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.' https://www.blogger.com/null  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     CHAPTER FIFTEEN     "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.     188     CHAPTER FIFTEEN     • 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