16. Hurricane Creek The People Rule: the fluoride deception by
Christopher Bryson from archive.org
Hurricane Creek The People Rule Scientists have been villains in this
story. Robert Kehoe and Harold Hodge
buried important research and misled
the general public. But
scientists have been heroes, too.
The pioneering work of Kaj Roholm and George Waldbott in unmasking fluoride s potential for harm was a
principled effort to explore
fluoride's role in our biology and biosphere. More recently we can see a similar heroic journey in that of
Phyllis Mullenix. When her
research revealed that fluoride in low doses has effects on the central nervous system, she was fired
from her job as the head of the
toxicology department at the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, and
her industry funding dried up. Mullenix has since immersed
herself in the medical literature about
fluoride and has appeared as an expert witness in several trials in
which fluoride was alleged to have
injured workers. Although the number of men and women exposed to fluoride in the workplace is enormous —
and as we have seen in the data
from the Kettering dog study, those workers are likely to have fluoride-induced injuries —
nevertheless, fifty years of assurances
by the Public Health Service that fluoride in small amounts is good and safe for children make winning damage
lawsuits an uphill and often https://www.blogger.com/null thankless
task. PHYLLIS
MULLENIX TOOK her seat on the stand beneath the giant seal of the state of Arkansas mounted high on the
court-room wall. The seal,
inscribed in Latin, read Regnat Populus — "The HURRICANE CREEK 203 People Rule."
The jury leaned forward. Presiding Circuit Court Judge Grisham Phillips peered over his
glasses. All eyes were on the female
toxicologist and the anticipated confrontation with the tall
redheaded attorney Harry M.
"Pete" Johnson III, who was now approaching the bench. Mullenix had changed careers. Since being fired in
1994 she had become perhaps the
most prominent scientist in the United States testifying in damage cases about the health risks she
saw from low-level fluoride
exposure. Mullenix had spoken with sick uranium and aluminum
workers in Tennessee and
Washington State, met with poisoned Mohawk Indians in New York, and testified in several court cases, helping to
win financial settlements for a
crippled chemical worker in Georgia and a
water-treatment-plant operator in Arkansas. Despite these occasional
legal successes, Mullenix believes
that doctors and citizens share a blind spot in not viewing fluoride as a chemical poison and an industrial
pollutant. The problem with
fluoride is that it is not recognized for what it is. First people think of toothpaste and second they
think of drinking water. They have
totally ignored the fluoride industry and fluoride workers." In October 2000, back in Arkansas
again, Mullenix found herself in the
crosshairs of one of the nations most powerful corporations, the
Reynolds Metals Company of
Richmond, Virginia; as we have seen, Reynolds has a long history of fighting fluoride pollution claims and good
reason to fear having the chemical
more widely recognized as a workplace poison. Reynolds had been one of the principal supporters, and
beneficiaries, of Robert Kehoes
fluoride research at the Kettering Laboratory. Now Mullenix was an expert witness for a group of fifty workers
suing Reynolds, part of a much
larger group of several hundred workers, who also alleged that their health had been damaged
while working at the company's Hurri-
cane Creek worksite. 1
One of the workers was Diane Peebles. The thirty-five-year-old
mother of two sat quietly at the
back of the Saline County courtroom in Benton throughout the October trial. Since working as a driver at
Hurricane Creek in 1995 and 1996,
a bizarre spectrum of physical and mental problems had dogged her. Her blood pressure had
begun fluctuating wildly, and she had
experienced powerful mood swings as well as "lots of headaches
and stomach problems," with 204 CHAPTER SIXTEEN near constant
exhaustion and pain in her joints. The aching never stops. I wish I had the energy that other people
have, she added. Diane s
husband, Scotty Peebles, had taken the witness stand. The stocky, tattooed laborer told the jury
that his health had also collapsed in
just six months at the Hurricane Creek site. He had been operating
heavy machinery in order to bury
chemical waste in giant pits. Scotty Peebles shared many symptoms with Diane and the other workers. His
lung capacity had been cut almost
in half, and his bones had lost mineral density, medical tests showed. His skin had burned bright red and his
nose filled with painful blisters
at the work site, he testified. Although he had not worked at Hurricane Creek for almost three years,
twenty-nine-year-old Scotty
Peebles's joints still ached and he, too, was plagued with mysterious headaches and stomach problems, he told
the court. Sitting at the
Peebles's kitchen table one October morning during the trial, the soft-spoken Diane suddenly
burst into tears. Scotty sat silent, his
hand gripping a coffee cup. "It's hard," she blurted out. The
strain on the family was sometimes
overwhelming, Diane said. Several scientists, including Dr. Mullenix, had testified about the serious and
often long-term health risks from
fluoride. "The kids want to know, "Are you sick mom — are you and Dad gonna die?' We
tell them we are not going
anywhere. I hate having to lie to my children, because I don't know
myself. I want to make sure that
they are taken care of. That is my biggest fear — because if we are not able to take care of our kids,
who is going to?"
Reynolds Metals had hired big-time lawyers to fight the Hurricane Creek workers' claim. Attorney Pete
Johnson was from the Virginia-based
firm of Hunton &Williams, who since 1910 had defended Standard Oil, Phillip Morris, and a host of banking,
electric utility, and railroad
companies. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell Jr. had once been a partner, and the firm had a reputation
in the legal world of having a
Southern "old boy" culture. Pete Johnson fitted the mold. The
University of Virginia law school
graduate was one of Hunton & Williams's younger members, but he had already defended clients in "toxic
tort" cases of asbestos and
lead poisoning. As Johnson approached the bench and opened his files, Phyllis Mullenix closed her
eyes. She smiled, bracing herself,
while recalling the words of her husband, Rick, when she had left
Boston.
HURRICANE CREEK
205 The
Reynolds lawyers, he had warned, are going to chew on your ass a while, but youve got more ass than
they ve got teeth. The duel
between Mullenix and Johnson over one of the most critical legal issues that had ever faced U.S. industry —
fluoride dam- age to human health
— was being fought, fittingly enough, near one of the most historic industrial sites in the United States.
Only four miles from the Benton
courthouse, Hurricane Creeks red earth once contained some of the nation's richest deposits of bauxite,
the raw mineral needed to make
aluminum. The Aluminum Company of
America had built the nearby company town of Bauxite in the early 19005 to house migrant miners. A
National Park Service plaque at the
Bauxite museum commemorates the regions vital role in making aluminum for aircraft during World War
U. In October 2000 Benton
was ready to make history again. The court case filed by the Hurricane Creek workers was closely linked to
what EPA officials call the
largest and most environmentally significant waste disposal issue facing aluminum producers in the United
States.' The material Scotty
Peebles had been burying at Hurricane Creek was a toxic by-product of making aluminum, a waste known as
treated spent potliner. The EPA
had taken an intense interest in the waste. Each year about 120,000 tons of spent potliner are produced by the
aluminum industry in the United
States.' The waste is impregnated with a witch's brew of fluoride, arsenic, and cyanide. Disposing of it has long
been a financial headache for
manufacturers — and a flashpoint for conflict with environmental regulators. There is so much of it and it is
somewhat awkward to treat,"
noted Steve Silverman of the EPAs Office of General Counsel.
Once, ugly black mountains of waste potliner — literally, the waste lining of the steel pots in which the
aluminum is smelted — had been stored
on site or buried in pits, leaching fluoride and other poisons into groundwater, and winning toxic
Superfund status for several aluminum
plants across the country, a federal designation that targets the
hazardous site for clean-up.' But
by the early 1990s Reynolds told the EPA that the company had solved the potliner problem. It had invented a
process at the Hurricane Creek
site to treat the waste, heating it with sand and lime in giant furnaces at temperatures of over
1,100 degrees, driving off the
cyanide, and then binding the 206 CHAPTER SIXTEEN fluoride to the sand and limestone as
calcium fluoride. Hurricane
Creek workers Jerry Jones and Alan Williams helped to develop that Reynolds treatment process — becoming, they now
believe, two more unwitting
victims of industrial fluoride poisoning. In 1988 the two laborers had been part of a work crew of several hundred
men that greeted a mighty
procession of loo-ton railroad "hopper" cars arriving in Arkansas, hauling potliner waste from
aluminum companies in New York,
Oregon, and Canada. The experimental treatment plant ran day and
night, coiling a plume of black
smoke across Saline County. Jerry Jones would climb into the railroad cars, smashing a sledgehammer to
loosen the foul-smelling material
while wearing only a bandana across his face for protection from the billowing dust. "We knew we were
dealing with something
awful," he added. "Your sweat would burn, and the stuff smelled just horrendous." Safety questions drew blunt
responses from the Reynolds s contractors, the men recalled. Recession was biting Arkansas hard in the
early 1990s, and both Jerry Jones
and Alan Williams had young children to feed. "I was told to either god-dammed do it, or hit
the fucking gate,' because they had
over a thousand applications at the office of people waiting to take
our jobs," said Jones.
"They did not tell us one thing [about safety]." Alan Williams is a thick-necked
former U.S. Marine with a college
degree. He became a foreman at Hurricane Creek. He had always been "super physical," he said,
but the forty-five-year-old quickly ran into health troubles while at the Reynolds site. "I wasn't sure
what the problem was," he
said. "My gums had begun to shrink. I quit smoking. I was having
chest pains and rashes all over my
body. I looked like an alcoholic and I don't hardly drink. It was covering my legs anti arms and I was
having joint pain. My sex is gone.
I'm impotent. It just wasted me away," he said.' By December 1991 the new treatment process was ready.
Reynolds assured the EPA the
"treated" spent potliner waste would not leach fluoride into ground water at levels the EPA
deemed unsafe. That year the treated
potliner was removed from the agency's list of toxic materials and
"lost its hazardous waste
stigma," according to Michelle Peace, an EPA environmental engineer who handled the delisting"
process.
HURRICANE CREEK
207 The
EPA ruling that the treated potliner was not hazardous was a financial windfall for Reynolds Metals.
Instead of paying for the disposal
of tens of thousands of tons of highly toxic waste, the company was now permitted to bury up to 300,000
cubic yards of the " treated"
material each year in giant unlined pits at Hurricane Creek where, according to Peace, "there was no
real associated costs with disposing
of that material."
The EPA may have ruled the material safe, but to workers like
Scotty Peebles, the acrid dust
that filled his truck cab each day was loathsome. Reynolds was experimenting with the treated pot-liner waste
as commercial road-grading
material, which was called ALROC. It was
Peebles's job to haul the ALROC fluoride waste around the site for
the test roads. He began to notice
changes in the environment after he had
begun this process. "It killed all the trees and the grass,"
Peebles said. "I used to see
a lot of deer, then you didn't see too many come around any more." Reynolds had assured the EPA that fluoride leaching
from the treated" waste would
be less than 48 parts per million. But an environmental audit by an EPA contractor found levels at
2,400 parts per million — fluoride
levels that "would have impacted human health and the
environment," according to
Michelle Peace. Nevertheless, the extraordinary difference between what Reynolds had promised and
what it actually delivered was an
honest difference of technique, not a deliberate effort to mislead
the government regulators,
according to Peace. "[Reynolds] ran the [initial] test as appropriately as they
could." The attorney
for the Hurricane Creek workers, Bruce McMath, didn't buy it. He claimed that Reynolds had "hoodwinked"
the EPA from the beginning. He
showed the Benton jury a Reynolds memo proving, he said, that the company had concealed the
truth from the federal regulators.'
"They knew the treatment process was not going to achieve what they
were representing to the EPA it
would achieve — or at least, how they knew the EPA was interpreting the data they were giving them."
He also noted that Reynolds had
hired a former top EPA official to work behind the scenes and help to get the treated potliner
delisted. "These corporations have such sustained and long-term working relationships with these
agencies," McMath said.
"It becomes very difficult for you to overcome that." 208 CHAPTER SIXTEEN Michelle Peace
conceded that the EPA had difficulty in evaluating the human-health significance of the
revised test data. Her comments are
revealing. While the amount of poison leaching into groundwater from
the treated potliner was
definitely the greatest for fluoride, nevertheless the agency still saw the cyanide and the
arsenic in the waste as the greater
health hazard, remarked Peace. Once again industry's historic
investment in efforts to spin
fluoride's image as good for teeth, and to hide its impact as a pollutant and worker poison, had paid
a handsome dividend. "Nobody
ever jumped up and down" at the fluoride results, explained Peace.
"You need that for your
teeth." 8 The idea that
fluoride could be harmful to humans came as no surprise to Reynolds Metals. Nor was the company
a stranger to the notion that
fluoride s role in dental health could influence the thinking of
regulators and jurors. The
Reynolds legal team in Arkansas had spent impressive funds in preparation for the October 2000 trial. That fall
morning, however, as defense
attorney Pete Johnson strode to the bench to begin his cross-examination of toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix, he
pointed to the weapon he would use
to defend his client. It cost less than four dollars. On the evidence table in full view of Judge Grisham Phillips
and the Benton jury, lay a single
item — a thin red box of Colgate fluoride
toothpaste. Johnson
approached Mullenix and smiled. He held up the toothpaste tube like a trophy. "You wouldn't
brush your teeth ... with Col -gate
toothpaste, would you, or any toothpaste, for that matter, where they
put fluoride in it. Is that
right?" Johnson asked Mullenix. "That's right," the scientist said. Johnsons legal strategy was
familiar. Like the Reynolds lawyer
Frederic Yerke in the Martin trial, forty-five years earlier, Johnson
now used water fluoridation as a
legal defense, pouring scorn on the notion that a chemical added to public water supplies, on behalf of
children, could possibly have hurt
the Hurricane Creek workers. He raised a
polystyrene cup at Mullenix in a theatrical gesture, like a trophy,
and slowly sipped the water in
front of the jurors. You
wouldnt drink the water in this courtroom on a regular basis like the folks who work here? Johnson asked
the scientist. You wouldnt do
that, would you?
HURRICANE CREEK
209 If I
could afford to go out and buy the bottled water, I would do so, Mullenix answered. Hundreds of workers had breathed
fluoride dust at the Hurricane Creek
plant. The EPA had ordered Reynolds to clean up the site.' The
federal Occupational Safety and
Health Agency (OSHA) had fined a Hurricane Creek contractor for not providing safety equipment and
training. Workers alleged serious
injury: their bones ached, their lungs gasped for air, weeping sores erupted on flayed red
skin, and some employees vomited in
the morning before work.]" But Reynolds's attorney Johnson
continued to drill away at the
issue of water fluoridation. Mullenix was a loopy dissident, he inferred, out of step with the U.S.
Surgeon General, the Public Health
Service, and the Centers for Disease Control, all of whom, the jury
was reminded, had endorsed
fluoridation. It was a legal strategy, trusted and true, that Alcoa's Frank Seamans and his Fluorine Lawyers
had understood, a generation before
young Pete Johnson had contemplated going to law school.
"In fact," Johnson now said, with a whiff of condescension,
"you think that there ought
to be a warning sign at the water fountain here outside the courtroom about all the health effects
it can cause. Is that right?"
"If someone asked me for my advice, would I drink it, I would say no, Mullenix said. But I m not into
parading posters or putting labels
or warnings up anywhere, she added. But Johnson soldiered on. Did Mullenix believe, he
asked, that fluoridated water was
responsible for "thyroid, memory, suicide, depression, neurological [problems], ulcers, stomach
problems, eye problems . . . and
ear problems?" It wasnt
that simple, Mullenix responded. The scientist explained that most people now received fluoride
from multiple sources, not just
drinking water. Many foods also frequently contained high levels of fluoride, especially food that was
processed and irrigated with
fluoridated water. Many agricultural fertilizers contained
fluoride. Some popular
medications, such as Prozac, were made with fluoride. And workers at numerous industrial sites, such as Hurricane
Creek, continued to breathe
fluoride at potentially unsafe levels. You have to look at the total body burden, Mullenix
told the jury. 210 CHAPTER SIXTEEN "The drinking
water is a contributor to the total body burden. And then you have to look at the exposure totally
and how it adds up. The jury
listened as Johnson continued. Youre against putting fluoride in drinking water because of the
medical problems it can cause. ... Is that right? You are opposed to that? he asked. I really didnt have an opinion
about fluoride, Dr. Mullenix answered,
until I had done studies and investigations of it . . . but after doing
the studies and considering the
health impacts, I would not recommend it as a good practice." Then Bruce McMath, the workers' attorney for whom
Mullenix was an expert witness,
walked to the front of the court and handed Judge Grisham Phillips the medical study on the group
of beagles, which Reynolds had
commissioned at the Kettering Laboratory in 1962. He also gave the
judge letters between company
officials and the Kettering Laboratory's director, Dr. Robert Kehoe, discussing the research." McMath
explained that during the pretrial
phase known as discovery, he had asked Reynolds for any company documents about fluoride and
its health effects. The company
had not given him the Kettering fluoride study, the very study he was
now handing to the judge. As Judge
Phillips took the long-ago documents from
the workers attorney, Reynolds s past appeared to have caught up with
it. The documents linked Reynolds
to a medical cover-up, illustrating that
scientific information about fluorides harmful effects had been
suppressed for almost half a
century. It was as if
fireworks had erupted in the middle of the courtroom. Reynolds s lawyer, Pete Johnson, quickly intervened, walking
briskly to the front of the court,
huddling with the Judge and hissing at McMath in stage whispers. Reynolds objected to the Kettering study s
being admitted as evidence, he
said. Johnson was especially outraged at any suggestion that the big aluminum company had
" buried the documents or somehow
failed to produce documents that it had in its possession, he told
Judge Phillips. McMath fought back. Your Honor,
he insisted. Reynolds had
obviously suppressed the health study. "We asked them to produce
all their documents, McMath told
the Judge, including studies ... which pertained to or consisted of human and animal health effects upon
exposure to fluoride. And of
course, this document is not in
there. HURRICANE
CREEK 21 1
McMath wanted the jury to know that Reynolds had commissioned the study in the wake of a fluoride
-pollution lawsuit, hidden the results, and then, forty years later, failed to turn the research over to
the injured Hurricane Creek
workers. They had hidden it twice, McMath said. To the great distress of McMath and his workers,
Judge Phillips banned that
argument. Mullenix could discuss the contents of the Kettering study,
the Judge ruled, but McMath could
not tell the jury about the long-ago Martin lawsuit, or that Reynolds had attempted to keep the study
secret.' It was a bitter pill for
the plaintiffs' attorney. "I thought that they deserved to face that in the court, before the jury,
McMath protested. A moment
of truth in the Arkansas trial did come, however, when attorney Johnson questioned Phyllis
Mullenix about Scotty Peebles s
breathing problems. The waste Peebles had handled at the Hurricane Creek
site had contained calcium
fluoride, the same chemical that had injured the long-ago Kettering beagle dogs. Peebles said that the
foul-smelling dust had filled the
cab of his front-end loader, grabbing at his lungs, burning his skin, and inflicting painful headaches.
It was getting in your hair. You
would literally breathe this stuff in, he added. A doctor diagnosed the
twenty-eight-year-old with emphysema.
Peebles s lung capacity was almost halved, tests showed. Many other Hurricane Creek workers also showed
decreased lung capacity.
Mullenix explained how the fluoride dust used in the Kettering experiment had caused lung damage in
dogs. Would the same dust hurt
workers such as Scotty Peebles at the Hurricane Creek work site,
the workers lawyer McMath
asked? "Yes,"
replied Mullenix. Later that
day Reynolds's attorney Johnson attempted to shoot down this diagnosis during his
cross-examination of Mullenix.
"Are you saying that Mr. Peebles's emphysema was caused by fluoride . . . from Hurricane Creek?
Johnson asked. Certainly,
said Mullenix. But Johnson
oozed confidence. He had researched the published medical literature thoroughly. In all those articles you
showed us and all these references
you gave us, he continued, do you have any reference that says that fluoride causes or contributes to emphysema? 212 CHAPTER SIXTEEN Johnson turned, grandly, to the jury. It
is getting late he reminded them.
He swiveled back to Mullenix. Do you have an article in all of the
stuff you have brought and
collected that says, We did a study and we found that fluoride causes the disease emphysema? he asked. Mullenix played her trump card.
In the Kettering study that we
presented earlier, in the pathology reports, the microscopic examination, they use [the term] emphysema lesions,
she said. They use the word
"emphysema,' yes."
Johnson adjusted his glasses. He seemed startled. "You're saying in
the Kettering study in the
dogs?" His voice trailed off. "In the dogs," Mullenix repeated. "In the dogs." Johnson
looked at his notes. "That's
correct," said Mullenix.
Judge and jury looked on. The Reynolds lawyer sounded almost incredulous. Animal experiments had
connected workers lung injuries
with fluoride? He looked at the bench where his legal support team
sat. They stared back. "They found emphysema, this
disease emphysema was caused by
fluoride?" Johnson repeated. The pathologists report, in looking at the tissues,
said there were emphysematous
changes, and that's what was reported," said Mullenix. "Okay. All right," the
Reynolds lawyer finally conceded.
Although Judge Phillips prevented attorney Bruce McMath from
telling the Arkansas jury about
the long-ago Martin trial — and why the Kettering fluoride research had been commissioned by Reynolds —
several former Hurricane Creek
workers sitting in the courtroom that Friday afternoon understood what had just taken place. "I didn't find out 'til
yesterday that Reynolds had known anything about [fluoride's inhalation effects]," said Jerry Jones, who
had begun working at Hurricane
Creek in 1988. "Reynolds had conducted a research test about fluoride in 1962. We should have been
told," he said. "I
am angry," said Alan Williams, the former Hurricane Creek shift supervisor. Reynolds knew in 1962 what
fluoride can do to you. They cant
say they didnt, because they had their own study. HURRICANE CREEK 213 Reynolds had a very
good idea about fluoride in 1962 based on the testimony I heard here today, said Tommy Ward, a rangy
ex-worker who had been in court
for most of the trial, watching the jury and listening to the medical experts. Ward had suffered a
violent stroke in 1996. He blamed his
health problems on his years at Hurricane Creek breathing fluoride potliner. Mullenix did a superb job, he said. The
jury got enough of that, I could
tell. I think the plaintiffs hit a home run today." Any optimism, however, vanished
just four days later. In a decision that
left many of the former workers incredulous and angry, Bruce McMath suddenly abandoned the lawsuit against
Reynolds. On the Wednesday
afternoon of October 25, 2000, Jerry Jones and Alan Wil liams went to court as usual. Nobody was around,
Jones said. The trial had
been scheduled to end that Friday. Several former workers were hopeful about the outcome. (McMath had seemed
con- fident too, and had even
turned down a modest offer from Reynolds to settle the case.) The jurors often passed through a
landscaped area outside the
courthouse, where smokers and visitors congregated and chatted. Diana Peebles had overheard a
juror, she said. We just have to
do something, the juror said, according to Peebles. They were
saying it was just a question of
how much they give us, Peebles explained she had overheard.
However, that Wednesday morning, Bruce McMath had told Judge Phillips that he wanted to abandon the
trial, in a legal procedure in
Arkansas state courts known as non-suiting. McMath believed the
jury had turned against him. He
feared that the court would rule that the
workers had not been injured at the site. It was better, he thought,
to withdraw the lawsuit and
perhaps allow another legal team to remount it at a later date. We were going to lose the whole
case," he insisted. McMath
blamed Judge Phil-lips for not allowing him to tell the jury that Reynolds Metals had suppressed the
Kettering study. And he pointed
the finger at state and federal agencies that had let Reynolds bury hundreds of tons of toxic fluoride
waste at the Hurricane Creeks
site. Reynolds had deceived those agencies, McMath said, by exaggerating how much fluoride its
treatment process would remove.
But the agencies had backed down, denying that they had been
misled, effectively torpedoing his
case. 214 CHAPTER SIXTEEN The EPA basically
said in as many words that they did not think they had been deceived or they had acted inappropriately, McMath
explained. Of course they had. To
a lawyer or to a sophisticated audience you could see what they had done, but they whitewashed it, and that
really took the wind out of our
sails in terms of the possibility of punitive damages or indignation with the jury. It became pretty
evident to us that we were not
going to be successful.
But the Hurricane Creek workers were angry and baffled at the
trial's outcome. It seemed
bizarre. How could their lawyer first turn down a settlement from Reynolds and then abandon the entire
lawsuit? Bruce McMath must have
lost a fortune by aborting the Ben-ton lawsuit, said a Little Rock trial attorney, James
Swindoll. "You are giving up two hundred grand the minute you do that," he said. " You
can't get it back, unless you
pursue it a second time." 13 "We weren't very impressed," said the
soft-spoken Diana Peebles. It just
seems very strange to us that this would occur. Several other former workers felt that they had been
deceived twice, first by Reynolds Metals
and now by their lawyers. After the trial McMath had told Jerry Jones
that he was going to reload for a
second shot at Reynolds and bring a fresh
lawsuit against the aluminum company, Jones said. Instead, eleven
days later, on November 5, 2000,
McMath and his partner, Steve Napper,
gathered the workers together for an announcement. Jerry Jones remembers that day.
He had not seen many of his former
workmates in years. He was shocked at how their health had
deteriorated. Some had developed
crooked joints and "big knobs on their knees and fingers," said Jones. Skin sores were visible on many.
Others could not lift their arms
above their heads. "It was just ugly," said Jones. "It just blew
my mind how it is slowly affecting
them. You know there is something wrong
when they all have the same thing," he added. The men listened as their lawyers
addressed them for the final time.
"Boys, we got some bad news," Jerry Jones remembers Steve
Napper saying. After three years
of representing them, McMath and Napper
explained to the gathered men that they were dropping their case. It was
too difficult to prove the
Hurricane Creek workers had been permanently hurt by their chemical exposures, the lawyers explained.
"Find someone else,"
McMath and Napper HURRICANE CREEK 215 told the stunned
workers, then shook a few hands and sidled out according to the shell-shocked Jerry Jones. The
whole meeting didn't last five
minutes," he recalled.
But Bruce McMath is unapologetic for dropping the Hurricane Creek suit. There was little hard data on how
much fluoride the men and women
had been exposed to, he said. And proving that the chemical had caused
so many different injuries,
especially in the small sample of workers
represented in the Benton case was difficult, he added. Many of the workers also smoked cigarettes. One
abused cocaine. "It creates credibility problems," said McMath. "We were looking at a case
with thin causation and amorphous
damages, so it becomes an impossible proposition." The fate of the Benton trial was
a consequence, perhaps, of fluoride's
basic nature. Although fluoride's effects on human health potentially
rival or even exceed the injuries
caused by any other workplace poison,
paradoxically, because fluoride has the potential to cause so many kinds
of health problems, it is actually
harder to fix blame on the chemical. Unlike other chemicals with easy-to-see and unique
"signature" effects — such as
the mesothelioma cancer caused by asbestos — fluoride is a systemic poison, inflicting differ ent injuries
in different people and at different
times. Duking it out
with Reynolds Metals also gave Bruce McMath a first-hand look at how water fluoridation has aided industry
in the courtroom. Hurricane Creek
had been his first fluoride case. Proving
fluoride injury to a jury was hard enough; but the federal
government's long-ago endorsement
of the safety of adding fluoride to public water supplies had placed the entire public-health establishment
in fluoride's corner, he said. By
waving a toothpaste tube at the Benton jury, Reynolds s Hurricane Creek attorney was taking
advantage of that," McMath pointed
out. " Industry has manipulated this public debate to put a smiling
face on what is otherwise a toxin,
and thereby reduce their cost of doing business in those businesses where fluoride is a waste product," he
added. Dumping waste fluoride in
reservoirs may help industry, but from a pure public health perspective, McMath said, This whole thing about
putting it in the water is just
silly. After the aborted
lawsuit, Jerry Jones and Alan Williams hunted for a new attorney. They met with James Swindoll, who called 216 CHAPTER SIXTEEN McMath s office and
received an explanation that McMath had no intention of refiling the workers case. He remembers the Hurricane
Creek workers who visited his
office as some of the most well-informed clients that I ever interviewed. Swindoll declined to
represent them, however, and they
never found a lawyer willing to refile their claim. "It just looked
like a nightmare of a case,"
he said. "It was going to bankrupt a plaintiffs lawyer."
But because fluoride poisoning isn't easy to prove in a court of
law, does it mean that doctors or regulators
should abandon the issue? Phyllis
Mullenix, for example, continues to take new cases of alleged
fluoride poisoning in workers,
representing plaintiffs around the country. She is convinced that an epidemic of disease and injury has slipped
beneath the radar screen of modern
health professionals. It is a sometimes -lonely battle, but the Plains daughter of Olive and
Shockey Mullenix cannot walk away
from the issue. She remains especially haunted by the anguished
phone calls in the middle of the
night from crippled former aluminum and
chemical workers. They are often suffering obvious central-nervous-system problems, she
notes, but they have been cast adrift
by today s medical profession. I get some of the most pathetic
individuals calling up, Mul-lenix
says. "They can't get a doctor to listen. The doctors don't know anything about fluoride and
think the workers are nuts." The Damage Is Done 
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