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
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