The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson Forward and Introduction
from archive.org
Christopher
Bryson with a lo/ewofd by
Dr. Theo Colborn
"Christopher Bryson is an excellent narrator, and he reports on
recent research previously not
known to me. Especially I am intrigued by the story about Phyllis Mullenix and her animal research on the
influence of fluoride on
behavior and brain development It is my sincere hope that his book will receive the attention it
deserves and that its implications will be seri- ously considered." Dr. Arvid Carlsson. 2000 Nobel Prize Laureate for
Medicine "In much the
same way biologist Rachel Carson warned us over forty years ago in Silent Spring about the havoc and harm being
caused by the misuse of persistent
pesticides, journalist Christopher Bryson here lays bare the secret story and hidden dangers of the introduction
of fluoride chemicals from the
cold war era into our drinking water. The
irrefutable evi- dence of duplicity and cover-up
presented in this book is hair-raising. The Fluoride Deception presents a scorching indictment of how
researchers and health care
officials working closely with government agencies, big industry, and their attorneys have
allowed themselves to surrender their
responsibility for the medical well-being of their fellow
citizens." Dr. Albert W. Burgstahler. former president of the https://www.blogger.com/null
International Society for Fluoride Research and Emeritus Professor of Organic Chemistry, University of
Kansas "Bryson is nght
on in his emphasis on the ineffectiveness of fluoridation of water with industrial wastes, and its
nsks of nerve and brain damage, and
cancer, coupled with the long-standing industrial conspiracy to
suppress this
information." Dr.
Samuel S. Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and Professor Emeritus of Environmental
and Occupational Medicine,
University of Illinois School of Public Health "The Fluoride Deception compellingly and
inescapably exposes the mur-
derous fraud that heads of state and industry have for decades
perpe- trated on an innocent
public. Extremely well written and tightly researched, The Fluoride Deception is sure to
become the 'must read' book in this
important and burgeoning field." Derrick Jensen, author of The Culture of Make
Believe and A Language Older Than
Words Toute
entreprise humaine, fut-elle industrielle, est susceptible de perfectionnement ! Inscription on memorial to the
sixty dead of the 1930 Meuse
Valley disaster
It is not just a mistake for public health agencies to cooperate
and collaborate with industries
investigating and deciding whether public
health is endangered — it is a direct abrogation of the duties and responsibilities of those public health
organizations. Scientist Clair
Patterson to the U.S. Senate, If you aint thinking about Man, God and
Law, you aint thinking about
nothin . Joe
Strummer (1952-2002)
Contents
Foreword by Theo Colborn vii
Note on Terminology x
Acknowledgments xii
Introduction xiv
Major Figures in the Fluoride Story xxii 1 Through the Looking Glass 1 2 Fireworks at Forsyth 1 1 3 Opposite Sides of the Atlantic
30 4 General Groves s
Problem 45 5 General Groves
s Solution: Dr. Harold Hodge and
the University of Rochester 65 6 How the Manhattan Project Sold Us Fluoride: Newburgh, Harshaw, and Jim
Conants Ruse 78 7 A
Subterranean Channel of Secret-Keeping 91
8 Robert Kehoe and The Kettering Laboratory 101 9 Donora: A Rich Mans Hocus Pocus
1 14 10 The Public Health
Service Investigation 133 1
1 As Vital to Our National Life As a Spark Plug to a Motor Car 148 12 Engineering Consent 158 13 Showdown in the West: Martin
vs. Reynolds Metals 168 14
Fluorine Lawyers and Government Dentists: A Very Worthwhile Contribution 176 15 Buried Science, Buried Workers 184 16 Hurricane Creek:
The People Rule 202 17 The
Damage Is Done 217 Epilogue: Blind to the
Truth? 230
Postscript: Dr. Arvid Carlsson, 2000 Nobel Laureate 240 Note on Sources 242 Notes 247 Index 359 Foreword THEO COLBORN THE QUESTION OF whether fluoride
is or is not an essential element is
debatable. In other words, is the element, fluorine, required for normal growth and reproduction? On one hand
there appears to be a narrow range
of topical exposure in which it might prevent cavities. But if exposure
is too high, it causes serious
health problems. And could an individual who is totally deprived of fluoride from conception through
adulthood survive? Definitive
research to resolve these questions has never appeared in the public record or in peer-reviewed
journals. It is important to keep this fact in mind as you read this book. Chris Bryson informs us that fluorine is, indeed, an
essential element in the
production of the atom bomb, and there is good reason to believe that fluoridated drinking water and
toothpaste — and the development of the
atom bomb — are closely related. This claim sounded pretty far-fetched
to me, and consequently I was
extremely skeptical about the connection when I started reading the book. Bryson writes with the skill of
a top-selling novelist, but it was
not his convincing storytelling that made me finish the book. It was the haunting message that
possibly here again was another
therapeutic agent, fluoride, that had not been thoroughly studied before
it was foisted on the public as a
panacea to protect or improve health. Bryson reveals that the safety of fluoride became a firmly established
paradigm based on incomplete
knowledge. The correct questions were never asked (or never answered when they were asked), thus giving birth
to false or bottomless assumptions
that fluoride was therapeutic and safe. Certainly, the evidence Bryson unearthed in this book begs for
immediate attention by those
responsible for public health.
As the story unfolds, Bryson weaves pieces of what at first appears to
be totally unrelated evidence into
a tapestry of intrigue, greed, FOREWORD collusion, personal aggrandizement,
corporate and government cover-up,
and U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) mistakes. While reading the
book, I kept thinking back to
1950, three years after I got my BS degree in Pharmacy and the year I gave birth to my first child.
Fluoride came on the market
packaged in pediatric vitamin drops for infants. Mothers left the hospital with their new babies in their
arms and prescriptions in their hands
from their dismissing physicians for these fluoride-laced drops. About that time communities around the country
began to add fluoride to their
drinking water. The promised benefits of fluoride were so positive that
my dentist friends began to wish
that they had chosen dermatology instead of dentistry. At that same time pregnant women were being given
a pharmaceutical,
diethylstilbestrol (DES), to prevent miscarriages, as well as DES-laced prescription vitamins especially designed
for pregnant women to produce big,
fat, healthy babies. I felt good when I dispensed the fluoride and DES prescriptions — they were products designed
to prevent health problems rather
than treat them. Now I can only wonder how many children were harmed because I and others like me took the
word of the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), the USPHS, and the major
pharmaceutical companies producing these products. We were caught up
in the spin. We were blind to the
corporate hubris and were swept along with the blissful enthusiasm that accompanies every new advance
in modern technology and
medicine. The hazards posed
by prenatal exposure to DES surfaced a lot sooner than those posed by fluoride. And although by 1958 it was
discovered that DES caused a rare
vaginal cancer that until that time had been found only in postmenopausal women, its use during
pregnancy was not banned until
1971 — thirteen years later. Even this year, 2003, new discoveries are
being reported about the impact on
health in the sons and daughters of the DES mothers, and now in their grandchildren. It is estimated that
in the United States alone there
are ten million daughters and sons. In comparison to DES, where exposure could be traced through prescription
records, the extent of exposure to
fluorides through drinking water, dental products, vitamins, and as Bryson points out, through Teflon,
Scotchgard, Stainmaster, and other
industrial and agricultural fluorinated products is practically unmeasurable. FOREWORD ix Certainly the evidence Bryson presents in
this book should cause those
charged with protecting public health to demand answers about the developmental, reproductive, and functional
role of fluorine in all living
organisms. A lack of data on the safety of a product is not proof of safety. Evidence has only recently
surfaced that prenatal exposure to
certain fluorinated chemicals is dangerous, often fatal at high doses, and that — even at extremely low levels
— such exposure can undermine the
development of the brain, the thyroid, and the metabolic system. This evidence surfaced because industrial
fluorine chemicals were suddenly
being discovered in human and wildlife
tissue everywhere they were looked for on earth. As a result, the
U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency ( EPA) began to press the
manufacturers of these products for data on their safety. It is no wonder that such chemicals never made
it on the list of known endocrine
disrupters, chemicals that undermine development and function. The studies were never done, or if they were, they
were not available to the public.
It is time that these chemicals, at the
cumulative concentrations they are found in the environment, be
tested thoroughly for their
developmental, reproductive, and endocrine effects.
Whether or not Bryson's nuclear-bomb connection is ever con- firmed without a doubt, this book
demonstrates that there is still much
that needs to be considered about the continued use of fluorine in future production and technology. The
nuclear product that required the
use of fluorine ultimately killed 65,000 people outright in one sortie over Japan. The actual number of
others since then and in generations
to come who will have had their health insidiously undermined by artificial exposure to fluorides and other
fluorine chemicals with half-lives
estimated in geologic time may well exceed that of the atom bomb victims millions and millions of times
over. Dr. Theo Colborn,
coauthor of Our Stolen Future: Are
We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival?
A Scientific Detective Story (1996) Note on Terminology THE TERMS fluorine
and fluoride should not be confused in a book about chemical toxicity. Fluorine is an element, one of our
planets building blocks, an
especially tiny atom that sits at the summit of the periodic table. Its lordly location denotes an
unmatched chemical potency that is a
consequence of its size and structure. The nine positively charged
protons at the atoms core get
little protection from a skimpy miniskirt of electrons. As a result, fluorine atoms are
unbalanced and dangerous predators,
snatching electrons from other elements to relieve their core tension.
(A ravenous hunger for electrons
explains why fluorine cuts through steel like butter, burns asbestos, and reacts violently with most
organic material.)'
Mercifully, Mother Nature keeps fluorine under lock and key.
Because of its extreme reactivity,
fluorine is usually bound with other elements. These compounds are known as salts, or fluorides, the same
stuff that they put in toothpaste.
Yet the chemical potency of fluorides is also dramatic. Armed with a captured electron, the
toxicity of the negatively charged
fluoride ion now comes, in part, from its tiny size. (Ionic means
having captured or surrendered an
electron). Like a midget submarine in a harbor full of battleships, fluoride ions can get close to big
molecules — like proteins or DNA —
where their negative charge packs a mighty wallop that can wreak havoc, forming powerful bonds
with hydrogen, and interfering
with the normal fabric of such biological molecules.' However — and please stay with me here, I promise it
gets easier — somewhat
confusingly, the words fluorine and fluoride are some-times used interchangeably. A fluoride
compound is often referred to, generically, as fluorine. (For example, the Fluorine Lawyers Committee
was a group of corporate attorneys
concerned about the medical and legal dangers from a great range of different industrial "fluorides"
spilling from company
smokestacks.) In
these pages Ive tried to be clear when Im referring to the element fluorine or to a compound, a fluoride.
And because different fluoride
compounds often have unique toxicities, where relevant or NOTE ON
TERMINOLOGY
Xi
possible, I have also given the compounds specific name. Mostly, however, for simplicity s sake, I have
followed convention and used the
shorthand fluoride when referring to the element and its multiple manifestations, a procedure approved
and used by the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences.' Acknowledgements This book owes a debt of gratitude to
many. First is my wife, Molly, whose
love and encouragement pushed me to the starting line and carried
me across the finish. My first
encounter with fluoride came as a BBC radio journalist working in New York in 1993, when I was asked to
find an "American angle"
on water fluoridation. Ralph Nader put me in touch with scientists at the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency who opposed
fluoridation) As I followed that story, I met the medical writer Joel Griffiths. His investigative article
"Fluoride: Commie Plot or Capitalist
Ploy" in the fall 1992 issue of the magazine Covert Action
Information Bulletin is a
masterful and detailed account of how fluoride is primarily an industrial and environmental story.
Griffiths reported how vested
economic interests were behind the earliest suggestions that fluoride
be added to water, while those
same interests for decades had assiduously suppressed information about fluorides destructive effects
on health and environment.
Griffiths paradigm-shifting story was my starting gun and, as my Manhattan neighbor, I leant heavily
on his reporting, interviews,
documents, interpretation and the gentle friendship of him and his
wife Barbara as I wrote this book.
Librarians are foot soldiers of democracy, and a legion of them sacked archives for me from Tennessee to
Washington State and from Denmark
to London. Everywhere I was met with eager help digging out dusty files and courteous answers to the most
foolish of questions. Special
thanks to my favorite Metallica fan, Billie Broaddus, at the University of Cincinnati Medical
Heritage Center, Marjorie Ciarlante
at the National Archives in Washington, DC, and Donald Jerne at the Danish National Library of Science and
Medicine. The book's spine is the
authority of the many workers, scientists, and public officials who gave
so freely of their time.
Particular gratitude to Albert Burgstahler of the University of Kansas, the EPA's J. William Hirzy, Robert J.
Carton, Phyllis J. Mullenix,
Kathleen M. Thiessen of SENES Oak Ridge Inc., and Robert F. Phalen of the University ACKNOWLEDGMENTS of California at
Irvine, who each spent long hours reviewing documents and medical studies for me. I had the good fortune to serve an apprenticeship in
the 1980s with the late Jonathan
Kwitny, one of the nations top investigative reporters. From his hospital bed, weak from radiation
treatment, he encouraged me. This is
your book, he said. I was helped with financial support from the Fund
for Investigative Journalism,
Inc., and the Institute for Public Affairs. A bouquet to Dan Simon at Seven Stories Press, who clapped his
hands in glee when told he'd be
taking on the great industrial trusts of America. Special thanks to Lexy Bloom and Ruth Hein for their
critical and conscientious
editing; to George Miirer, Anna Lui, Chris Peterson, and India Amos for wrestling this octopus
to the printer; and to the entire staff
at Seven Stories Press for their passion and commitment. Many helped in myriad other ways.
This book is theirs, too. Gwen
Jaworzyn, Janet Michel, Bette Hileman, USA Today and Peter Eisler, George Mavridis, Felicity Bryson and
Vincent Gerin, Ruth Miller at the
Donora Historical Society, Anne-Lise Gotzsche, Barbara Griffiths, Anthony and Nancy Thompson and family,
Basil and Anne Henderson,
Joan-Ellen and Alex Zucker, Nina and David Altschil-ler, Bill and
Janney Murtha, Tom Webster, Naomi
Flack, Ken Case, Bob Woffinden, Traude
Sadtler, Gordon Thompson, Clifford and Russ Honicker, Jacqueline O. Kittrell, Ellie Rudolph, Robert Hall,
Martha Bevis, John Marks, Chris
Trepal, Carol Patton, Gar Smith at Earth Island Journal, Lennart
Krook, Danny Moses at Sierra Club
Books, Andreas Schuld, Erwin Rose and
family, Roberta Baskin, the Connett family, Colin Beavan, Sam Roe,
Karin and Hans Hendrik Roholm, Eleanor
Krinsky, Allen Kline, Bill and Gladys
Shempp ( who put me up in their home in Donora one night),
Elizabeth Ramsay, Lynne Page
Snyder, and Peter Meiers, whom I never met nor spoke with but whose splendid research led me to the papers
of Charles F. Kettering. Thank you all. Introduction A Clear and Present
Danger Warning:
Keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age. If you accidentally swallow more than used for
brushing, get medical help or
contact a Poison Control Center right away. NEXT TIME YOU confront yourself in the bathroom
mirror, mouth full of foam, take
another look at that toothpaste tube. Most of us associate fluoride with the humdrum issue of
better teeth and the promised fewer
visits to the dentist. Yet the story of how fluoride was added to
our toothpaste and drinking water
is an extraordinary, almost fantastic tale. The plot includes some of the most spec tacular events in
human affairs — the explosion of
the Hiroshima atomic bomb, for example. Many of the principal characters are larger than life, such as
the "father of public
relations" Edward L. Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, who was
until now more famous for his
scheme to persuade women to smoke cigarettes.' And the twists and turns of the fluoride story are propelled
by nothing less than the often
grim requirements of accumulating power in the industrial era — the same raw power that is at the
beating heart of the American
Century. Fluoride
lies at the elemental core of some of the greatest fortunes that the world has ever seen, the almost
unimaginable wealth of the Mellons of
Pittsburgh and the DuPonts of Delaware. And no wonder the warning on the toothpaste tube is so dramatic. The
same potent chemical that is used
to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, to prepare Sarin nerve gas, and
to wrestle molten steel and
aluminum from the earth's ore is what we give to our children INTRODUCTION XV first thing in the morning and last thing
at night, flavored with peppermint,
strawberry, or bubble gum.
Fluoride is so muscular a chemical that it has become a lifeblood
of modern industry, pumped hotly
each day through innumerable factories,
refineries, and mills. Fluoride is used to produce high-octane gasoline;
to smelt such key metals as
aluminum, steel, and beryllium; to enrich
uranium; to make computer circuit boards, pesticides, ski wax,
refrigerant gases, Teflon plastic,
carpets, waterproof clothing, etched glass, bricks and ceramics, and numerous drugs, such as
Prozac and Cipro. Fluoride's
use in dentistry is a sideshow by comparison. But its use in dentistry helps industry, too. How does
it work? Call it elemental public
relations. Fluoride is so potent a chemical that it's also a grave environmental hazard and a potential
workplace poison. So, for the
industry-sponsored scientists who first promoted fluoride's use in
dentistry, linking the chemical to
better teeth and stoutly insisting that, in low doses, it had no other health effect helped to
change fluorides image from poison
to panacea, deflecting attention from the injury that factory
fluoride pollution has long
wreaked on workers, citizens, and nature. Hard to swallow? Maybe not. The face-lift performed on
fluoride more than fifty years ago
has fooled a lot of people. Instead of conjuring up the image of a crippled worker or a
poisoned forest, we see smiling children.
Fluoride's ugly side has almost entirely escaped the public gaze.
Historians have failed to record
that fluoride pollution was the biggest single legal worry facing the atomic-bomb program following World War
II. Environmentalists are often
unaware that since World War II, fluoride has been the most damaging poison spilling from factory
smokestacks and was, at one point
during the cold war, blamed for more damage claims against industry than all twenty other major
air pollutants combined. And it was
fluoride that may have been primarily responsible for the most
notorious air pollution disaster
in U.S. history — the 1948 Halloween nightmare that devastated the mill town of Donora, Pennsylvania — which
jump-started the U.S.
environmental movement.' It's
the same story today: more happy faces. Yet we are exposed to fluoride from more sources than ever.
We consume the chemical from water
and toothpaste, as well as from processed foods made xvi INTRODUCTION with fluoridated water and
fluoride-containing chemicals. We are exposed to fluorine chemicals from often-unrecognized sources, such
as agricultural pesticides,
stain-resistant carpets, fluorinated drugs, and such packaging as microwavable popcorn bags and hamburger
wrappers, in addition to
industrial air pollution and the fumes and dust inhaled by many workers inside their factories. Fluorides double-fisted trait of bringing
out the worst in other chemicals
makes it especially bad company. While a common air pollutant, hydrogen fluoride, is many times more
toxic than better-known air
pollution villains, such as sulfur dioxide or ozone, it
"synergistically" boosts
the toxicity of these pollutants as well. Does fluoride added to our drinking water similarly increase the
toxicity of the lead, arsenic, and other
pollutants that are routinely found in our water supply? As we shall
see, getting answers to such
questions from the federal government, even after fifty years of endorsing water fluoridation, can prove
impossible. By the mid-193os
European scientists had already linked fluoride to a range of illnesses, including breathing problems,
central-nervous-system disorders,
and especially an array of arthritis-like musculoskeletal problems.' But during the cold war, in
one of the greatest medical vanishing
acts of the twentieth century, fluoride was systematically removed
from public association with ill
health by researchers funded by the U.S. military and big corporations. In Europe excess exposure to fluoride
produced a medical condition
described as "poker back" or "crippling skeletal fluorosis" among fac tory workers.
But the chemical somehow behaved differently
when it crossed the Atlantic, the industry-funded researchers implied, failing to produce such
disability in the United States. It was a
deceit, as we shall see: scientific fraud on a grand and global scale;
a lawyerly ruse to escape liability
for widespread worker injury; a courtroom
hustle made possible and perpetuated by the suppression of medical evidence and by occasional perjury. Your history is all mixed up, say
supporters of water fluorida-tion. The
story of how fluoride was added to our toothpaste and water is a
separate history, unrelated to
fluoride's use in industry, they maintain. But there is only one story, not two. The tale of
the dental wonder chemical and the
mostly secret account of how industry and the U.S. military helped
to create and polish that INTRODUCTION xvn public image are
braided too closely to distinguish between them. The stories merge completely in the conduct of two of the most
senior American scientists who led
the promotion of water fluo-ridation in
the 19405 and 1950S, Dr. Harold Carpenter Hodge and Dr. Robert Arthur Kehoe. Don't blame the dentists. They were taught that
fluoride is good for teeth. Few
realize that Dr. Hodge, the nation's leading fluoride researcher who trained a generation of dental school deans
in the 19506 and 1960S, was the
senior wartime toxicologist for the Man-
hattan Project. There he helped choreograph the notorious human radiation experiments in which hospital
patients were injected with
plutonium and uranium — without their knowledge or consent — in order to study the toxicity of those
chemicals in humans. Hodge was
similarly charged with studying fluoride toxicity. Building the
worlds first atomic bomb had
required gargantuan amounts of fluoride. So, for example, on behalf of the bomb makers he covertly
monitored one of the nation's
first public water fluoridation experiments. While the citizens of Newburgh, New York, were
told that fluoride would reduce
cavities in their children, secretly blood and tissue samples from residents were sent to his atomic
laboratory for study.' Some
dentists are unaware that much of the fluoride added to drinking water today in the United
States is actually an industrial
waste, "scrubbed" from the smokestacks of Florida phosphate
fer- tilizer mills to prevent it
from damaging livestock and crops in the
surrounding countryside. In a sweetheart deal these phosphate com- panies are spared the expense of
disposing of this "fluosilicic acid" in a toxic waste dump. Instead, the acid is sold to
municipalities, shipped in
rubber-lined tanker trucks to reservoirs across North America and injected into drinking water for the reduction
of cavities in children. (So toxic
are the contents of the fluoride trucks that in the aftermath of the September II, zoos, terrorist
attack, authorities were alerted to keep
a watchful eye on road shipments of the children's tooth-decay reducer.) 8 "I had no idea where the fluoride was coming from
until the anti-fluoridationists
pointed it out to me, Dr. Hardy Limeback, the head of Preventative Dentistry at the University of Toronto,
Canada, and a former leading
fluoridation supporter, told me. I said, You have got to be wrong. That is not possible! xviii INTRODUCTION Those same phosphate
manufacturers were members of an influential group of industries that sponsored Dr. Robert Kehoe s
fluoride research at the
University of Cincinnati during the 1940s and 1950s. Kehoe is better known today for his career-long defense
of the safety of adding lead to
gasoline (now discredited). But he was also a leading figure
reassuring citizens and scientists
of the safety of industrial fluoride and water fluoridation, while burying information about the chemical s
toxic effects and privately
sharing doubts with his corporate sponsors about the safety of even tiny amounts of the chemical.
9 Not surprisingly, peering
behind the fifty-year-old facade of smiling children with rows of picket-fence-white teeth is difficult.
Industry is reluctant to have its
monument to fluoride safety blackened or its role in dental mythmaking explored. Several of the archives I
visited had gaping holes or
missing documents, and some were closed entirely. And many scientists are reluctant to speak
critically about fluoride — mindful of the fate of researchers who have questioned the government line.
Scientists have been fired for
their refusal to back down from their questions about the safety of fluoride, blackballed by industry, or smeared
by propagandists hired by the U.S.
Public Health Service and the American Dental Asso-ciation. 10 "Bodies litter the field," one
senior dental researcher told me
when he learned that I was writing a book on fluoride. Myths are powerful things. Mention
of fluoride evokes a skeptically
cocked eyebrow from liberals and conservatives alike and an almost reflexive mention of the 1964 Stanley
Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove. The
hilarious portrayal of General Jack D. Ripper as a berserk
militarist obsessed with
Communists adding fluoride to the nation's water became a cultural icon of the cold war — and
perhaps the movie's most famous scene.
(Today Nile Southern, the son of Dr. Strangelove's screenwriter,
Terry Southern, remarks that the
news that U.S. military and industrial
interests — not Communists — promoted water fluoridation is
"just shocking. Terry and
Stanley [ Kubrick] would have been horrified by it.")" The media caricature was largely
false. The national grassroots struggle
against water fluoridation was a precursor of todays environmental movement, with multicolored hues of
political affiliation. It was led by
veteran scientists with distinguished careers safeguard- INTRODUCTION xix ing public health,
including the doctor who warned the nation about the dangers of cigarette smoking and the risk from allergic
reaction to penicillin. Yet
instead of being seen as medical pioneers and minutemen, warning of the encroachment of industrial
poisons, antifluoridationists are
portrayed as unscientific and isolationist the modern equivalent of believing that the earth is flat. It is the U.S. medical
establishment that is out on a limb, say crit ics. Adding to water a chemical so toxic that it was once used as
rat poison was a uniquely American
idea and is, increasingly, a lone American practice. Most European countries do not add fluoride to
their water. Several nations have
long since discontinued the practice,
doubting its safety and worth." Fluoride may help teeth, but the evidence is not
overwhelming. Although rates of
dental decay have fallen significantly in the United States since the 194os, similar improvements have been seen in countries where fluoride is not added
to the water. Improved dental
care, good nutrition, and the use of antibiotics may explain the parallel improvement. A largely
sympathetic official review of
fluoridation by the British government in 2000 found that most studies of the effectiveness of
fluoridated water were of moderate
quality and that water fluoridation may be responsible for 15
percent fewer cavities."
Thats a far cry from the 65 percent reductions promised by the early promoters of fluoride. With
revelations that such health
problems as central nervous system effects, arthritis, and the risk of bone cancer were minimized
or concealed entirely from the
public by early promoters of fluoride, the possible benefit of a handful of better teeth might not be
worth running the risk. How many
cavities would have to be saved to justify the death of one man from osteosarcoma?" asked the late
Dr. John Colquhoun, the former
chief dental officer of Auckland, New Zealand, and a fluoride promoter turned critic. "I did not realize the
toxicity of fluoride," said Dr. Limeback, the Canadian. I had taken the word of the public health
dentists, the public health
physicians, the USPHS, the USCDC, the ADA, the CDA [Canadian Dental Association] that fluoride was safe and
effective without actually
investigating it myself.
Even the theory of how fluoride works has changed. The CDC no longer argues that fluoride absorbed
from the stomach via
XX INTRODUCTION
drinking water helps teeth. Instead, the argument goes, fluoride strikes
at dental decay from outside the
tooth, or topically, where, among other
effects, it attacks the enzymes in cavity-causing bacteria.
Drinking fluoridated water is
still important, according to the CDC, because it bathes the teeth in fluoride-enhanced saliva —
a cost-effective way of reaching
poorer families who may not have a balanced diet, access to a dentist,
or the regular habit of brushing
with fluoride toothpaste.'
But swallowing treated water allows fluoride into our bones and
blood, where it may be harmful to
other parts of the body, say critics. If fluoride can kill enzymes in tooth bacteria, its potentially
crippling effects on other enzymes
— the vital chemical catalysts that regulate much biological activity — must be considered.' When I investigated [such
questions] I said, "This is crazy." Lets take it out of the water because it is harming
so many people — [not] simply the
dental fluorosis [the white mottling on teeth caused by fluoride], but
now we are seeing bone problems
and possibly cancer and thyroid problems. If you are really targeting the poor people, lets give
toothpaste out at the food banks.
Do something other than fluoridate the water supply," said Dr. Limeback. Then [the fluoride promoters]
kept saying, Well, it is cost
effective. That is a load of crap-it is cost effective because they are
using toxic waste, for crying out
loud! History tells us that
overturning myths is rarely easy. But we have been down this path before. The fluoride story is similar to the
fables about lead, tobacco, and
asbestos, in which medical accomplices helped industry to hide the truth about these substances
for generations. Fluoride workers
share a tragic fate with the souls who breathed beryllium, uranium,
and silica in the workplace.
Endless studies that assured workers that their factories and mines were safe concealed the simple truth
that thousands of people were
being poisoned and dying painful early deaths from these chemicals. So if this tale of how
fluorides public image was privately
laundered sounds eerily familiar, maybe its because the very same professionals and institutions who told
us that fluoride was safe said much
the same about lead, asbestos, and DDT or persuaded us to smoke
more tobacco. INTRODUCTION XXI Lulled by half a
century of reassurances from supporters of fluoride in the public health establishment, many doctors today have
no idea of the symptoms of
fluoride poisoning. A silent killer may stalk us in our ignorance. There is a black hole out
there, in terms of the public and
scientific knowledge, says former industry toxicologist Dr. Phyllis Mullenix. There is really no public
health issue that could impact a
bigger population. I dont think there is an element of this society
that is not impacted by fluoride.
It is very far-reaching and it is very
disturbing."
Fifty years after the U.S. Public Health Service abruptly reversed
course during the darkest days of
the cold war — and endorsed artificial water fluoridation — it is time to recognize the folly, hubris,
and secret agendas that have
shackled us too long, poisoning our water, choking our air, and crippling workers. It is time, as the
Quakers ask in life, to speak truth to
power. Good science can sharpen the tools for change, but it will be
public opinion and citizen action
that strike those shackles free. Major Figures On The Fluoride Story edward L. bernays . A
propagandist and the self-styled father of public relations, Bernays was Sigmund Freud s nephew. Among his
clients were the U.S. military,
Alcoa, Procter and Gamble, and Allied Signal. On behalf of big tobacco companies he persuaded American women
to smoke cigarettes. He also
promoted water fluoridation, consulting on strategy for the National Institute of Dental
Research. Gerald judy COX. A
researcher at the Mellon Institute in the 1930s, where he held a fellowship from the Aluminum Company of
America. Following Frarys (see
below) suggestion, Cox reported that fluoride gave rats cavity-resistant teeth and in 1939 made the first
public proposal to add fluoride to
public water supplies. henry
trendley dean. The U.S. Public Health Service researcher who studied dental fluorosis in areas
of the United States where fluoride
occurred naturally in the water supply. His fluorine-caries
hypothesis suggested that fluoride
made teeth cavity-resistant but also caused unsightly dental mottling. Worried about toxicity, Dean
opposed adding fluoride to water
in Newburgh, New York, the site of the nations first-planned water fluoridation experiment. In 1948 Dean
became the first director of the
National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) and, in 1953, a top official of the American Dental Association. OSCAR R. ewing . A top Wall
Street lawyer for the Aluminum Company
of America. As Federal Security Agency administrator for the Truman administration with jurisdiction over
the Public Health Service, it was
Ewing who, in 1950, endorsed public water fluoridation for the
United States. MAJOR FIGURES FRANCIS COWLES FRARY.
As Director of Research at the Aluminum
Company of America from 1918, Frary was one of the most powerful science bureaucrats in the United
States and grappled with the issue of
fluoride emissions from aluminum smelters. It was Frary who made
early suggestions to Gerald Cox, a
researcher at the Mellon Institute, that
fluoride might make strong teeth. GENERAL LESLIE R. GROVES. Head of the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers' Manhattan Project to
build the world's first atomic bomb. HAROLD CARPENTER HODGE. A biochemist and toxicologist
at the University of Rochester who
investigated fluoride for the U.S. Armys
Manhattan Project, where he also supervised experiments in which unsuspecting hospital patients were
injected with uranium and plutonium.
After the war Hodge chaired the National Research Council s
Committee on Toxicology and became
the leading scientific promoter of water
fluoridation in the United States during the cold war. DUDLEY A. IRWIN. Alcoa s medical
director who helped oversee Robert
Kehoes fluoride research at the Kettering Laboratory, and who met personally with top fluoride
researchers at the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) following the verdict in the Martin
air-pollution trial. ROBERT
A. KEHOE . As the Director of the Kettering Laboratory of Applied Physiology at the University of
Cincinnati, Kehoe was the leading
defender in the United States of the safety of leaded gasoline. Guided by a group of corporate
attorneys known as the Fluorine Lawyers
Committee, Kehoe similarly defended fluoride on behalf of a group
of corporations that included
DuPont, Alcoa, and U.S. Steel, all of which faced lawsuits for industrial fluoride pollution. EDWARD J. L ARGENT. A researcher
at the Kettering Laboratory who
defended corporations accused of fluoride pollution and spent a
career negating the fluoride
warnings of the Danish scientist Kaj xxiv MAJOR FIGURES Roholm. Largent exposed his wife and son
to hydrogen fluoride in a
laboratory gas chamber.
NICHOLAS C. LEONE. The head of medical investigations at the
federal governments NIDR who was
in close communication with industry s
Fluorine Lawyers and who, following the 1955 Martin verdict, met with Alcoa s Dudley Irwin and the Kettering
Laboratory s Robert Kehoe to
discuss how government water fluoridation safety studies could help industry. WILLIAM J. MARCUS . A senior toxicologist in the EPAs
Office of Drinking Water. In 1992,
after he protested what he described as the systematic downgrading of the results of the government's
study of cancer and fluoride, he
was fired. A federal judge later ruled that he had been fired because of his scientific opinions on
fluoride and ordered him reinstated. PAUL AND VERLA MARTIN. Oregon farmers who were
poisoned by fluoride from a Reynolds
Metals aluminum plant. Their precedent-setting court victory in 1955 sparked emergency meetings between
fluoride industry representatives
and senior officials from the National Institute of Dental Research and launched a crash program of laboratory
experiments at the Kettering
Laboratory to prove industrial fluoride pollution "safe." PHYLLIS J. MULLENIX. A leading
neurotoxicologist hired by the
Forsyth Dental Center in Boston to investigate the toxicity of
materials used in dentistry. In i
994i after her research indicated that fluoride was neurotoxic, she was fired. KAJ ELI ROHOLM. The Danish scientist who in 1937
published the book Fluorine
Intoxication, an encyclopedic study of fluoride pollution and poisoning. He opposed giving fluoride
to children. PHILIP SADTLER.
The third-generation son of a venerable Philadelphia family of chemists, Sadtler gave expert testimony during the
1940s and 1950s on behalf of
farmers and citizens who claimed that they had been poisoned by industrial fluoride pollution. He MAJOR FIGURES XXV blamed fluoride for
the most notorious air pollution disaster in U.S. history, during which two dozen people were
killed and several thousand were
injured in Donora, Pennsylvania, over the Halloween weekend in
1948. FRANK L. SEAMANS. A
top lawyer for Alcoa, Seamans was also
head of the group of senior attorneys known as the Fluorine Lawyers Committee, which represented big
corporations in cases of alleged
industrial fluoride pollution. GEORGE L. WALDBOTT. A doctor and scientist and a
leading expert on the health
effects of environmental pollutants, Waldbott's research in the 19505 and 196os on his own patients
indicated that many people were
uniquely sensitive to very small doses of fluoride. He founded the International Society for Fluoride Research
and was a leader of the
international and domestic opposition to water fluoridation.
COLONEL STAFFORD L. WARREN. Head of the Manhattan Projects Medical Section. EDWARD RAY WEIDLEIN. Director of
the Mellon Institute, where Cox
carried out his studies. 1 Through the Looking Glass At the children's
entrance to the prestigious Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, there is a bronze mural from a scene in
Alice in Wonderland. The mural
makes scientist Phyllis Mullenix laugh. One spring morning, when she
was the head of the toxicology
department at Forsyth, she walked into the ornate and marbled building and, like Alice, stepped through the
looking glass. That same day in
her Forsyth laboratory she made a startling discovery and tumbled into a bizarre wonderland where almost no one
was who they had once appeared to
be and nothing in the scientists life would ever be the same again. AS SHE DROVE alongside the Charles River in the bright
August sunshine of 1982 for her
first day of work at the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix was smiling. She and
her husband Rick had recently had
their second daughter. Her new job promised career stability and with it, the realization of a
professional dream. Since
her days as a graduate student Mullenix had been exploring new methods for studying the possible
harmful effects of small doses of
chemicals. By 1982 Dr. Mullenix was a national leader in the young science of neurotoxicology, measuring
how such chemicals affected the
brain and central nervous system. She and a team of researchers
were developing a bold new
technology to perform those difficult
measurements more accurately and more quickly than ever before. The system was called the Computer
Pattern Recognition System. 
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