Ch. 5. General Groves's Solution: the fluoride deception by Christopher Bryson from archive.org
General Groves's Solution Dr. Harold Hodge and the University of Rochester The Manhattan Project had seen the danger from fluoride early. Before the war private industry had contained the legal dangers from factory pollution by forming the Air Hygiene Foundation at the Mellon Institute. Also fearing lawsuits, in 1943 General Groves established the Manhattan Projects Medical Section at the University of Rochester to strengthen the governments interests, placing Dr. Harold C. Hodge in charge of a secret unit studying fluoride and the other chemicals being used to make the atomic bomb. FROM His CORNER office window in the medical school at Strong Memorial Hospital that summer of 1943 Dr. Harold Hodge could see construction workers placing the finishing touches on a half million-dollar building at the University of Rochester known as the Manhattan Annex.' The heavily guarded structure, funded by the U.S. Army, would be home to the Manhattan Project's Medical Section. Orders had been placed for hundreds of
experimental animals: Puerto Rican monkeys, dogs, mice, rabbits, and guinea pigs.' And an umbilical cord-like tunnel linking the military annex with the university hospital was urgently being readied. https://www.blogger.com/nullAs the new Annex foundations were put down, so too was the keystone laid for the postwar practice of toxicology in the United States — and for the future career of the thirty-nine-year-old bioc hemist, Dr. Harold Hodge. The Annex would soon house the largest 66 CHAPTER FIVE medical laboratory in the nation, with a staff of several hundred scientists testing the toxicity of the chemicals being used to build the atomic bomb. Military pilots flew the exotic new compounds directly from the bomb factories to Hodges team at Rochester. "Harold would actually meet the pilots under [cover of] dark to get the material to test, said toxicologist Judith MacGregor, who befriended Hodge at Rochester, where she was a graduate student in the 1960s, and who was mesmerized by her mentors tales. It was unbelievable. That spring of 1943, Hodge had been placed in charge of the bomb programs Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology and given control of a secret biomedical research unit known as Program F to study fluoride toxicity.' The Manhattan Project had a whole section working on uranium and a whole section working on fluoride, explained Jack Hein, who worked with Hodge at Rochester during the early cold war as a young graduate student and remembers the scale of the fluoride studies. The toxicology studies were very comprehensive. They were looking for toxic effects on the bone, the blood, and the nervous system. . . . Without the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb, we wouldnt know anywhere near as much as we do about the physiological effects of fluoride, Hein added . 4 His research suddenly blossomed into an immense program, noted Paul Morrow, a uranium expert who also joined Hodge at Rochester in 1947 and who worked on some of the earliest experiments. Hodge's war work germinated into a career as the nation's leading expert on fluoride. Over more than half a century the tall, black-haired researcher published several books and some three hundred scientific papers. He was chairman of the National Research Councils Committee on Toxicology and first president of the Society of Toxicology. And a generation of Hodges Rochester colleagues and students — men such as Herbert Stokinger, Paul Morrow, and Helmuth Schrenk — went on to occupy leading positions in government agencies and universities after the war.' He was unarguably the dean of American toxicology, stated a former colleague and Rochester alumni, Ernest Newbrun, now a professor emeritus at the University of California at San Francisco." To several generations of colleagues, the soft-spoken scientist with the slicked-back hair was a gentleman scholar and tutor, advising GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION 67 them to play it straight, and regularly, in his early seventies, trounc ing graduate students at squash.' But Harold Hodge — grandfather, soft-spoken friend, and dean of American toxicology — shouldered dark secrets for much of his professional life. That summer of 1943, as Dr. Hodge stood at his office window, he confronted a terrible dilemma. Speed was essential in beating the Germans to full-scale production of the atomic bomb.' The fate of tens of thousands of American workers lay in his hands. His laboratory's evaluation of the toxicity of chemicals needed for the bomb, such as fluorine, beryllium, and trichloroethylene, would fix work conditions for the women and men inside the Manhattan Projects bomb factories, help determine how quickly the plants could achieve full production — and whether employers would be successfully sued for damages if those workers claimed injury from chemical exposure.' The questions were many and the answers few, wrote Hodge. There was no time to wait for months, or even weeks, while the accepted laboratory tests established the toxico-logical facts. Production had to proceed with no delays." 10 People working in the atomic energy production plants were going to be chronically exposed, said Jack Hein. We didnt know too much about the toxicity of fluoride, other than the early studies saying a little too much in the water causes damage to teeth, he added." General Leslie Groves understood the dangers of such pell-mell production. He feared that personal injury lawsuits would be an Achilles heel for the entire nuclear program. Leading insurers, such as Aetna and Travelers, were providing health coverage for workers in the new bomb factories. 12 Successful claims for fluoride injury or for neighborhood pollution might hemorrhage compensation payments, create a public-relations disaster, risk jeopardizing the embryonic nuclear industry — and threaten the United States' unprecedented new military power. 13 The army moved quickly to protect itself. Its first weapon was secrecy. The second weapon was seizing control of basic science. In particular the crucial toxicity studies on bomb program chemicals performed at the University of Rochester were sculpted and shaped to defend the Manhattan Project from lawsuits.' Those marching orders — conscripting science and law for military service — were drummed home in a July 30, 1945, memorandum titled Purpose 68 CHAPTER FIVE and Limitations of the Biological and Health Physics Research Pro -gram, written by the head of the Medical Section, Colonel Stafford Warren. According to Warren, The Manhattan District, as a unit of the U.S. Army ... has been given a directive to conduct certain operations which will be useful in winning the war. As such, medico-legal aspects were accorded a clear priority for scientists, he added, including the necessary biological research to strengthen the Governments interests. 15 Scientists soon delivered courtroom ammunition. "Much of the data already collected is proving valuable from a medical legal point of view," noted a February 1946 memo to General Groves's deputy, Brigadier General K. C. Nichols. "It is anticipated that further research will also serve in this manner," the memo added. 16 Colonel Warren had chosen his top fluoride expert carefully. The son of an Illinois schoolteacher, Harold Hodge was a biochemist whose specialty was the study of bones and teeth. He had arrived at the University of Rochester in 1931, where he was one of an elite cadre of men selected by the Rockefeller Foundation as dental research fellows. The Rockefeller Foundation was then funding basic research at selected dental schools in a bid to lift the standards of dental care in the United States. Hodge was also a pharmacologist and toxicologist who by 1937 had forged close links with corporate America.' By the summer of 1943 some of those corporations and institutions were taking a lead role in developing America's first nuclear weapon. Eastman Kodak, a Rochester company where Hodge had investigated chemical poisoning before the war, was now a leading industrial contractor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. 16 Rockefeller interests were also using fluoride to refine uranium at an undisclosed site in New Jersey and funding their own biomedical research at the University of Rochester."" Harold Hodge's role as gatekeeper at the wartime crossroads of law and medical science was spelled out in a 1944 letter introducing the Rochester scientist to the DuPont company. The letter, stamped confidential, again lays out a fundamental scientific bias in the Manhattan Districts medical program — a bias against workers and communities, and in favor of corporate legal interests. The Medical Section has been charged with the responsibility of obtaining toxicological data which will insure the Districts being GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION 69 in a favorable position in case litigation develops from exposure to the materials, Colonel Stafford Warren told Dr. John Foulger of DuPonts Haskell Laboratory in a letter dated August 12, 1944. Harold Hodge was to insure that information about the toxicity of certain fluoride compounds was coordinated between the government and its contractors, Warren explained. It would be desirable, he told Foulger, to have the work on the toxicity of fluorocarbons being done in your laboratory parallel the investigations being made on similar compounds elsewhere. For that reason it would be appreciated if Dr. Harold Hodge of the University of Rochester could visit your laboratory in the near future and an exchange of ideas be effected." 20 Harold Hodge, Devil's Island, and the Peach Crop Cases 21 Harold Hodge s diligence in defending the war industry can be seen in a 1946 court challenge from farmers living near a DuPont fluoride plant in New Jersey. Although not mentioned in any history of the Manhattan Project, the lawsuits were regarded by the military as the most serious legal threat to the U.S. nuclear program, requiring the direct intervention of General Leslie Groves. A closing chapter in the Manhattan Project, the aggressive use of secrecy, science, and public relations by Groves and Hodge, and at least a half dozen federal agencies battling the farmers, is an opening scene in the story of how fluoride was handled by our government following World War II. The gently rolling alluvial soil along the shore of the Delaware estuary in Southern New Jersey is some of the most bountiful farm- land in the United States. Its historic harvest of fruit and vegetables won New Jersey the accolade of The Garden State. The orchards downwind of the DuPont plant in Gloucester and Salem counties were especially famous for their high-quality produce; their peaches went directly to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Campbell's Soup bought up their tomatoes. But in the summer of 1943 the farmers began to report that their orchards were blighted and that "something is burning up the peach crops around here." Poultry died after an all-night thunderstorm, they reported. Fields were sometimes strewn with dead cattle, residents recalled, while 70 CHAPTER FIVE workers who ate the produce they had picked vomited all night and into the next day. I remember our horses looked sick and were too stiff to work, Mildred Giordano, who was a teenager at the time, told reporter Joel Griffiths. Some cows were so crippled that they could not stand up, and grazed by crawling on their bellies. The injuries were confirmed in taped interviews, shortly before he died, with the chemical consultant Philip Sadtler of Sadtler Laboratories in Philadelphia. On behalf of the farmers' crusading attorney, Counselor William C. Gotshalk of Camden, New Jersey, Sadtler had measured blood fluoride levels in laborers as high as 310 parts per million. (Blood fluoride is normally well below i part per mil- lion. These levels are potentially lethal doses) 22 Some of the farm workers were pretty weak, Sadtler noted. The New Jersey farmers organized a Fluorine Committee. They patriotically waited until the war was over, then sued DuPont and the Manhattan Project for fluoride damage. Thirteen claimants asked for a total of $430,000 in compensation. Little wonder the farmers reported health problems. Conditions on the other side of the DuPont fence were extraordinarily dangerous. More than a thousand women and men were employed on Manhattan Project contracts at the Chamber Works during the war, secretly manufacturing elemental fluorine, uranium hexafluoride, and several exotic new fluorocarbons. 23 Chemical exposures were frequent, making the DuPont employees perhaps the most endangered and fearful of the wartime fluoride workers. By the end of January 1944 at least two DuPont laboratory workers had been killed and several scientists injured. Work conditions at the secret fluoride-producing East and Blue Areas of the Chamber Works were especially dreadful, with "gross violations of safety," inspectors noted. 24 One unit was especially notorious, the government reported. "The plant frequently caught on fire, and the activators often burned out so the employees were frequently exposed to rather large amounts of fluorine compounds," Captain Mears of the Manhattan Project noted in October 1945. "Medical hazards were attributed to fluorine in a gaseous state, silver fluorides in a powdered state and liquid 2144 [code for fluorocarbon]. 25 Injured workers paraded into the DuPont hospital. Doctors often reported "a fibrotic condition of both lungs" on X-rays; serious GENERAL GROVESS SOLUTION 71 chemical burns were seen very frequently. The mounting injury toll was blamed on fluoride. 20 In February 1945 doctors at the East and Blue Areas reported seventy-nine sub-par or so-called chronic cases. Sixteen of those workers had their condition detected in the last two months." A Manhattan Project medical investigator, Captain Richard C. Bernstein, warned his boss, Colonel Warren, that workers now feared assignment to the DuPont fluoride processing areas as "an exile to Devil's Island." 28 Another report warned of brewing labor unrest. "Fear of the physical consequences was becoming prevalent in the Areas, wrote Manhattan Project investigator First Lieutenant Birchard M. Brundage in February 1945. "This fear was being used by certain agitators to cause trouble in the personnel," he added. 29 The farmers lawsuits electrified the Manhattan Project. There had been no disclosure of the diabolical work conditions at DuPont. Now, a public lawsuit pointed a finger directly at the Chamber Works and fluoride. A once secret November 1945 memo measures the government's concern: "The most serious claim to neighboring properties of any operations of the [Manhattan Engineering] District is the litigation known as the "peach crop cases.' These are cases claiming damages to the fruit crop and to the peach trees themselves in and around the operation of the Chambers Works of the DuPont Company at Kearney, New Jersey. This damage is alleg edly caused by the release into the atmosphere, both unintentional and necessary as a result of the process [sic] of hydrogen fluoride. The claims against the District approximate $430,000. Part of the loss would be due to the private contractor and part to the operation of the contractor on behalf of the District." 30 The military sprang into action. Dr. Hodge was dispatched to New Jersey to marshal the medical response to the farmers' rebellion. Although DuPont's smokestack fluoride had long been spilled into the environment and a great volume of new fluoride compounds were being made inside the wartime plant, he quickly reported back to Colonel Stafford Warren at Oak Ridge that the mottled teeth seen in the school near the DuPont plant could be attributed to natural fluoride in the ground water. 31 Such natural fluoride in the water supply meant that the dental markings could not be used as unequivocal proof of industrial poisoning. The situation was 72 CHAPTER FIVE complicated by the existence of mottled enamel as a result of fluoride in the drinking water, Hodge told Warren. Dr. Hodge had an idea for calming the citizen panic. His prescrip tion gives an early meaning to the term spin doctor — and provides a clue that the promotion by the U.S. government of a role for fluoride in tooth health has a powerful national-security appeal. Would there be any use in making attempts to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents of Salem and Gloucester counties through lectures on F toxicology and perhaps the usefulness of F in tooth health? Hodge inquired of Colonel Warren. 32 Such lectures, of course, were indeed given, not only to New Jersey citizens, but to the rest of the nation throughout the cold war. A good cop-bad cop assault was launched against the farmers. Almost immediately their spokesperson, Willard B. Kille, a market gardener, received an extraordinary invitation: to dine with none other than General Leslie R. Groves, then known as the man who built the atomic bomb, at his office at the War Department on March 26, 1946. 33 Although Kille had been diagnosed with fluoride poisoning by his doctor, he departed the luncheon convinced of the governments good faith. The next day he wrote to thank the general, wishing the other farmers could have been present, he said, so they too could come away with the feeling that their interests in this particular matter were being safeguarded by men of the very highest type whose integrity they could not question." Behind closed doors however, General Groves had mobilized the full resources of the federal government and the Manhattan Project to defeat Kille s farmers and their Fluorine Committee. The documentary trail detailing the government's battle against the farmers begins with a March 1, 1946, memo to top Manhattan Project doctor Colonel Stafford Warren, outlining the medical problem in New Jersey. There seem to be four distinct (though related) problems, Colonel Warren was told. 1. A question of injury of the peach crop in 1944. 2. A report of extraordinary fluoride content of veg- etables grown in this area. 3. A report of abnormally high fluoride content in the blood of human individuals residing in this area. GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION 73 4. A report raising the question of serious poisoning of horses and cattle in this area. Under the personal direction of General Groves, secret meetings were convened in Washington, with compulsory attendance by scores of scientists and officials from the U.S. War Department, the Manhattan Project, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture and Justice departments, the U.S. Armys Chemical Warfare Service and Edgewood Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, and DuPont lawyers.'' These agencies are making scientific investigations to obtain evidence which may be used to protect the interest of the Government at the trial of the suits brought by owners of peach orchards in . . . New Jersey," stated Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B. Rhodes of the Manhattan Project in a memo dated August 27, 1945, and cc'd to General Groves.' The memo stated: SUBJECT: Investigation of Crop Damage at Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey T o : The Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Pentagon Building, Washington D.C. At the request of the Secretary of War the Department of Agriculture has agreed to cooperate in investigating complaints of crop damage attributed ... to fumes from a plant operated in connection with the Manhattan Project. Signed L. R. Groves, Major General U.S.A. 36 "The Department of Justice is cooperating in the defense of these suits," General Groves subsequently wrote in a February 28, 1946, memo to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy. 37 General Groves, of course, was one of the most powerful men in postwar Washington, and the full resources of the military-industrial state were now turned upon the New Jersey farmers. The farmers' expert witness, scientist Philip Sadder, was singled out by the military. A handwritten note in General Groves's files in the National Archives demands to know: Col. Rhodes, Who is Sadtler ? 38 74 CHAPTER FIVE Groves learned that the Sadtler family name was one of the most distinguished and respected in American chemistry. The firm of Samuel P. Sadtler and Son was established in 1891 and routinely consulted for top industrial corporations, including Coca-Cola and John D. Rockefeller.' ' Philip Sadtler s grandfather, Samuel P. Sadtler, had been a founding member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, while his father, Samuel S. Sadtler, was one of the first editors of the venerable science publication Chemical Abstracts. (Today Philip Sadtler s Standard Spectra are a diagnostic tool used in laboratories around the world.) But back then, in New Jersey, counterespionage agents followed him and accused him of "dealing with the enemy," stated Sadtler. 40 He recalled one confrontation with two U.S. Army captains that ended in a South Jersey orchard when Gotshalk, the farmers lawyer, asked the military officials, Since when are the farmers of the United States the enemy? Why was there such a national-security emergency over a few lawsuits by New Jersey farmers? In 1946 the United States had begun full-scale production of atomic bombs. No other nation had yet tested a nuclear weapon, and the A-bomb was seen as crucial for U.S. leadership of the postwar world. The New Jersey fluoride law -suits were a serious roadblock to that strategy. In the case of fluoride, If the farmers won, it would open the door to further suits, which might impede the bomb programs ability to use fluoride, remarked Jacqueline Kittrell, a Tennessee public-interest lawyer specializing in nuclear cases, who examined the declassified fluoride documents. (Kittrell has represented plaintiffs in several human radiation experiment cases.) She added, The reports of human injury were especially threatening, because of the potential for enormous settlements — not to mention the PR problem. " 41 Indeed, DuPont was particularly concerned about the possible psychologic reaction to the New Jersey pollution incident, according to a secret 1946 Manhattan Project memo. Facing a threat from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to embargo the regions produce because of "high fluoride content," DuPont dispatched its lawyers to the FDA offices in Washington, where an agitated meet ing ensued. According to a memo sent the following day to General Groves, DuPont s lawyer argued that in view of the pending suits GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION 75 any action by the Food and Drag Administration . . . would have a serious effect on the DuPont Company and would create a bad public relations situation." After the meeting adjourned, Manhattan Project Captain John Davies approached the FDA s Food Division chief and impressed upon Dr. White the substantial interest which the Government had in claims which might arise as a result of action which might be taken by the Food and Drug Administration. 42 There was no embargo. Instead, new tests for fluoride in the New Jersey area would be conducted — not by the Department of Agriculture but by the Chemical Warfare Service — because work done by the Chemical Warfare Service would carry the greatest weight as evidence if .. . lawsuits are started by the complainants. The memo was signed by General Groves. 43 The farmers kept fighting. On February 2, 1946, Willard Kille wrote to the influential Senator Brian McMahon, Chairman of the Special Committee on Atomic Energy, on behalf of the Fluorine Committee, telling him about the peach trees and poisoning. General Groves quickly interceded, informing the Senator, I do not believe it would be of any value to your committee to have Mr. Kille appear before it. Groves assured Senator McMahon that I am keeping in close personal touch with the matter from day to day in order that I may be personally certain that while the government's interests are protected no advantage is taken of any injured farmer. 44 The New Jersey farmers were ultimately pacified with token financial settlements, according to interviews with descendants still living the area. 45 Joseph Clemente says that his father told him the family had been "paid off" by DuPont after the cattle died suddenly during the war. The Clemente farm lay just across the road from the Chamber Works. His grandfather had been a wartime manager inside the Chamber Works and his family owned a construction firm that had helped to build the plant; accordingly, his father accepted DuPont s cash settlement. It wouldnt have been very good if my family had caused a lot of stink about the episode, Clemente said. All we knew is that DuPont released some chemical that burned up all the peach trees around here, a second resident, Angelo 76 CHAPTER FIVE Giordano, whose father James was one of the original plaintiffs, told the medical writer Joel Griffiths, who visited the orchard country in 1997. The trees were no good after that, so we had to give up on the peaches. Their horses and cows also acted sick and walked stiffly, recalled his sister Mildred. "Could any of that have been the fluoride?" she asked. According to veterinary toxicologists, various symptoms she went on to detail are cardinal signs of fluoride toxicity. The Giordano family has been plagued by bone and joint problems, too, Mildred added. Recalling the settlement received by the Giordano family, Angelo told Griffiths that "my father said he got about $200. The New Jersey farmers were blocked in their legal challenge by the government's refusal to reveal the key piece of information that would have settled the case — the amount of fluoride DuPont had vented into the atmosphere during the war. "Disclosure ... would be injurious to the military security of the United States, wrote Manhattan Project Major C. A. Taney Jr." Gotshalk, the farmers' attorney, was outraged at the stonewalling. He called it a callous disregard for the rights of people and accused the Manhattan Project of using the sovereign power of the government to escape the consequences of what undoubtedly was done." 47 Gotshalk was right. A once-secret memorandum sent to General Groves in Washington — which Gotshalk and the farmers never saw — reveals that the wartime DuPont plant was belching out mass quantities of hydrogen fluoride: at least 30,000 pounds, and perhaps as much as 165,000 pounds, was expelled over the adjacent farmland each month. 48 The scale of the pollution was explained to General Groves. DuPont was then producing 1,500,000 pounds of HF each month for its commercial Freon-producing [Kinetics] plant, according to his deputy Major C. A. Taney. "Assuming that the losses were only 1 percent at Kinetics, the amount vented to the atmosphere would be about equal to the average loss from the Government facilities at the Chamber Works during the worst months of 1944," Major Taney wrote. But the pollution might be much worse, he added, in which case the lion's share of the blame would be attributable to DuPont's commercial operations. "If the losses at Kinetics ran as rGENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION 77 high as 10 percent, which is possible, the fumes produced at the Chamber Works would obviously be caused to the greatest extent by DuPonts own operations and not by the Government facilities, the memo stated. The memo to Groves is probably the smoking gun tying DuPont to the reported injuries. The emissions data would certainly have been crucial courtroom ammunition for the plaintiffs, according to the scientist Kathleen M. Thiessen, an expert on risk analysis and on the health effects of hydrogen fluoride" She notes that the amount of fluoride spilled over the orchards and farms in 1944 from the Chamber Works — at least 30,000 pounds monthly — is consistent with the injuries reported within a ten-kilometer radius around the DuPont plant. The air concentrations could easily have been high enough to cause vegetation damage, and if they are high enough to cause vegetation damage they are high enough to cause damage to livestock eating that pasture," the scientist estimated. Could the fluoride have hurt the local citizens too? It is going to depend on where they lived and how much of that local produce [they ate], Thiessen explained. The reports of high blood fluoride levels in local citizens, and of badly contaminated local produce, were again consistent with human fluoride injury, she added. Denied the government data, the farmers settled their lawsuit, and their case has long since been forgotten. But the Garden State peach growers unknowingly left their imprint on history. Their complaints of sickness reverberated through the corridors of power in Washington and triggered Harold Hodge's intensive secret bomb-program research on the health effects of fluoride. "Because of complaints that animals and humans have been injured by hydrogen fluoride fumes in [the New Jersey] area," reads a 1945 memo to General Groves from a deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B. Rhodes, although there are no pending suits involving such claims, the University of Rochester is conducting experiments to determine the toxic effect of fluoride." 50 6 How the Manhattan Project Sold Us Fluoride
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