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
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tmhmif, 7, !t. T. k >9
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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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