15. BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS: the fluoride deception by Christopher Bryson from archive.org
15. BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS: the fluoride deception by Christopher Bryson from archive.org
BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 185 By February the Kettering Laboratory director had drawn up a game plan, focusing on the Achilles heel that had tripped up Reynolds Metals in the Martin trial. The Public Health Service was providing medical information about the health effects of swallowing fluoride, via its water-fluoridation safety studies. But the Martin trial had hinged on the accusation that air pollution had hurt the family, and Kehoe saw a clear need for fresh human experiments.' There seems to be no documentary information on the mat-ter of human safety in relation to such exposure, Kehoe told the TVA's Dr. Derryberry. "In any case, we are about ready to initiate the experiments on animals, and while
these are in progress, we can design and construct the facilities for the investigation of human subjects," he added. Kehoe pointed to another goal: creating an unassailable medical orthodoxy that would block scientists from serving as effective expert witnesses in future court cases. His laboratory s earlier efforts to control scientific information about fluoride had almost borne fruit in the Martin trial, he remarked, but the surprise appearance of the Englishman, Dr. Donald Hunter, had upset the apple cart. Opposing counsel overcame this obstacle by the importation of an expert who, with some charity, may be judged to have been susceptible to the thrill of participating in a grandstand play or, perhaps, of aiding an aggrieved family, wrote Kehoe.' https://www.blogger.com/null The only solution was a fresh batch of medical experimentation and scientific data, so overwhelmingly persuasive, both in itself and its dissemination, as to render futile any efforts to combat it." The new Kettering research would pile negative evidence upon negative evidence, said Kehoe. This would result in such difficulty in finding a competent and credible expert witness as to thwart the attempts of counsel to make a case for a potential plaintiff, he added.' The Kettering foot soldiers were given their marching orders at a planning session in the fall of 1956. They were under no illusions about their mandate. The sponsor group is concerned with the litigation questions that may arise in the future as demonstrated by those that have occurred in the past, noted the scientists who attended the meeting, according to the recorded minutes. Its purpose is not altruistic, they added. The threat of litigation would be their North Star, guiding research and experiments. 186 CHAPTER FIFTEEN "The sponsors are interested not only in what happens to persons in the plant but also in whether they will be sued or not. They are interested particularly in finding out if the absence of deleterious effects of the absorption of the fluoride ion can be demonstrated, the minutes record. Specifically, what industry needed to learn — sixteen years into the fluoridation of water supplies — was the physiological effects on the various organ systems of the continued absorption of fluorides. The scientists noted that something is known about mottled enamel and skeletal changes but [there is] no information concerning effects on other organ systems.'" The Martin ruling had exposed the tip of a very dangerous iceberg, Kehoe told an invited audience of government dental researchers and industry lawyers, who had gathered in the Ballroom of the Cincinnati Club for a Fluoride Symposium in Cincinnati in December 1957. 9 The primary threat facing industry, Kehoe explained in his opening remarks, was that workers could use the Martin verdict to buttress lawsuits claiming injury from exposure to airborne fluoride inside factories. The problem, he went on, was that the court verdict had set the stage for the greater threat of claims for illness among employees in the industries in which exposure to fluoride is greater than that of any group of persons outside of industry." 70 In the ballroom sat Harold Hodge from the University of Rochester and Alcoa s Frank Seamans, head of the Fluorine Lawyers Committee. No two people were in a better position to know the risk from airborne fluoride pollution. Twenty-five thousand people worked in aluminum smelting plants in the United States, and tens of thousands toiled in the giant gaseous diffusion plants at Oak Ridge, Paducah, and Portsmouth." The presentations were biased in favor of industry. Frank Sea-mans gave a presentation titled The Medical Aspects of Fluoride Litigation. While the Director of the National Institute of Dental Research, Francis Arnold, discussed the Present Status of Dental Research in the Study of Fluorides, there were no criticisms of water fluoridation; nor were experts such as Dr. Capps from Chicago or Dr. Hunter from England (both of whom had testified in the Martin trial on the human health consequences of industrial fluoride air pollution) in attendance.' BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 187 The papers were further culled when it came to their publication. Readers of the American Medical Associations journal Archives of Industrial Health (edited by Kehoes Harvard friend, Philip Drinker), never learned of the symposium remarks on fluoride litigation by Kehoe and Seamans. Nor did they read the paper by D. A. Greenwood from Utah State University, spelling out the stupendous scale of the fluoride lawsuits facing U.S. Steel in Utah." The Symposium was just one front in industry s campaign to shape a scientific consensus about fluoride. Another was opened that summer of 1957, when industry committed $179,175 to a new fluoride research program at the Kettering Laboratory. It was a down payment on a three-year investigative program that would eventually cost almost half a million dollars. Air pollution would be the major focus of the research. The centerpiece would be an experimental chamber from which forty-two beagle dogs would inhale fine particles of calcium fluoride dust, for six hours a day, five days a week. Alcoa s lawyer, Frank Seamans, handled the money for the new experiment, acting as intermediary between Kehoe, the Fluorine Lawyers, and the Medical Advisory Committee. On April 16, 1957, Seamans sent a letter to the Fluorine Lawyers, titled Re: Kettering Research re Human Beings." He laid out how much each corporation would contribute. Checks would be sent on a quarterly basis directly from the companies to the Kettering Laboratory. U.S. Steel, Alcoa, Kaiser Aluminum, Reynolds Metals, and Alcan paid the lions share, each putting up $30,535 for the first year; Olin Revere Metals, Monsanto Chemical, West Vaco Chemi cal, TV A, and Tennessee Corporation made smaller commitments. Seamans enclosed a variety of documents. They illustrate the key role the Fluorine Lawyers had in shaping Ketterin gs medical research, and the importance industry attached to the efforts of the National Institute of Dental Research and other parties on behalf of public water fluoridation. Enclosures were listed by Seamans as follows: • Letter from Dr. Irwin under date of March 13, 1957, enclosing a letter from Dr. Leone of the National Institute of Dental Research dated March 5, 1957. 188 CHAPTER FIFTEEN • A publication entitled Our Children s Teeth. This is the best collection of material dealing with the association between fluorides and human beings that I have seen. ■ Lastly, a letter which I am sending to the Medical Advisory Committee, in which an attempt is made to more specifically advise just what the lawyers group wishes them to do. I am sorry that it has taken so long to develop matters to this point. However, I am glad to say that all parties are now in complete agreement and that the work can now go forward. Very truly yours, Frank Seamans." The crucial inhalation experiments, in which researchers were to simulate ... occupational exposure to particulate fluoride, began on October 6, 1958. The forty-two beagles were divided equally into three groups: a control group that received no fluoride; a second group that inhaled a small dose, 3.5 mgs of calcium fluoride per cubic meter of air; and a group that received 35.5 mgs of calcium fluoride per cubic meter. Kehoe had assembled an expert team of scientists to supervise the dog experiment, according to Eula Bingham, who became head of the Kettering Laboratory in the 19705 and later served as President Jimmy Carters head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). They included Robert K. Davis, Klaus L. Stemmer, William P. Jolley, and Edwin E. Larson. Robert Davis was always the boss," said Bingham. "I really didn't have much contact with him, but he always seemed to be pretty substantial, she added. A pathologist, Klaus Stemmer, "was very well trained in what I would call the old European school of pathology. [He] came over from Germany after the war," said Bingham. "Larson was a very fine person when it came to exposure assessment, and he knew how to put a chamber together so that you could put a dose of whatever the contaminant was in there by inhalation. It was a very substantial training [Larson had], I tell you." The results of the Kettering beagle experiment were startling — and not at all what the scientists had predicted. It was anticipated BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 189 that there would be little or no injury to the lungs of experimental animals, the report noted, and that the demonstration of the innocuous effects of the respiratory exposure . . . would pave the way for similar experiments with human subjects. But there could be no human experiments now: the fluoride injured the dogs. Autopsy revealed wounds to their lungs and lymph nodes. The damage had occurred in both groups of animals that were exposed to fluoride, with inflamed lesions on the lung surface and a fibrosis, or a thickening of the lungs, that was so marked in some cases that the researchers called it emphysema" Unexpected, the researchers said, "was the injurious effect exerted by calcium fluoride in the lungs and lymph nodes of the dogs. 16 The corporate sponsors were quickly informed. It seems likely that we have produced a dust lung using calcium fluoride as the particulate, Kettering s scientist Albert A. Brust wrote Alcoa s Dudley Irwin in a letter dated February 10, 1960. The fluoride had wreaked havoc with biological tissue, the report explained, when the fluoride ion had attacked the lungs surface. The calcium fluoride had disassociated inside the lung, transforming the dust into a corrosive acid deep inside the body, the report stated. Some degree of solvent action was exerted locally, and the fluoride ion in the resultant solution reacted with the tissue, the report added. The results also showed that fluoride traveled quickly from the lung into the blood stream. "These data appear to confirm beyond all question the efficacy of pulmonary absorption of fluoride, Brust told Irwin." Frighteningly, long after the dogs had been removed from the inhalation chamber, dust particles remained lodged in their lungs. These particles continued to wreak havoc on the body, dissolving and freeing fluoride ions to mount fresh assaults on the pulmonary tissue, the report recorded. The results obtained in this experiment are of more than casual interest, especially to investigators in the fields of pulmonary physiology and pathology," the Ketter-ing report noted. The health effects of airborne fluoride should be studied in workers, the results suggested. They point to the desirability of conducting systematic investigations of the pulmonary function of representative groups of industrial employees who are being 190 CHAPTER FIFTEEN subjected to various types and intensities of exposure to particu-late, inorganic fluorides, the authors wrote. The Fluorine Lawyers understood the frightening legal and health implications of the study. The Kettering data pointed an arrow directly at the heart of key modern industrial enterprises, where the extraordinary incidence of emphysema in workers potentially dwarfed even the silicosis crisis of the 19305. 18 The steel, aluminum, phosphate, gasoline refining, uranium enriching, fluorocarbon, and plastics industries, to name a few, were especially at risk. The general counsel for the TVA, Charles McCarthy, wrote to Kehoe on July 9,1962, shortly after he received his copy of the report. Its findings were clear, he agreed: workers might be at risk. "The pulmonary findings suggest the need for further investigation of the pulmonary function of exposed workers," noted McCarthy. 19 Industry's top lawyers received copies of the Kettering dog study — but nobody told America's workers, or their doctors. Instead, the research was buried. Although industry had spent almost half a million dollars on fluoride research at the Kettering Laboratory following the 1955 Martin verdict, the fate of the fluoride-breathing beagles was never made public. The study lay hidden for almost forty years, until, in the course of researching the topic, I found a copy in a basement archive of the old Kettering Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati. I sent it to the toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix and to an air-pollution expert at the University of California at Irvine, Dr. Robert Phalen. 20 Both suggested that the nonpublication of the study had hurt American workers and misshaped the modern debate over air pollution. Dr. Phalen had written a 1984 book on inhalation experiments and is also a graduate of the University of Rochester. He took his job studying air pollution in Southern California on the recommendation of none other than Harold Hodge. After reading the study, Phalen remarked that he was impressed at the quality of the forty-year-old research. "It was a very good study," Phalen said. "It was state of the art. I am amazed at how good a job they did. The scientists conclusions were blunt. It is likely that American workers have inhaled too much fluoride in the workplace for several decades, Phalen told BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 191 me. This study is sufficiently strong to cause a reconsideration of the industrial standard, he said. Thats a staggering statement. Many hundreds of thousands of women and men have breathed fluoride in their workplaces since the Kettering study was conducted. Had the threshold for unsafe exposure been set too loosely because the dog research was not published? Occupational standards for workplace exposure to chemicals in the United States are guided by an influential private group known as the American Conference of Government and Industry Hygienists (ACGIH). The group s scientists set what is known as a Threshold Limit Value (TLV) for different chemicals, which is then used by regulatory agencies in setting legal exposure standards, Phalen explained.' The people who set standards in industry, said Phalen, review everything they can get their hands on, and then they say, What shall we recommend for dusty air in industry for fluoride?' for example. Phalen is baffled at how ACGIH could have left the nation's industrial fluoride standard unchanged since 1946 — if it had seen the Kettering beagle study. As I look at the level that is set today, 2.5 milligrams per cubic meter, it sure looks to me like if [ ACGIH] had access to this April 13, 1962 study, they would have recommended a lower level. Phalen was especially startled to learn that today federal regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), cannot locate any published animal stud ies on fluoride dust inhalation to cite for the current occupational standard. 22 "I tend to not be a conspiracy-type person," Phalen said, "I was surprised when they said there had been no studies. Why this study wasnt published, I dont know. Did the standard-setters have access to the Kettering data? I contacted Dr. Lisa Brosseau at the University of Minnesota; she heads ACGIH's standard-setting committee. The beagle study had not been listed as one of the documents ACGIH scientists had consulted in setting the current fluoride TLV. 23 And Dr. Brosseau did not know if past ACGIH review committees had seen the Ketter-ing study. However, she explained, if the 1962 research is not listed on ACGIH s current TLV report for fluoride, then it had not been used in its most recent review. We will only list those things that X92 CHAPTER FIFTEEN we did use, Brosseau said. 21 "It is very possible that we didnt see it," she added. According to the toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix, the fact that the Kettering data were never published, or made available, is a crime against American workers — with profound health consequences for the rest of the nation. The buried data points at a clear cause-and-effect relationship between an industrial pollutant and an injury widely seen in factories and the general population, according to the scientist. That study is key, said Mullenix, because it directly links fluoride with emphysema. And that is mind-boggling in terms of public health, because no one has ever made that connection. Suppressing the 1962 study was a gross dereliction of scientific responsibility, says Mullenix, a medical cover-up that has lulled doctors and federal regulators to sleep for forty years. I regard it as absolutely being hidden, she said. It was a good study; the results were clear. The memos that went along with it certainly stated that it should be followed up." Thousands of men and women are stalked by fluoride in the modern workplace yet blinkered to its toxic potential, according to Mullenix. In 1998 she met former aluminum workers from Washington State whose health had been ruined by fluoride. These men are between thirty and fifty years old and have replaced knees and shoulders; they have leukemias, thyroid problems, and soft tissue diseases. I've never seen such a bunch of young pathetic people with such health problems. I just dont see the outrage. They are just putting them out as old men, and bringing in younger men, over and over again," she said. "Fluoride has impacted the work span of many of our workers, and this is in aluminum factories, petroleum companies, brick, tanneries, steel, glass, plastics, and fluorinated plastics manufacturers. I think that it has had a big impact on our industries that we are not recognizing.' Eating Country Ham PERHAPS THE FLUORIDE workers most badly treated have been the women and men who won the battle of the cold war, who did our dirty work, laboring in the satanic mills that were Americas nuclear bomb factories. Since 1949, an estimated 600,000 worked in BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 193 government atomic plants, with tens of thousands more employed by private industrial corporations who built the bomb during the early years of the Manhattan Project. But while the U.S. spent an estimated $5.5 trillion to build nuclear weapons, we hid the health risks of working in those factories, denied workers additional hazardous pay, and then fought those very same men and women in court if they became injured or ill and filed for compensation. 26 The government told these workers that they had no illnesses, noted Clinton-era Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. "These were heroes and heroines of the Cold War that built our weapons . . . and we turned our backs on them. Paducah Joe Harding was one of those workers, toiling in the Kentucky fluoride gaseous-diffusion plant from 1952 until 1971 — when he was fired, without insurance, disability, or benefits.' A voice in the wilderness, Harding fought to tell the world that the United States' nuclear-bomb plants were poisoning their workers. In 1950 one of the federal plutonium injectors, Dr. Joseph Hamilton, had worried that proposals to use U.S. prisoners in more human radiation experiments had a little of the Buchenwald touch. Joe Harding had a similar thought. In a letter written shortly before his death in 1980, and entered into the Congressional Record twenty years later, Harding wrote to the Department of Energy about the nations nuclear weapons program: It seems that Union Carbide Nuclear Co., all other Corporations that are involved, AEC, Department of Energy, Federal Security, FBI, Justice Department, etc, can do as they please, trample on the public and not be touched, Harding noted. He concluded, The Germans had a name for this kind of setup. They called it Nazism.' Harding died of cancer the same morning a Swedish TV crew arrived for an interview. At the end weeping sores marched across Joe Harding s body. He struggled to breathe. His stomach and two feet of his intestines had been removed. Bony outgrowths — classic symptoms of extreme fluoride poisoning — sprouted painfully from Harding s palms and joints. The Department of Energy lawyers fought Joe Harding until the end, at one point blaming his sickness on a combination of smoking cigarettes and eating country ham. 30 After Harding died, the government battled his widow, Clara, in court.' 1 94 CHAPTER FIFTEEN Pressured by union groups and shamed by an ocean of tears, Congress finally enacted legislation in October 2000 that set up a mechanism for compensation of up to $150,000 per injured atomic worker." But the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act largely sidestepped the issue of fluoride poisoning. Although a federal study of former bomb-program workers health found that respiratory diseases and mental disorders were widespread in the Oak Ridge K-25 gaseous-diffusion plant, there was no mention of a medical link to fluoride, at least for the purposes of worker compensation." (Remember, the buried Kettering dog study had specifically linked fluoride to such serious lung problems, while Kaj Roholm and Harold Hodge had each suspected fluorides role in central-nervous-system disorders, a link confirmed in animals by the laboratory studies of Dr. Phyllis Mullenix at the Forsyth Dental Center in the early 1990s. n I am not aware of any [nuclear worker] cases that have successfully been compensated for fluoride exposures, said Dr. Ekaterina Mallevskia, a scientist at the Department of Energy-funded Worker Health Protection Program at Queens College in New York, which helps to diagnose the illness of former atomic workers. We did not pay any particular attention to fluoride; we are concentrating on asbestos, radiation, uranium, plutonium. Fluoride was good for workers, the scientist even suggested, unconsciously mouthing a role written for her a generation earlier by Harold Hodge, Robert Kehoe, and Edward Bernays. It is more like an insufficient supply than an overexposure. Thats why it was initially added to toothpaste, Mallevskia explained." "No one has ever asked that question" ITS NOT JUST workers who are getting hurt by a chemical they never suspected. The Kettering study on beagle dogs is very likely a smoking gun, linking fluoride to the extraordinary toll taken by air pollution in the general population, according to Phyllis Mul-lenix. Air pollution causes the early deaths of an estimated sixty thousand people in the United States each year — thats 4 percent of all U.S. deaths, and a hundred times the total number of deaths caused by all the other pollutants the EPA regulates." Thirty thousand of these deaths from air pollution are attributed to emissions BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 95 from electric power plants, which contain fluoride. Countless thou- sands of additional Americans suffer from other illnesses linked to air pollution, including heart attacks, lung cancer, and breathing disorders such as bronchitis and asthma. 37 Air pollution especially hurts children and inner city residents.' Mullenix once worked as an air-pollution consultant for industry. For eleven years during the 1970s and 1980s she helped the American Petroleum Institute (API) — the oil companies lobbying group — battle new federal air pollution standards. She had advised corporations such as Monsanto, Amoco, 3-M, Boise Cascade and Mobil Oil, jetting around the country, staying in fabulous hotels, all expenses paid. It was mind-boggling the amount of money that went into it," says Mullenix. Her specialty was ozone. In the late 1970s the EPA used the Clean Air Act to order a reduction in ozone levels. Industry s lawyers fought back, opposing the new standards and arguing that EPA had the facts wrong. On industry s behalf Mullenix attacked EPAs scientific justification for the proposed ozone policy changes, the so-called criteria document. It was a shoddy piece of scientific material, she recalls. Every time EPA came out with another criteria document, I would look for the errors and compare it back to the [scientific] literature. That is what I did for over ten years. Mullenix used her training as a toxicologist to fight what she saw as the EPA s inadequate scientific basis for its attack on ozone pollution. The efforts to regulate ozone had a fundamental scientific weakness, Mullenix remarked. Laboratory experiments with pure ozone were unable to replicate the many serious injuries and health effects associated with air pollution, she stated. Study after study, year after year, it was extremely difficult to link ozone with asthma, ozone with emphysema. It just didnt match. That is one of the reasons that I could work for industry. During her years working for industry, fluoride was never discussed, she told me. "At the time, I didn't know anything about fluoride," she added. "Never, ever was fluoride mentioned as a cause of respiratory distress. Had the nonpublication of the 1962 Kettering study thrown a generation of scientists off the scent of a key villain, responsible, at least in part, for air pollution s terrible health toll? 196 CHAPTER FIFTEEN "This study, the dog study, I think might have at least triggered some investigators to look at fluorine-containing compounds as a suspect, said Robert Phalen, of the University of California. Instead, most experts today habitually ignore fluoride s role in air pollution. Whether something like fluoride contributes more than its share, because of an additional irritancy? I would say no one has ever asked that question," he added. It is a startling oversight, because there is a much greater quantity of fluoride in our air than we once knew. In 1998 the Clinton administration forced several key industries to report the volumes of toxic chemicals they were spilling into the environment. Previously the EPA had allowed industrial sectors, such as the electric utilities and the mining and chemical wholesalers, to avoid reporting that data. The updated information was shocking. Overnight the amount of reported toxic pollution in the United States soared by 300 percent. Estimate of Toxic Chemicals Is Tripled, headlined the New York Times. 39 Even more dramatic was the increase in the amount of hydrogen fluoride gas that industry now admitted was being spilled into the nations air. Before the new requirements industry reported that 15 million pounds of HF pollution escaped into the air each year. When the additional industries were added, however, that figure rocketed to almost 78 million pounds, an increase of over 500 percent. 40 Of the almost 63 million pounds of additional HF, 53 million pounds (or 84 percent) came from electric power companies, and most of that came from the burning of coal. The EPA is studying how the fine particles in air pollution can cause human injury. Does this hydrogen fluoride gas bind with those tiny carbon particles in the atmosphere, contributing to the health damage seen from such particles? What are the synergistic health effects on humans of fluoride and sulfur compounds? ( Fluoride dramatically increases the toxicity of sulfur compounds on vegetation and animals, according to recent studies in Russia and work performed by the Atomic Energy Commission.)" "You have a good point," said scientist Maria Constantini from the Health Effects Institute (HRI), a shared project of EPA and industry to fund air pollution research. HRI has never funded a fluoride study, she said. Why is it not being measured? People BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 197 just sometimes look for what they think is there and not for new things. HF [hydrogen fluoride] should be looked at, she added. It could be coating some of the particles and ... it could be more likely to go down into the deep lung because the particle is carried down in the lung. If it has properties that are toxic properties, depending on the dose, obviously it could be of concern. The befuddlement of todays air pollution experts is staggering, given the toll of destruction that fluoride has wrought throughout the twentieth century. 42 Fluoride has been the nation s most damaging air pollutant, and almost certainly its most expensive. From 1957 to 1968, fluoride was responsible for more damage claims than all twenty other major air pollutants combined, according to former U.S. National Academy of Sciences fluoride expert Edward Groth. 4, The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in 1970 that " airborne fluorides have caused more worldwide damage to domestic animals that any other pollutant." 44 And in 1982, L. H. Wein-stein of Cornell University s Boyce Thompson Institute reported, There has been more litigation on alleged damage to agriculture by fluoride than all other pollutants combined ... of the major airborne pollutants, inorganic fluoride [is] clearly the most toxic, he added. Weinstein noted fluoride s extreme toxicity to vegetation. While ozone or sulfur dioxide hurt plants at a threshold level of 0.05 parts per million, hydrogen fluoride gas produced lesions on some plant leaves at concentrations of one part per billion, according to Wein-stein 46 (That suggests fluoride can be up to 50 times more toxic than sulfur dioxide or ozone.) Despite this manifest chemical danger and extraordinary legal expense — or perhaps because of it — federal regulators have long turned their backs on fluoride air pollution. In 1957, the same year Judge Denman issued his devastating legal ruling of human harm in the Martin case, Washington abruptly terminated monitoring of fluoride levels in the nation s air. 47 That decision came none too soon. Industry's hunger for fluoride grew more voracious in the years following the Martin trial. Hydrogen fluoride use alone more than tripled from 1957 through 1974, from 123 thousand tons to 375 thousand tons. 48 By the end of 198 CHAPTER FIFTEEN the 196os industry was discharging 150 thousand metric tons of fluoride pollution directly into the nations air. 40 There is little doubt that the federal decision to end air monitoring helped industry. The feared tsunami wave of fluoride litigation from workers and communities did not break, as industry worried it might, following the Martin verdict. 50 And despite several expensive lawsuits during the 196os, according to Keith Taylor, an attorney who represented industry in alleged fluoride pollution cases, "We were all comfortable. There were no crises. 61 Federal aid for fluoride polluters continued. In the early 1970s the EPA elected not to include the chemical on a bad-boy list of so-called criteria air pollutants that are hazardous to human health. Chemicals such as sulfur dioxide, although more voluminous, yet which are only a fraction as toxic as the hydrogen fluoride gas in air pollution, were included on the list. Instead, fluoride was categorized in the new Clean Air Act as a welfare pollutant, blamed primarily for economic damage, such as injuring crops, rather than human health effects — a chemical favoritism that allowed individual states a permissive flexibility to set emission standards for them- selves, instead of adhering to one federal policy. 62 This ruling was based largely on a 1971 National Academy of Sciences report that concluded fluorides presented no direct hazard to human health. According to the logic of the National Academy, cattle were felled, glass was etched, and crops were decimated by a chemical that in similar doses failed to injure people. It was all a grisly farce, of course, a cruel dictate that flew, quite literally, in the face of the sick Americans who lived near fluoride-spewing industrial plants, and of the lessons learned from the Martin trial. Closer to the truth was the observation of top EPA air pollution expert D. F. Walters: fluoride was so toxic a chemical that some form of environmental damage was inevitable, and industries therefore needed the freedom to pollute. Mandating "standards stringent enough to insure complete protection against any welfare effects may require closure of major sources of fluoride emissions." 53 The Kettering Laboratory's long-ago suppression of the dog study helped to perpetuate a cover-up of fluoride s potential for harm as an air pollutant, says Phyllis Mullenix. You have a study back in 1962 that says fluoride caused emphysema and there are no studies The Mellon Institute for Industrial Research in Pittsburgh, founded by leading Alcoa stockholder Andrew W. Mellon, which assisted industry in fighting lawsuits alleging air pollution. CARNEGIE LIBRARY OF PITTSBURGH MELLON INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH PITTSRU&GM PA GERALD J COX Gerald |. Cox. a researcher at the Mellon Institute who had worked on a fellowship from Alcoa and who, in 1939. made the first suggestion that fluoride be added to public water supplies, mellon institute collection, COURTESY OF THE CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES P. 0. Bn M7. Mtt«l«i station tmhmif, 7, !t. T. k >9 *rU ly44 ■akJaaAi kHM fa# AUatl ^aaaxlaaatatlca to m*m1m Cwtlll fcniM Srataa Effaota. Oal. IWfart u «*xna, 3. 3. -ocIami offlaa, ca* tU«a. T«— Tha ArM aaglnaar, M aalao n «uui Ana* M.T. ) la aa — bltaa oX • projoaad • HUM u tliaaa a/atac arraota MM ;tl6 a; ba ra a aa axataa arr«ct alu. -wall) au4 laailtuea aa tf.a inn an lag—a ■ . Xt Inm a»at likaij tLat tha T aocyoa—t rattar • T la baa oauaattT* f««V>r. 1. Slaoa) ton »lta t&aaa JC*.jouiia« la acaaatlal. it ■ Hi ba na a aaa arj to <ao« 1a aaveaaa wtat _»nial aTfooia :xa/ Mm kfM axpooura, IT aer/aaa era to ba noaarlr bm> boat at. Tfcla 4a laaartaat mi ouljr to (rataat a *I*aa la- AlTlabaU, baft Um to eraraut a caoruaac teruu from lajui» las ataaaa ba- laaaropari;- parfosalas ala autiaa. 4. Tula lati»r la balaj roatad bora taa «m iaala«>r, — «l M a c ^uara ana, beat aaamal ci ale.*,. t^t«i or taa ta-> faraaaiaa aa b lUaa- a bora aa/ »a laalaataa b/ tar baa Dlatrlab tal. I DLSTSIBOTICII ^ * * * y ' /( Oaillaa - plaint raaaaxaa Cpjr 1 ft, 2' -vWdraaaaa. anjaat-< m ana afreeba 0/ * % - %J7^C^7m\¥^ pajJB) Manhattan Project document warning that fluoride (coded "F") rather than uranium (coded "T") likely caused central-nervous-system injury in nuclear workers. NATIONAL ARCHIVES University of Rochester's Strong Memorial Hospital, c. 1946. where plutonium was ed into patients in military experiments that were partly orchestrated by Dr. Harold C. . EDWARD G. MINER LIBRARY ARCHIVES, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND DENTISTRY, IVERSITY OF ROCHESTER Dr. Harold C. Hodge, senior toxicologist for the Manhattan Project, and America's leading scientific promoter of water fluoridation during the cold war. 1 adr lames B. Conant, president of Harvard University, chemist, and senior government official in the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb. c. paul bishop, COURTESY PAUL BISHOP IR. ra, Pennsylvania, site of the nation's most notorious air pollution disaster, kh lulled two dozen people and sickened thousands in October 1948. TIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE Toxic Fumes Believed Cause of 19 Deaths; Hundreds Stricken LM of It 4**d in Donora tmeg •ad aWfarw. P*ft 2 Mr ASA ATWATKB. PHIakargh PnM Mall Wrltrr dAnora. Nov. 1— The heavy pall of fog which brought mysterious death to 19 elderly persons here thii week end has begun to drift away. Two separate investigations are under way to stalk the silent killer ''which is believed to be a toxic poison in the fog The deadly fag struck first Friday night when hundred* of persons; — m — II. I asthma luffrren — ex pen - ' enced difficulty in breathing Pittsburg Press November 2, 19 WXATMCH— ^air »m4 eOarriM* • VOLUME 6S. No. 130 •• Slat* or f fnorgency Dec/ored — Smog-Born Plague Kills 17 in Donora; Hospitals Overcrowded Doctors llama 4 Days of Fog Plus Plant Fumai; Hundreds Laava Town for Safety DONORA, Oct. 30 (8peci*J)_A sUte of emergency was declared in Donora today as a mysterious smof- bom plague brought death to 17. 4 without sleep and the Red Class. 1 ind other rroupi co-operated to art hospital In the town Community Ho s pit als were Jammed to overflowing. Twelve oeraont News of the air pollution disaster which took place in Donora, Pennsylvania over Halloween, 194*. dipSadllcr.chcmic.il nmtwhtlM who blamed fluoride pollution for the Donora disaster, i represented New lersey farmers in WWII era fluoride pollution claims against the L attan Project, trai-uf sadtler Chemist Says Fluorine Gas Caused 19 Smog Deaths Pi-..*.' Dl „ tt j f g| p 0 || 0|(w(| ' In Report to Donora Council on Tragody Fluorine gas — not sulphur fume* — ru the poison In Philip Sadtler blames fluorine for the IXinora deaths Aluminum (*mt|Ktmj uFAmrrira ALUMINUM »CSrA»CM LABONATOMIKS •<■ • • - - i Dacaabar 30. 1 Dr. ItUlaa r. Aaha gattariaa Laboratory Dh tiara it j of CiKihiU Cincinnati 19, Ohla Doar Dr. Aaha: •• hara Jaat coaslatad low analytical aort anion hu haaa dlin—lll rfth DrTT«U*7 A. Irwin, fed l oil Director of AJoalnan Coapany of Aaarlca. Dr. Irwin hu ■W«Ud that I tranaail tha nmlli of oar analysis to joa. For jour inforaatioa, tha rsaulta of Mr «ilnli ara balsa tranaalttod only to 700 Kid to Dr. Irwia Sola raoalsina. » cow 0? UU« laltar. . I. Raanay, StLoiifli^»t^ r n^a£toTtoiplUl, Barton, Psoaayltania, not to as loag tlaaaa ana blood - dlad during too pariod of U> ral axaaiaation of tha laag nta nn praasBt, anaT Dr. 0 laahlngt . froa tha body of Rika Doruca troubla at Doaora* la aada a (a tlaaaa la ordar to daUrain* afiat ala tha raaulta aara aora or laaa of a ganaral aatara l h ow ad tha praaanca of a graat satyr alaaaatf .as In lew ooaoaatratloa. Tha aaapla ta, iaclBdiag aoaa aa aada our usual rsaaal axtrsa»ly au fluorine at 1 lnlaraet to 70a L aaa laaarsarl Id 1 11 body fluid. Bafora bow that wKao tha aaapla aaa aaat to aa, it quid anion Bar or any aot bn»e baaa •zoaat 1 ashing tha lanf . ileaj reacted froB this ' i several tiaaa. Tola r aanwfl aa auoh llaald liquid and squeezed sereral tiaaa. Thla raaorad aa auoh liquid aa poasibls.W all of tha liquid aqaaaaad oat. aa Ball aa that r eal i s i n g la tha bottle, aaa earafulla ashed and toatad. lowerer, tha aah of thia liquid aaa ao ertrwaaly loa that aa did aot aara to aire tha siopad epecuagranhic aaat aaoaaaary enough aaapla < to taat for fluorine At that particular tiaa, aa did aat da anything alto tha aaapla of blood, bac.ua t aa laamad that tha bod/ oT tha aaa bad baan aabalaad bafora axolalaa of tha tlaaaa. left U/*Vas Blood test secretly performed by the Aluminum Company of America on one of the Donora dead, showing high level of fluorine in blood. MEDICAL HERITAGE CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI NdTatlllal .. »rlc acir.t . UBpajSuraTni!*. aaa to you. I traat roe will find thla isfaraaUoa of aaa* »ery truly jour.. m. ». anwiin, dhiaf 1 nc/> Copy: Dr. . ''""HTM. Chi af Analyticsl Dlilslea ALBJOBOJ OOBMUrj Of ANDUCA Alu.Ua. haaaarak Uaaratartaa Dsdley A. Irala, MtUbargh Dr. George L \\'aldlx>it, internationally renowned allergist and physician who early warned America to the dangers of smoking, and of the potential dangers of even small amounts of fluoride, Elizabeth ramsey Kettering Laboratory at the University of Nicholas C. Leone, Chief of Medical Cincinnati, and leading defender of industry Investigations at the National Institute in fluoride pollution lawsuits, university q ( Research during the i<«os. OF CINCINNATI. ACADEMIC INFORMATION NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DENTAL AND AND COMMUNICATIONS, CINCINNATI CRANIOFACIAL RESEARCH MEDICAL HERITAGE CENTER The Reynolds Metals Company aluminum reduction plant at Akwesasnc, New York. HENRY LICKERS Mohawk child at the Akwesasne reservation in New York, with evidence of fluoride-poisoned teeth. PROFESSOR LENNART KROOK National FLUORIDATION NEWS National Fluoridation Sews, a newspaper edited by George and Edith Waldbott. which connected the vigorous antifluoridation movement during the 1960s and 1970s. ff Forsyth Dental Center ^News RESEARCH INSTITUTE SCHOOL FOR DENTAL HYCJENIST5 DENTAL INFIRMARY New Forsyth Toxicology Dept. Dr. Phyllis Mulknix tuts been appointed by Dr. John W. Hein. Director of Fonyth. lo head the department of toxicology In an nouncinf the appointment. Dr. Hein Mated "Societal concerns are becoming justi- fiably aroused over the long term implications of traces of toxins in the environment. As a major center of dental science, we at Forsyth beueve our institution has a special obligation to answer these concerns by a reexamination and reassessment of the long range toxicity of substances of particular interest to dentistry, a* for example, the fluoride ion. mercury (in dental fillings), nitrous oxide (for anesthesia), non precious metal substitutes for gold and many others. But, beyond our interest in the toxicity of specific materials used in den- tistry, it is our desire to advance methodology for delecting toxicity. Dr. Mullen ix has evolv- ed a new technique which indicates a much more sensitive test than the traditional means of the letting of compounds causing toxic ef- fects on the nervous system. It measures in animal behavior rather than in structure. Application of this i to nitrous oxide, long considered the safest of general anesthetics, has revealed that this agent can cause damage at certain timet during the gestation period in rodents which arc only revealed as behavioral changes when adulthood is reached. The far-reaching im- plications of this research are obvious." Dr. MuDenix received her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas Medical C enter and a a former Fellow in Toxicology of Johm Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health Dr. Mullenix holds many consulting appointments lo government and industry and is a faculty member of the Department of Psychiatry of the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hein also stated that he had the add* pleasure of announcing the appointment of Dr. Harold C. Hodge, internationally known loxkologist. as Research Affiliate in the Department of Toxicology. Dr. Hodge, considered by his colleagues as the dean P modern toxicology, was the founder of f Society of Toxicology and served as its pn dent in 1961. Dr. Hodge has held many i port ant academic and scientific appoint m including Professor of Pharmacology Toxicology, the University of Ro School of Medicine and Dentistry, Pi of Pharmacology. University of Califo San Francisco, and Professor of Ea vironmental Toxicology, University California. Irvine. While professor Rochester. Dr. Hodge headed the P™ of Pharmacology and Toxicology. I ten Project and Atomic Energy Project. Hodge is also the author of several texts t toxicology and numerous scientific pi have been contributed by him to the i macological and toxicologtcal literature. i 1 Forsyth Dental Center News, spring 1984. announcing appointments of Phyllis Mullenix and Harold Ho FORSYTH DENTAL CENTER Dr /*>fto Sfw/lrmi. rrrral'i hrtd of tonytk '« TajKnlait Drpartmrnl. mill (It Dr. HmvM C Hod*. Knrmnk AJfihlt m Taarofccr anrf tr) fonyltt I Dmrtor. Dr. John » BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 199 after that? Mullenix said. "I mean that is a complete dodging of a very important factor that should be looked at. There was no repeat study, no follow-up on fluoride. . . . That is completely the opposite of what happened with ozone, she said. Everything was blamed on ozone. Everything went into [studying] nitrous oxides, or sulfur oxides." (Unlike the case with fluoride, where the source of the effluent is often obvious and unique, suing a particular factory or industry for use of these more ubiquitous pollutants is much more difficult)" The Clean Air Act let industry off the hook: federal laws would not protect citizens living near fluoride emitting factories. The aluminum industry was an especially big winner. In 1958 for example, Reynolds Metals — fresh from its defeat in the Martin trial — opened a new aluminum plant near the ancestral Native American farming community of Akwesasne on St. Regis Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is situated on the border between New York and Canada. Akwesasne is a Mohawk Indian word meaning "land where the partridge drums." Those partridges soon fell silent, however, as Reynolds's fluoride filled the air. By the early 1960s a drumbeat of protest was sounding. Mohawk farmers reported that honeybees and grasshoppers had disappeared from the area, while sick cattle and etched car windows were found downwind from the Reynolds's plant. Although Reynolds was acutely aware of the dangers from fluoride — after all, the company had just received Robert Kehoe's 1962 report on the poisoned beagle dogs — Reynolds did not share the information with the Native Americans, according to the Mohawk biologist Henry Lickers." "For 17 years we allowed Reynolds Metals to come onto the island to look at the problem. And for 17 years they collected data ... never insinuating there was anything wrong with our cattle," Lickers remarked." The aluminum industry helped to drive a chemical stake through an ancient culture that had lived in harmony with the earth, said Lickers. The concept of Peace, the concept of the Great Law — all of those things knit our people together in a strong union. [But] when you poison the environment, the fiber of the community comes apart. Into that void now comes the non-traditional economies — gambling, smuggling — because people no longer can depend upon the old economies. 200 CHAPTER FIFTEEN Evidence that fluoride might be hurting local children at Akwe-sasne was discovered on a 1978 visit to a Mohawk school by the scientist Bertram Carnow of the University of Illinois School of Public Health. He found a range of health problems on St. Regis Island similar to those that had frequently been linked to fluoride elsewhere. (The complaints echo almost exactly the injuries to Paul Martins daughter, for example.) "At the school," Carnows team reported, "teachers stated that ... the Island children were more irritable and hyperactive and appeared to be suffering from a considerable amount of chronic fatigue. They seemed to be tired all of the time. Additionally, some had complained of aching in the legs, particularly the muscles, and in one case, the son of one of the teachers had so much pain in his feet that he frequently had difficulty in sleeping. Several teachers mentioned poor handwriting as a problem. They felt that in several cases that this might be due to the presence of a tremor. A number of children apparently had rashes, which were noted by one of the teachers. Respiratory infections were frequent and one of the children had developed a goiter." Among the Akwesasne Mohawks, Carnow concluded, "There would appear to be significant numbers of people with abnormalities of the muscular, skeletal, nervous, and hematologic systems. In addition, there appears to be a large number at high risk because of diabetes and high blood pressure." In 198o, threatened by Carnows findings, the Canadian and American governments intervened and arranged for a second team of scientists to visit the tribe for a more in-depth study." Although the report subsequently issued by Dr. Irvine Selikoff of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York was not able to conclusively fix the blame on fluoride for local health problems — a determination that eventually helped to undercut the $150 million lawsuit against Reynolds — at least one scientist believes that the Akwesasne verdict has not yet been fully rendered. 59 Phyllis Mullenix is now regularly visiting Akwesasne to advise Mohawk health care providers on the possible relationship between environmental pollution and their sick patients. "A lot of these people have lung problems, asthma, breathing problems — they are all on puffers [inhalers]," she says. Mullenix notes that, while Dr. Selikoff s team found serious breathing difficulties and lung problems in the Mohawks, his scientists BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 201 were never shown the Kettering Laboratory's fluoride inhalation study, which connects fluoride to lung damage at low doses, and which Reynolds Metals had helped pay for. Such missing medical evidence has left scientists, doctors, and Native Americans alike in the dark about fluorides health effects and has shaped an environment where chronic sickness has been blamed, not on fluoride, but on the Indians themselves. "It is bizarre," Mullen ix remarked. "This population has been so sick for so long. They said, We are Indian — yeah, we are all diabetic, we are all fat, we all have thyroid problems.' They have been told that for so long. A population has accepted illness as a way of life." What befell the Indians at Akwesasne may have befallen us all. Federal regulators were watching the situation at Akwesasne in early 198os very closely. A ruling that the Indians had been hurt by fluoride would have increased pressure on the EPA to list fluoride as a hazardous "criteria" air pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and required federal policing of fluoride across the entire country." Instead, the Selikoff team's failure to conclusively link fluoride to Mohawk sickness once again helped what some environmentalists call "the protected pollutant" to wriggle out from under EPA scrutiny. But had Selikoff seen the 1962 Kettering study on the beagles, and the strength of its link between fluoride and lung damage, he might have been forced to rule differently on Akwesasne — and federal regu lators might have been forced to look anew at fluoride air pollution across the rest of the country. "The changes that Selikoff was seeing in the reduced lung capacity of Akwesasne residents] would have made sense," notes Phyllis Mullenix. "His conclusions, in respect to pulmonary function [and its cause-and-effect relationship with inhaled fluoride] would have had to be totally different." A new focus by the EPA, aggressively targeting fluoride in air pollution, might even make good economic sense, argued the Uni- versity of California's Robert Phalen, by allowing industry to be more selective in filtering out harmful air poisons. "You can't just turn off all air pollutants, because we will all starve," he said. "You have got to identify the more toxic components and control them in a pin-point fashion. It's like food — do you ban food? No, you say salmonella is a problem and you control it." Hurricane Creek The People Rule
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