 
war. 1 adr 




lames B. Conant, president of Harvard 
University, chemist, and senior government 
official in the Manhattan Project to make 
the atomic bomb. c. paul bishop, 

COURTESY PAUL BISHOP IR. 



ra, Pennsylvania, site of the nation's most notorious air pollution disaster, 
kh lulled two dozen people and sickened thousands in October 1948. 

TIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE 




Toxic Fumes Believed 
Cause of 19 Deaths; 
Hundreds Stricken 



LM of It 4**d in Donora tmeg •ad aWfarw. P*ft 2 



Mr ASA ATWATKB. PHIakargh PnM Mall Wrltrr 

dAnora. Nov. 1— The heavy pall of fog which 
brought mysterious death to 19 elderly persons here thii 
week end has begun to drift away. 

Two separate investigations are under way to stalk 
the silent killer ''which is believed to be a toxic poison 
in the fog 

The deadly fag struck first Friday night when 
hundred* of persons; — m — II. I asthma luffrren — ex pen - 

' enced difficulty in breathing 



Pittsburg Press 
November 2, 19 




WXATMCH— ^air »m4 eOarriM* • 

VOLUME 6S. No. 130 •• 



Slat* or f fnorgency Dec/ored — 

Smog-Born Plague 
Kills 17 in Donora; 
Hospitals Overcrowded 

Doctors llama 4 Days of Fog Plus Plant 
Fumai; Hundreds Laava Town for Safety 

DONORA, Oct. 30 (8peci*J)_A sUte of emergency 
was declared in Donora today as a mysterious smof- 
bom plague brought death to 17. 

4 without sleep and the Red Class. 1 
ind other rroupi co-operated to art 
hospital In the town Community 



Ho s pit als were Jammed to overflowing. Twelve oeraont 

News of the air pollution disaster which took place in Donora, 
Pennsylvania over Halloween, 194*. 






dipSadllcr.chcmic.il nmtwhtlM who blamed fluoride pollution for the Donora disaster, 
i represented New lersey farmers in WWII era fluoride pollution claims against the 
L attan Project, trai-uf sadtler 



Chemist Says Fluorine Gas 
Caused 19 Smog Deaths 

Pi-..*.' Dl „ tt j f g| p 0 || 0|(w(| 

' In Report to Donora Council on Tragody 
Fluorine gas — not sulphur fume* — ru the poison In 

Philip Sadtler blames fluorine for the IXinora deaths 



Aluminum (*mt|Ktmj uFAmrrira 

ALUMINUM »CSrA»CM LABONATOMIKS 

•<■ • • - - i 

Dacaabar 30. 1 



Dr. ItUlaa r. Aaha 
gattariaa Laboratory 
Dh tiara it j of CiKihiU 
Cincinnati 19, Ohla 

Doar Dr. Aaha: 




•• hara Jaat coaslatad low analytical aort 
anion hu haaa dlin—lll rfth DrTT«U*7 A. Irwin, fed l oil 
Director of AJoalnan Coapany of Aaarlca. Dr. Irwin hu 
■W«Ud that I tranaail tha nmlli of oar analysis to joa. 
For jour inforaatioa, tha rsaulta of Mr «ilnli ara balsa 
tranaalttod only to 700 Kid to Dr. Irwia Sola raoalsina. » 
cow 0? UU« laltar. 

. I. Raanay, StLoiifli^»t^ r n^a£toTtoiplUl, 
Barton, Psoaayltania, not to as loag tlaaaa ana blood 

- dlad during too pariod of U> 
ral axaaiaation of tha laag 
nta nn praasBt, anaT 



Dr. 0 

laahlngt . 

froa tha body of Rika Doruca 
troubla at Doaora* la aada a (a 
tlaaaa la ordar to daUrain* afiat ala 



tha raaulta aara aora or laaa of a ganaral aatara 
l h ow ad tha praaanca of a graat satyr alaaaatf 
.as In lew ooaoaatratloa. 



Tha aaapla 

ta, iaclBdiag aoaa 



aa aada our usual 
rsaaal axtrsa»ly 
au fluorine at 1 
lnlaraet to 70a L 
aaa laaarsarl Id 1 11 
body fluid. Bafora 




bow that wKao tha aaapla aaa aaat to aa, it 
quid anion Bar or any aot bn»e baaa •zoaat 1 
ashing tha lanf . ileaj reacted froB this ' i 
several tiaaa. Tola r aanwfl aa auoh llaald 



liquid and squeezed sereral tiaaa. Thla raaorad aa auoh liquid 
aa poasibls.W all of tha liquid aqaaaaad oat. aa Ball aa that 
r eal i s i n g la tha bottle, aaa earafulla ashed and toatad. lowerer, 
tha aah of thia liquid aaa ao ertrwaaly loa that aa did aot aara 
to aire tha siopad epecuagranhic aaat aaoaaaary 



enough aaapla < 
to taat for fluorine 



At that particular tiaa, aa did aat da 
anything alto tha aaapla of blood, bac.ua t aa laamad that tha 
bod/ oT tha aaa bad baan aabalaad bafora axolalaa of tha tlaaaa. 

left 



U/*Vas 




Blood test secretly performed 
by the Aluminum Company 
of America on one of the 
Donora dead, showing high 
level of fluorine in blood. 

MEDICAL HERITAGE CENTER, 
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI 




NdTatlllal .. 



»rlc acir.t . UBpajSuraTni!*. 




aaa to you. 



I traat roe will find thla isfaraaUoa of aaa* 
»ery truly jour.. 

m. ». anwiin, dhiaf 1 



nc/> 

Copy: Dr. 



. ''""HTM. Chi af 
Analyticsl Dlilslea 
ALBJOBOJ OOBMUrj Of ANDUCA 
Alu.Ua. haaaarak Uaaratartaa 



Dsdley A. Irala, MtUbargh 



Dr. George L \\'aldlx>it, internationally renowned allergist and physician who 
early warned America to the dangers of smoking, and of the potential dangers 
of even small amounts of fluoride, Elizabeth ramsey 




Kettering Laboratory at the University of Nicholas C. Leone, Chief of Medical 

Cincinnati, and leading defender of industry Investigations at the National Institute 

in fluoride pollution lawsuits, university q ( Research during the i<«os. 

OF CINCINNATI. ACADEMIC INFORMATION NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DENTAL AND 

AND COMMUNICATIONS, CINCINNATI CRANIOFACIAL RESEARCH 



MEDICAL HERITAGE CENTER 



The Reynolds Metals 
Company aluminum 
reduction plant at 
Akwesasnc, New York. 

HENRY LICKERS 




Mohawk child at the 
Akwesasne reservation in 
New York, with evidence of 
fluoride-poisoned teeth. 

PROFESSOR LENNART KROOK 




National 

FLUORIDATION NEWS 




National Fluoridation Sews, a newspaper edited by George and Edith Waldbott. which 
connected the vigorous antifluoridation movement during the 1960s and 1970s. 



ff Forsyth Dental Center 
^News 



RESEARCH INSTITUTE 
SCHOOL FOR DENTAL HYCJENIST5 
DENTAL INFIRMARY 



New Forsyth 
Toxicology Dept. 



Dr. Phyllis Mulknix tuts been appointed by 
Dr. John W. Hein. Director of Fonyth. lo 
head the department of toxicology In an 
nouncinf the appointment. Dr. Hein Mated 
"Societal concerns are becoming justi- 
fiably aroused over the long term implications 
of traces of toxins in the environment. As a 
major center of dental science, we at Forsyth 
beueve our institution has a special obligation 
to answer these concerns by a reexamination 
and reassessment of the long range toxicity of 
substances of particular interest to dentistry, 
a* for example, the fluoride ion. mercury (in 
dental fillings), nitrous oxide (for anesthesia), 
non precious metal substitutes for gold and 
many others. But, beyond our interest in 
the toxicity of specific materials used in den- 
tistry, it is our desire to advance methodology 
for delecting toxicity. Dr. Mullen ix has evolv- 
ed a new technique which indicates a much 
more sensitive test than the traditional means 
of the letting of compounds causing toxic ef- 
fects on the nervous system. It measures 
in animal behavior rather than 
in structure. Application of this 

i to nitrous oxide, long considered the 

safest of general anesthetics, has revealed that 
this agent can cause damage at certain timet 
during the gestation period in rodents which 



arc only revealed as behavioral changes when 
adulthood is reached. The far-reaching im- 
plications of this research are obvious." 

Dr. MuDenix received her Ph.D. from the 
University of Kansas Medical C enter and a a 
former Fellow in Toxicology of Johm 
Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public 
Health Dr. Mullenix holds many consulting 
appointments lo government and industry 
and is a faculty member of the Department of 
Psychiatry of the Harvard Medical School. 

Dr. Hein also stated that he had the add* 
pleasure of announcing the appointment of 
Dr. Harold C. Hodge, internationally 
known loxkologist. as Research Affiliate in 
the Department of Toxicology. Dr. Hodge, 
considered by his colleagues as the dean P 
modern toxicology, was the founder of f 
Society of Toxicology and served as its pn 
dent in 1961. Dr. Hodge has held many i 
port ant academic and scientific appoint m 
including Professor of Pharmacology 
Toxicology, the University of Ro 
School of Medicine and Dentistry, Pi 
of Pharmacology. University of Califo 
San Francisco, and Professor of Ea 
vironmental Toxicology, University 
California. Irvine. While professor 
Rochester. Dr. Hodge headed the P™ 
of Pharmacology and Toxicology. I 
ten Project and Atomic Energy Project. 
Hodge is also the author of several texts t 
toxicology and numerous scientific pi 
have been contributed by him to the i 
macological and toxicologtcal literature. 



i 1 



Forsyth Dental 
Center News, 
spring 1984. 
announcing 
appointments of 
Phyllis Mullenix 
and Harold Ho 

FORSYTH DENTAL 
CENTER 



Dr /*>fto Sfw/lrmi. rrrral'i hrtd of tonytk '« TajKnlait Drpartmrnl. mill (It Dr. 

HmvM C Hod*. Knrmnk AJfihlt m Taarofccr anrf tr) fonyltt I Dmrtor. Dr. John » 



BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 



199 



after that? Mullenix said. "I mean that is a complete dodging of a very 
important factor that should be looked at. There was no repeat study, 
no follow-up on fluoride. . . . That is completely the opposite of what 
happened with ozone, she said. Everything was blamed on ozone. 
Everything went into [studying] nitrous oxides, or sulfur oxides." 
(Unlike the case with fluoride, where the source of the effluent is often 
obvious and unique, suing a particular factory or industry for use of 
these more ubiquitous pollutants is much more difficult)" 

The Clean Air Act let industry off the hook: federal laws would not 
protect citizens living near fluoride emitting factories. The aluminum 
industry was an especially big winner. In 1958 for example, Reynolds 
Metals — fresh from its defeat in the Martin trial — opened a new 
aluminum plant near the ancestral Native American farming 
community of Akwesasne on St. Regis Island in the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence, which is situated on the border between New York and 
Canada. Akwesasne is a Mohawk Indian word meaning "land where 
the partridge drums." Those partridges soon fell silent, however, as 
Reynolds's fluoride filled the air. 

By the early 1960s a drumbeat of protest was sounding. Mohawk 
farmers reported that honeybees and grasshoppers had disappeared 
from the area, while sick cattle and etched car windows were found 
downwind from the Reynolds's plant. Although Reynolds was acutely 
aware of the dangers from fluoride — after all, the company had just 
received Robert Kehoe's 1962 report on the poisoned beagle dogs — 
Reynolds did not share the information with the Native Americans, 
according to the Mohawk biologist Henry Lickers." "For 17 years we 
allowed Reynolds Metals to come onto the island to look at the 
problem. And for 17 years they collected data ... never insinuating 
there was anything wrong with our cattle," Lickers remarked." 

The aluminum industry helped to drive a chemical stake through an 
ancient culture that had lived in harmony with the earth, said Lickers. 
The concept of Peace, the concept of the Great Law — all of those 
things knit our people together in a strong union. [But] when you 
poison the environment, the fiber of the community comes apart. Into 
that void now comes the non-traditional economies — gambling, 
smuggling — because people no longer can depend upon 
the old economies. 



200 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 



Evidence that fluoride might be hurting local children at Akwe-sasne 
was discovered on a 1978 visit to a Mohawk school by the scientist 
Bertram Carnow of the University of Illinois School of Public Health. He 
found a range of health problems on St. Regis Island similar to those that 
had frequently been linked to fluoride elsewhere. (The complaints echo 
almost exactly the injuries to Paul Martins daughter, for example.) "At the 
school," Carnows team reported, "teachers stated that ... the Island children 
were more irritable and hyperactive and appeared to be suffering from a 
considerable amount of chronic fatigue. They seemed to be tired all of the 
time. Additionally, some had complained of aching in the legs, particularly 
the muscles, and in one case, the son of one of the teachers had so much 
pain in his feet that he frequently had difficulty in sleeping. Several 
teachers mentioned poor handwriting as a problem. They felt that in 
several cases that this might be due to the presence of a tremor. A number 
of children apparently had rashes, which were noted by one of the teachers. 
Respiratory infections were frequent and one of the children had developed 
a goiter." 

Among the Akwesasne Mohawks, Carnow concluded, "There would 
appear to be significant numbers of people with abnormalities of the 
muscular, skeletal, nervous, and hematologic systems. In addition, there 
appears to be a large number at high risk because of diabetes and high 
blood pressure." 

In 198o, threatened by Carnows findings, the Canadian and American 
governments intervened and arranged for a second team of scientists to 
visit the tribe for a more in-depth study." Although the report subsequently 
issued by Dr. Irvine Selikoff of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 
New York was not able to conclusively fix the blame on fluoride for local 
health problems — a determination that eventually helped to undercut the 
$150 million lawsuit against Reynolds — at least one scientist believes that 
the Akwesasne verdict has not yet been fully rendered. 59 Phyllis Mullenix 
is now regularly visiting Akwesasne to advise Mohawk health care 
providers on the possible relationship between environmental pollution and 
their sick patients. "A lot of these people have lung problems, asthma, 
breathing problems — they are all on puffers [inhalers]," she says. Mullenix 
notes that, while Dr. Selikoff s team found serious breathing difficulties 
and lung problems in the Mohawks, his scientists 



BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 



201 



were never shown the Kettering Laboratory's fluoride inhalation 
study, which connects fluoride to lung damage at low doses, and 
which Reynolds Metals had helped pay for. 

Such missing medical evidence has left scientists, doctors, and Native 
Americans alike in the dark about fluorides health effects and has shaped 
an environment where chronic sickness has been blamed, not on fluoride, 
but on the Indians themselves. "It is bizarre," Mullen ix remarked. "This 
population has been so sick for so long. They said, We are Indian — yeah, 
we are all diabetic, we are all fat, we all have thyroid problems.' They have 
been told that for so long. A population has accepted illness as a way of 
life." 

What befell the Indians at Akwesasne may have befallen us all. 
Federal regulators were watching the situation at Akwesasne in early 
198os very closely. A ruling that the Indians had been hurt by fluoride 
would have increased pressure on the EPA to list fluoride as a 
hazardous "criteria" air pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and 
required federal policing of fluoride across the entire country." Instead, 
the Selikoff team's failure to conclusively link fluoride to Mohawk 
sickness once again helped what some environmentalists call "the 
protected pollutant" to wriggle out from under EPA scrutiny. 

But had Selikoff seen the 1962 Kettering study on the beagles, and the 
strength of its link between fluoride and lung damage, he might have been 
forced to rule differently on Akwesasne — and federal regu lators might 
have been forced to look anew at fluoride air pollution across the rest of the 
country. "The changes that Selikoff was seeing in the reduced lung 
capacity of Akwesasne residents] would have made sense," notes Phyllis 
Mullenix. "His conclusions, in respect to pulmonary function [and its 
cause-and-effect relationship with inhaled fluoride] would have had to be 
totally different." 

A new focus by the EPA, aggressively targeting fluoride in air 
pollution, might even make good economic sense, argued the Uni- 
versity of California's Robert Phalen, by allowing industry to be more 
selective in filtering out harmful air poisons. "You can't just turn off all 
air pollutants, because we will all starve," he said. "You have got to 
identify the more toxic components and control them in a pin-point 
fashion. It's like food — do you ban food? No, you say salmonella is a 
problem and you control it." 



Hurricane Creek 

The People Rule