Flouride
& The A Bomb Program
Nexus Magazine
Some 50 years after
United States authorities began adding fluoride to public water
supplies to reduce cavities in children's teeth, recently discovered
declassified government documents are shedding new light on the
roots of that still-controversial public health measure, revealing
a surprising connection between the use of fluoride and the dawning
of the nuclear age.
Today, two-thirds
of US public drinking water is fluoridated. Many municipalities
still resist the practice, disbelieving the government's assurances
of safety.
Since the days of
World War II when the US prevailed by building the world's first
atomic bomb, the nation's public health leaders have maintained
that low doses of fluoride are safe for people and good for children's
teeth.
That safety verdict
should now be re-examined in the light of hundreds of once-secret
WWII-era documents obtained by these reporters [authors Griffiths
and Bryson], including declassified papers of the Manhattan Project-the
ultra-secret US military program that produced the atomic bomb.
Fluoride was the key
chemical in atomic bomb production, according to the documents.
Massive quantities-millions of tons-were essential for the manufacture
of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons throughout
the Cold War. One of the most toxic chemicals known, fluoride
emerged as the leading chemical health hazard of the US atomic
bomb program, both for workers and for nearby communities, the
documents reveal.
Other revelations
include:
€ Much of the original proof that fluoride is safe for humans
in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists who had
been secretly ordered to provide "evidence useful in litigation"
against defence contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The
first lawsuits against the American A-bomb program were not over
radiation, but over fluoride damage, the documents show.
€ Human studies were required. Bomb program researchers played
a leading role in the design and implementation of the most extensive
US study of the health effects of fluoridating public drinking
water, conducted in Newburgh, New York, from 1945 to 1955. Then,
in a classified operation code-named "Program F", they
secretly gathered and analysed blood and tissue samples from Newburgh
citizens with the cooperation of New York State Health Department
personnel.
€ The original, secret version (obtained by these reporters)
of a study published by Program F scientists in the August 1948
Journal of the American Dental Association1 shows that evidence
of adverse health effects from fluoride was censored by the US
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)-considered the most powerful of
Cold War agencies-for reasons of "national security".
€ The bomb program's fluoride safety studies were conducted
at the University of Rochester-site of one of the most notorious
human radiation experiments of the Cold War, in which unsuspecting
hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive
plutonium. The fluoride studies were conducted with the same ethical
mindset, in which "national security" was paramount.
Evidence of
Fluorides Adverse Health Effects
The
US Government's conflict of interest and its motive to prove fluoride
safe in the furious debate over water fluoridation since the 1950s
has only now been made clear to the general public, let alone
to civilian researchers, health professionals and journalists.
The declassified documents resonate with a growing body of scientific
evidence and a chorus of questions about the health effects of
fluoride in the environment.
Human exposure to
fluoride has mushroomed since World War II, due not only to fluoridated
water and toothpaste but to environmental pollution by major industries,
from aluminium to pesticides, where fluoride is a critical industrial
chemical as well as a waste by-product.
The impact can be
seen literally in the smiles of our children. Large numbers (up
to 80 per cent in some cities) of young Americans now have dental
fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive fluoride exposure
according to the US National Research Council. (The signs are
whitish flecks or spots, particularly on the front teeth, or dark
spots or stripes in more severe cases.)
Less known to the
public is that fluoride also accumulates in bones. "The teeth
are windows to what's happening in the bones," explained
Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry at St Lawrence University,
New York, to these reporters. In recent years, paediatric bone
specialists have expressed alarm about an increase in stress fractures
among young people in the US. Connett and other scientists are
concerned that fluoride-linked to bone damage in studies since
the 1930s-may be a contributing factor.
The declassified documents
add urgency: much of the original 'proof ' that low-dose fluoride
is safe for children's bones came from US bomb program scientists,
according to this investigation.
Now, researchers who
have reviewed these declassified documents fear that Cold War
national security considerations may have prevented objective
scientific evaluation of vital public health questions concerning
fluoride.
"Information
was buried," concludes Dr Phyllis Mullenix, former head of
toxicology at Forsyth Dental Center in Boston and now a critic
of fluoridation. Animal studies which Mullenix and co-workers
conducted at Forsyth in the early 1990s indicated that fluoride
was a powerful central nervous system (CNS) toxin and might adversely
affect human brain functioning even at low doses. (New epidemiological
evidence from China adds support, showing a correlation between
low-dose fluoride exposure and diminished IQ in children.) Mullenix's
results were published in 1995 in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific
journal.2
During her investigation,
Mullenix was astonished to discover there had been virtually no
previous US studies of fluoride's effects on the human brain.
Then, her application for a grant to continue her CNS research
was turned down by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH),
when an NIH panel flatly told her that "fluoride does not
have central nervous system effects".
Declassified documents
of the US atomic bomb program indicate otherwise. A Manhattan
Project memorandum of 29 April 1944 states: "Clinical evidence
suggests that uranium hexafluoride may have a rather marked central
nervous system effect... It seems most likely that the F [code
for fluoride] component rather than the T[code for uranium] is
the causative factor." The memo, from a captain in the medical
corps, is stamped SECRET and is addressed to Colonel Stafford
Warren, head of the Manhattan Project's Medical Section. Colonel
Warren is asked to approve a program of animal research on CNS
effects. "Since work with these compounds is essential, it
will be necessary to know in advance what mental effects may occur
after exposure... This is important not only to protect a given
individual, but also to prevent a confused workman from injuring
others by improperly performing his duties."
On the same day, Colonel
Warren approved the CNS research program. This was in 1944, at
the height of World War II and the US nation's race to build the
world's first atomic bomb.
For research on fluoride's
CNS effects to be approved at such a momentous time, the supporting
evidence set forth in the proposal forwarded along with the memo
must have been persuasive. The proposal, however, is missing from
the files at the US National Archives. "If you find the memos
but the document they refer to is missing, it's probably still
classified," said Charles Reeves, chief librarian at the
Atlanta branch of the US National Archives and Records Administration
where the memos were found. Similarly, no results of the Manhattan
Project's fluoride CNS research could be found in the files.
After reviewing the
memos, Mullenix declared herself "flabbergasted". "How
could I be told by NIH that fluoride has no central nervous system
effects, when these documents were sitting there all the time?"
She reasons that the Manhattan Project did do fluoride CNS studies:
"That kind of warning, that fluoride workers might be a danger
to the bomb program by improperly performing their duties-I can't
imagine that would be ignored." But she suggests that the
results were buried because of the difficult legal and public
relations problems they might create for the government.
The author of the
1944 CNS research proposal attached to the 29 April memo was Dr
Harold C. Hodge-at the time, chief of fluoride toxicology studies
for the University of Rochester division of the Manhattan Project.
Nearly 50 years later
at the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, Dr Mullenix was introduced
to a gently ambling elderly man, brought in to serve as a consultant
on her CNS research. This man was Harold C. Hodge. By then, Hodge
had achieved status emeritus as a world authority on fluoride
safety. "But even though he was supposed to be helping me,"
said Mullenix, "he never once mentioned the CNS work he had
done for the Manhattan Project."
The "black hole"
in fluoride CNS research since the days of the Manhattan Project
is unacceptable to Mullenix who refuses to abandon the issue.
"There is so much fluoride exposure now, and we simply do
not know what it is doing. You can't just walk away from this."
Dr Antonio Noronha,
an NIH scientific review advisor familiar with Dr Mullenix's grant
request, told us that her proposal was rejected by a scientific
peer-review group. He termed her claim of institutional bias against
fluoride CNS research "far-fetched". He then added:
"We strive very hard at NIH to make sure politics does not
enter the picture.
The New Jersey
Fluoride Pollution Incident
The documentary trail
begins at the height of World War II, in 1944, when a severe pollution
incident occurred downwind of the E.I. DuPont de Nemours Company
chemical factory in Deepwater, New Jersey. The factory was then
producing millions of pounds of fluoride for the Manhattan Project
whose scientists were racing to produce the world's first atomic
bomb.
The farms downwind
in Gloucester and Salem counties were famous for their high-quality
produce. Their peaches went directly to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel
in New York City; their tomatoes were bought up by Campbell's
Soup.
But in the summer
of 1944 the farmers began reporting that their crops were blighted:
"Something is burning up the peach crops around here."
They said that poultry died after an all-night thunderstorm, and
that farm workers who ate produce they'd picked would sometimes
vomit all night and into the next day.
"I remember our
horses looked sick and were too stiff to work," Mildred Giordano,
a teenager at the time, told these reporters. Some cows were so
crippled that they could not stand up; they could only graze by
crawling on their bellies.
The account was confirmed
in taped interviews with Philip Sadtler (shortly before he died),
of Sadtler Laboratories of Philadelphia, one of the nation's oldest
chemical consulting firms. Sadtler had personally conducted the
initial investigation of the damage.
Although the farmers
did not know it, the attention of the Manhattan Project and the
federal government was rivetted on the New Jersey incident, according
to once-secret documents obtained by these reporters.
A memo, dated 27 August
1945, from Manhattan Project chief Major-General Leslie R. Groves
to the Commanding General of Army Service Forces at the Pentagon,
concerns the investigation of crop damage at Lower Penns Neck,
New Jersey. It states: "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."
After the war's end,
Dr Harold C. Hodge, the Manhattan Project's chief of fluoride
toxicology studies, worriedly wrote in a secret memo (1 March
1946) to his boss, Colonel Stafford L. Warren, chief of the Medical
Section, about "problems associated with the question of
fluoride contamination of the atmosphere in a certain section
of New Jersey".
"There seem to
be four distinct (though related) problems:
1. A question of injury of the peach crop in 1944.
2. A report of extraordinary fluoride content of vegetables grown
in this area.
3. A report of abnormally high fluoride content in the blood of
human individuals residing in this area.
4. A report raising the question of serious poisoning of horses
and cattle in this area."
Fluoride Damage:
The First Lawsuits
The New Jersey farmers
waited until the war was over before suing DuPont and the Manhattan
Project for fluoride damage-reportedly the first lawsuits against
the US atomic bomb program. Although seemingly trivial, the lawsuits
shook the government, the secret documents reveal.
Under the personal
direction of Major-General Groves, secret meetings were convened
in Washington, with compulsory attendance by scores of scientists
and officials from the US War Department, the Manhattan Project,
the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture and Justice
departments, the US Army's Chemical Warfare Service and Edgewood
Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, as well as lawyers from DuPont.
Declassified memos of the meetings reveal a secret mobilisation
of the full
forces of the government to defeat the New Jersey farmers.
In a memo (2 May 1946)
copied to General Groves, Manhattan Project Lt Colonel Cooper
B. Rhodes notes that 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".
Regarding these lawsuits,
General Groves wrote to the Chairman of the Senate Special Committee
on Atomic Energy in a memo of 28 February 1946, advising that
"the Department of Justice is cooperating in the defense
of these suits".
Why the national security
emergency over a few lawsuits by New Jersey farmers? In 1946 the
United States began full-scale production of atomic bombs. No
other nation had yet tested a nuclear weapon, and the A-bomb was
seen as crucial for US leadership of the postwar world. The New
Jersey fluoride lawsuits were a serious roadblock to that strategy.
"The specter of endless lawsuits haunted the military,"
wrote Lansing Lamont in Day of Trinity, his acclaimed book about
the first atomic bomb test.3
"If the farmers
won, it would open the door to further suits which might impede
the bomb program's ability to use fluoride," commented Jacqueline
Kittrell, a Tennessee public interest lawyer who examined the
declassified fluoride documents. (Kittrell specialises in nuclear-related
litigation and has represented plaintiffs in several human radiation
experiment cases.) "The reports of human injury were especially
threatening because of the potential for enormous settlements-not
to mention the PR problem," she added.
Indeed, DuPont was
particularly concerned about the "possible psychologic reaction"
to the New Jersey pollution incident, according to a secret Manhattan
Project memo of 1 March 1946. Facing a threat from the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) to embargo the region's produce because
of "high fluoride content", DuPont dispatched its lawyers
to the FDA offices in Washington, DC, where an agitated meeting
ensued. According to a memo sent next day to General Groves, DuPont's
lawyer argued that
"in view of the pending suits...any action by the Food and
Drug 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".
There was no embargo.
Instead, according to General Groves' memo of 27 August 1946,
new tests for fluoride in the New Jersey area were to be conducted
not by the Department of Agriculture but by the US Army's Chemical
Warfare Service (CWS)-because "work done by the Chemical
Warfare Service would carry the greatest weight as evidence if...lawsuits
are started by the complainants".
Meanwhile, the public
relations problem remained unresolved: local citizens were in
a panic about fluoride. The farmers' spokesman, Willard B. Kille,
was personally invited to dine with General Groves (then known
as "the man who built the atomic bomb") at his office
at the War Department on 26 March 1946. Although diagnosed by
his doctor as having fluoride poisoning, Kille departed the luncheon
convinced of the government's good faith. Next day he wrote to
the general, expressing his wish that
the other farmers could have been present so that "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".
A broader solution
to the public relations problem was suggested by Manhattan Project
chief fluoride toxicologist Harold C. Hodge in a second secret
memo (1 May 1946) to Medical Section chief Colonel Warren: "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?" Such lectures were indeed given, not
only to New Jersey citizens
but to the rest of the nation throughout the Cold War.
The New Jersey farmers'
lawsuits were ultimately stymied by the government's refusal to
reveal the key piece of information that would have settled the
case: how much fluoride DuPont had vented into the atmosphere
during the war. "Disclosure would be injurious to the military
security of the United States," Manhattan Project Major C.
A. Taney, Jr, had written in a memo soon after the war's end (24
September 1945).
The farmers were pacified
with token financial settlements, according to interviews with
descendants still living in the area.
"All we knew
is that DuPont released some chemical that burned up all the peach
trees around here," recalled Angelo Giordano whose father
James was one of the original plaintiffs. "The trees were
no good after that, so we had to give up on the peaches."
Their horses and cows acted and walked stiffly, recalled his sister
Mildred. "Could any of that have been the fluoride?"
she asked. (The symptoms she detailed are cardinal signs of fluoride
toxicity, according to veterinary toxicologists.) The Giordano
family has also been plagued by bone and joint problems, Mildred
added. Recalling the settlement received by the family, Angelo
Giordano told these reporters that his father said he "got
about $200".
The farmers were stonewalled
in their search for information about fluoride's effects on their
health, and their complaints have long since been forgotten. But
they unknowingly left their imprint on history: their complaints
of injury to their health reverberated through the corridors of
power in Washington and triggered intensive, secret, bomb program
research on the health effects of fluoride.
"Program
F": Secret Fluoirde Research
A secret memo (2 May
1946) to General Groves from Manhattan Project Lt Colonel Rhodes
states: "Because of complaints that animals and humans have
been injured by hydrogen fluoride fumes in [the New Jersey] area,
although there are no pending suits involving such claims, the
University of Rochester is conducting experiments to determine
the toxic effect of fluoride."
Much of the proof
of fluoride's alleged safety in low doses rests on the postwar
work done at the University of Rochester in anticipation of lawsuits
against the bomb program for human injury.
For the top-secret
Manhattan Project to delegate fluoride safety studies to the University
of Rochester was not surprising. During WWII the US Federal Government
became involved for the first time in large-scale funding of scientific
research at government-owned labs and private colleges. Those
early spending priorities were shaped by the nation's often-secret
military needs.
The prestigious upstate
New York college in particular had housed a key wartime division
of the Manhattan Project to study the health effects of the new
"special materials" such as uranium, plutonium, beryllium
and fluoride which were being used in making the atomic bomb.
That work continued after the war, with millions of dollars flowing
from the Manhattan Project and its successor organisation, the
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). (Indeed, the bomb left an indelible
imprint on all of US science in the late 1940s and 1950s. Up to
90 per cent of all federal funds for university research came
from either the Department of Defense or the AEC in this period,
according to Noam Chomsky in his 1997 book, The Cold War and the
University.4)
The University of
Rochester Medical School became a revolving door for senior bomb-program
scientists. The postwar faculty included Stafford Warren, the
top medical officer of the Manhattan Project, and Harold C. Hodge,
chief of fluoride research for the bomb program.
But this marriage
of military secrecy and medical science bore deformed offspring.
The University of Rochester's classified fluoride studies, code-named
"Program F", were started during the war and continued
up until the early 1950s. They were conducted at its Atomic Energy
Project (AEP), a top-secret facility funded by the AEC and housed
at Strong Memorial Hospital. It was there that one of the most
notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War took place,
in which unsuspecting hospital
patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium.
Revelation of this experiment-in a Pulitzer Prize&endash;winning
account by Eileen Welsome-led to a 1995 US presidential investigation
and a multimillion-dollar cash settlement for victims.
Program F was not
about children's teeth. It grew directly out of litigation against
the bomb program, and its main purpose was to furnish scientific
ammunition which the government and its nuclear contractors could
use to defeat lawsuits for human injury. Program F's director
was none other than Dr Harold C. Hodge- who led the Manhattan
Project investigation of alleged human injury in the New Jersey
fluoride pollution incident.
Program F's purpose
is spelled out in a classified 1948 report. It reads: "To
supply evidence useful in the litigation arising from an alleged
loss of a fruit crop several years ago, a number of problems have
been opened. Since excessive blood-fluoride levels were reported
in human residents of the same area, our principal effort has
been devoted to describing the relationship of blood fluorides
to toxic effects."
The litigation referred
to and the claims of human injury were of course against the bomb
program and its contractors. Thus the purpose of Program F was
to obtain evidence useful in litigation against the bomb program.
The research was being conducted by the defendants.
The potential conflict
of interest is clear. If lower dose ranges were found hazardous
by Program F, this might have opened the bomb program and its
contractors to public outcry and lawsuits for injury to human
health.
Lawyer Jacqueline
Kittrell commented further: "This and other documents indicate
that the University of Rochester's fluoride research grew out
of the New Jersey lawsuits and was performed in anticipation of
lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury. Studies undertaken
for litigation purposes by the defendants would not be considered
scientifically acceptable today because of their inherent bias
to prove the chemical safe."
Unfortunately, much
of the proof of fluoride's safety rests on the work performed
by Program F scientists at the University of Rochester. During
the postwar period, that university emerged as the leading academic
centre for establishing the safety of fluoride as well as its
effectiveness in reducing tooth decay, according to Rochester
Dental School spokesperson William H. Bowen, MD. The key figure
in this research, Bowen said, was Dr Harold C. Hodge-who also
became a leading national proponent of fluoridating public drinking
water.
The A-Bomb
and Water Fluoridation
Program F's interest
in water fluoridation was not just "to counteract the local
fear of fluoride on the part of residents", as Hodge had
earlier written to Colonel Warren. The bomb program required human
studies of fluoride's effects, just as it needed human studies
of plutonium's effects. Adding fluoride to public water supplies
provided one opportunity.
Bomb-program scientists
played a prominent, if unpublicised, role in the nation's first-planned
water fluoridation experiment in Newburgh, New York. The Newburgh
Demonstration Project is considered the most extensive study of
the health effects of fluoridation, supplying much of the evidence
that low doses are allegedly safe for children's bones and good
for their teeth.
Planning began in
1943 with the appointment of a special New York State Health Department
committee to study the advisability of adding fluoride to Newburgh's
drinking water. The chairman of the committee was, again, Dr Harold
C. Hodge, then chief of fluoride toxicity studies for the Manhattan
Project. Subsequent members of the committee included Henry L.
Barnett, a captain in the Project's Medical Section, and John
W. Fertig, in 1944 with the Office of Scientific Research and
Development-the super-secret Pentagon group which sired the Manhattan
Project. Their military affiliations were kept secret. Hodge was
described as a pharmacologist, Barnett as a
paediatrician. Placed in charge of the Newburgh project was David
B. Ast, chief dental officer of the New York State Health Department.
Ast had participated in a key secret wartime conference on fluoride,
held by the Manhattan Project in January 1944, and later worked
with Dr Hodge on the Project's investigation of human injury in
the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret memos.
The committee recommended
that Newburgh be fluoridated. It selected the types of medical
studies to be done, and it also "provided expert guidance"
for the duration of the experiment.
The key question to
be answered was: "Are there any cumulative effects, beneficial
or otherwise, on tissues and organs other than the teeth, of long-continued
ingestion of such small concentrations?" According to the
declassified documents, this was also key information sought by
the bomb program. In fact, the program would require "long-continued"
exposure of workers and communities to fluoride throughout the
Cold War.
In May 1945, Newburgh's
water was fluoridated, and over the next 10 years its residents
were studied by the New York State Health Department.
In tandem, Program
F conducted its own secret studies, focusing on the amounts of
fluoride Newburgh citizens retained in their blood and tissues-information
called for by the bomb program in connection with litigation.
"Possible toxic effects of fluoride were in the forefront
of consideration," the advisory committee stated. Health
department personnel cooperated, shipping blood and placenta samples
to the Program F team at the University of Rochester. The samples
were collected by Dr David B. Overton, the department's chief
of paediatric studies at Newburgh.
The final report of
the Newburgh Demonstration Project, published in 1956 in the Journal
of the American Dental Association,5 concluded that "small
concentrations" of fluoride were safe for US citizens. The
biological proof, "based on work performed...at the University
of Rochester Atomic Energy Project", was delivered by Dr
Hodge.
Today, news that scientists
from the A-bomb program secretly shaped and guided the Newburgh
fluoridation experiment and studied the citizens' blood and tissue
samples is greeted with incredulity.
"I'm shocked...beyond
words," said present-day Newburgh Mayor Audrey Carey, commenting
on these reporters' findings. "It reminds me of the Tuskegee
experiment that was done on syphilis patients down in Alabama."
As a child in the
early 1950s, Mayor Carey was taken to the old Newburgh firehouse
on Broadway which housed the public health clinic. There, doctors
from the Newburgh fluoridation project studied her teeth, and
a peculiar fusion of two fingerbones on her left hand which she's
had since birth. (Carey said that her granddaughter has white
dental-fluorosis marks on her front teeth.)
Mayor Carey wants
answers from the government about the secret history of fluoride
and the Newburgh fluoridation experiment. "I absolutely want
to pursue it," she said. "It is appalling to do any
kind of experimentation and study without people's knowledge and
permission."
When contacted by
these reporters, the now 95-year-old David B. Ast, former director
of the Newburgh experiment, said he was unaware that Manhattan
Project scientists were involved. "If I had known, I would
have been certainly investigating why, and what the connection
was," he said. Did he know that blood and placenta samples
from Newburgh were being sent to bomb-program researchers at the
University of Rochester? "I was not aware of it," Ast
replied. Did he recall participating in the Manhattan
Project's secret wartime conference on fluoride in January 1944,
or going to New Jersey with Dr Hodge to investigate human injury
in the DuPont case, as secret memos state? He told these reporters
he had no recollection of any such events.
Bob Loeb, a spokesperson
for the University of Rochester Medical Center, confirmed that
blood and tissue samples from Newburgh had been tested by the
University's Dr. Hodge. On the ethics of secretly studying US
citizens to obtain information useful in litigation against the
A-bomb program, he said: "That's a question we cannot answer."
He referred inquiries to the US Department of Energy (DOE), successor
to the Atomic Energy Commission.
Jayne Brady, a spokesperson
for the Department of Energy in Washington confirmed that a review
of DOE files indicated that a "significant reason" for
fluoride experiments conducted at the University of Rochester
after the war was "impending litigation between the DuPont
company and residents of New Jersey areas". However, she
added: "DOE has found no documents to indicate that fluoride
research was done to protect the Manhattan Project or its contractors
from lawsuits."
On Manhattan Project
involvement in Newburgh, Brady stated: "Nothing that we have
suggests that the DOE or predecessor agencies-especially the Manhattan
Project-authorised fluoride experiments to be performed on children
in the 1940s."
When told that these
reporters have several documents that directly tie the AEP-the
Manhattan Project's successor agency at the University of Rochester-to
the Newburgh experiment, DOE spokesperson Brady later conceded
her study was confined to "the available universe" of
documents.
Two days later, Brady
faxed a statement for clarification. "My search only involved
the documents that we collected as part of our human radiation
experiments project; fluoride was not part of our research effort."
"Most significantly,"
the statement continued, "relevant documents may be in a
classified collection at the DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
known as the Records Holding Task Group. This collection consists
entirely of classified documents removed from other files for
the purpose of classified document accountability many years ago
[and was] a rich source of documents for the human radiation experiments
projects."
Suppression
of Adverse Health Findings
The crucial question arising from the investigation is whether
adverse health findings from Newburgh and other bomb-program fluoride
studies were suppressed. All AEC-funded studies had to be declassified
before publication in civilian medical and dental journals. Where
are the original classified versions?
The transcript of
one of the major secret scientific conferences of World War II-on
"fluoride metabolism"-is missing from the files of the
US National Archives and is "probably still classified",
according to the librarian. Participants in the January 1944 conference
included key figures who promoted the safety of fluoride and water
fluoridation to the public after the war: Harold Hodge of the
Manhattan Project, David B. Ast of the Newburgh Demonstration
Project, and US Public Health Service dentist
H. Trendley Dean, popularly known as "the father of fluoridation".
A WWII Manhattan Project
c lassified report (25 July 1944) on water fluoridation is missing
from the files of the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project,
the US National Archives, and the Nuclear Repository at the University
of Tennessee, Knoxville. The next four numerically consecutive
documents are also missing, while the remainder of the "M-1500
series" is present.
"Either those
documents are still classified, or they've been 'disappeared'
by the government," said Clifford Honicker, Executive Director
of the American Environmental Health Studies Project in Knoxville,
Tennessee, which provided key evidence in the public exposure
and prosecution of US human radiation experiments.
Seven pages have been
cut out of a 1947 Rochester bomb project notebook entitled "DuPont
Litigation". "Most unusual," commented the medical
school's chief archivist, Chris Hoolihan.
Similarly, Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) requests lodged by these reporters over
a year ago with the DOE for hundreds of classified fluoride reports
have failed to dislodge any. "We're behind," explained
Amy Rothrock, chief FOIA officer at Oak Ridge National Laboratories.
So, has information
been suppressed? These reporters made what appears to be the first
discovery of the original classified version of a fluoride safety
study by bomb program scientists. A censored version of this study
was later published in the August 1948 Journal of the American
Dental Association.6 Comparison of the secret version with the
published version indicates that the US AEC did censor damaging
information on fluoride-to the point of tragicomedy. This was
a study of the dental and physical health of workers in a factory
producing fluoride for the A-bomb program; it was conducted by
a team of dentists from the Manhattan Project.
€ The secret
version reports that most of the men had no teeth left. The published
version reports only that the men had fewer cavities.
€ The secret version says the men had to wear rubber boots
because the fluoride fumes disintegrated the nails in their shoes.
The published version does not mention this.
€ The secret version says the fluoride may have acted similarly
on the men's teeth, contributing to their toothlessness. The published
version omits this statement and concludes that "the men
were unusually healthy, judged from both a medical and dental
point of view".
After comparing the
secret and published versions of the censored study, toxicologist
Phyllis Mullenix commented: "This makes me ashamed to be
a scientist." Of other Cold War&endash;era fluoride safety
studies, she asked: "Were they all done like this?"
Asked for comment
on the early links of the Manhattan Project to water fluoridation,
Dr Harold Slavkin, Director of the National Institute for Dental
Research-the US agency which today funds fluoride research-said:
"I wasn't aware of any input from the Atomic Energy Commission."
Nevertheless, he insisted that fluoride's efficacy and
safety in the prevention of dental cavities over the last 50 years
is well proved. "The motivation of a scientist is often different
from the outcome," he reflected. "I do not hold a prejudice
about where the knowledge comes from."
Endnotes:
1. Dale, Peter P., and McCauley, H. B, "Dental Conditions
in Workers Chronically Exposed to Dilute and Anhydrous Hydrofluoric
Acid", Journal of the American Dental Association, vol. 37,
no. 2, August 1948, pp. 131-140. Note that Dale and McCauley were
both Manhattan Project and, later, Program F personnel; they also
authored the secret Manhattan Project paper.
2. Mullenix, Phyllis et al., "Neurotoxicity of Sodium Fluoride
in Rats", Neurotoxicology and Teratology, vol. 17, no. 2,
1995, pp. 169-177.
3. Lamont, Lansing, Day of Trinity, Atheneum, New York City, 1965.
4. Chomsky, Noam, The Cold War and the University, New Press,
New York City, 1997 (distributed by W.W. Norton & Co. Inc.,
NYC).
5. Hodge, H. C., "Fluoride metabolism: its significance in
water fluoridation", in "Newburgh-Kingston caries-fluorine
study: final report", Journal of the American Dental Association,
vol. 52, March 1956.
6. Dale and McCauley, ibid.
About the
Authors:
Joel Griffiths is a medical writer based in New York City. He
is the author of a book on radiation hazards that included one
of the first revelations of human radiation experiments, and has
contributed numerous articles to medical journals and popular
publications.
Chris Bryson, who holds a Master's degree in journalism, is an
independent reporter for BBC Radio, ABC-TV and public television
in New York City, and writes for a variety of publications.
The authors wish to
thank Clifford Honicker, Executive Director of the American Environmental
Health Studies Project, Knoxville, TN, for his indispensable archival
research.
Resources:
Copies of 155 pages of supporting documents, including all the
declassified papers referred to in this article, can be obtained
from the following contacts for a small fee to cover copying and
postage:
€ Australia: Australian Fluoridation News, GPO Box 935G,
Melbourne, Victoria 3001, phone (03) 9592 5088, fax (03) 9592
4544.
€ New Zealand: New Zealand Pure Water Association, 278 Dickson
Road, Papamoa, Bay of Plenty, phone (07) 542 0499.
€ UK: National Pure Water Association of the UK, 12 Dennington
Lane, Crigglestone, Wakefield, WF4 3ET, phone 01924 254433, fax
01924 242380.
€ USA: Waste Not newsletter, 82 Judson Street, Canton, NY
13617, phone (315) 379 9200, fax (315) 379 0448, e-mail wastenot@northnet.org.
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