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FLUORIDE, TEETH
AND THE ATOMIC BOMB
BY JOEL
GRIFFITHS AND CHRIS BRYSON
Some
fifty years after the United States began adding
fluoride to public water supplies to reduce cavities
in children's teeth, declassified government
documents are shedding new light on the roots of
that still-controversial public health measure,
revealing a surprising connection between fluoride
and the dawning of the nuclear age.
Today, two thirds of U.S. 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 this nation
prevailed by building the world's first atomic bomb,
U.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 documents
obtained by Griffiths and Bryson --including
declassified papers of the Manhattan Project, the
U.S. military group that built the atomic bomb.
Fluoride was the key chemical in atomic bomb
production, according to the documents. Massive
quantities of fluoride-- 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 rapidly emerged as the leading chemical
health hazard of the U.S 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
defense contractors for fluoride injury to
citizens. The first lawsuits against the U.S.
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 U.S. study of the health
effects of fluoridating public drinking
water--conducted in Newburgh, New York from 1945
to 1956. Then, in a classified operation
code-named "Program F," they secretly gathered and
analyzed blood and tissue samples from Newburgh
citizens, with the cooperation of State Health
Department personnel.
-
The original
secret version--obtained by these reporters--of a
1948 study published by Program F scientists in
the Journal of the American Dental Association
shows that evidence of adverse health effects from
fluoride was censored by the U.S. 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 mind-set, in which "national
security" was paramount.
-
The U.S.
government's conflict of interest--and its motive
to prove fluoride "safe" -- has not until now been
made clear to the general public in the furious
debate over water fluoridation since the 1950's,
nor to civilian researchers and health
professionals, or 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 aluminum to pesticides: fluoride is
a critical industrial chemical.
The impact can be seen, literally, in the smiles of
our children. Large numbers of U.S. young people--up
to 80 percent in some cities--now have dental
fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive
fluoride exposure, according to the U.S. 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," explains Paul
Connett, Professor of Chemistry at St. Lawrence
University (N.Y.). In recent years, pediatric bone
specialists have expressed alarm about an increase
in stress fractures among U.S. young people. Connett
and other scientists are concerned that fluoride
--linked to bone damage by studies since the
1930's-- 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 U.S. 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 Mullenix and co-workers
conducted at Forsyth in the early 1990's 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 I.Q. in children.) Mullenix's results
were published in 1995, in a reputable peer-reviewed
scientific journal.
During her
investigation, Mullenix was astonished to discover
there had been virtually no previous U.S. 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 U.S. National Institutes of
Health (NIH), where an NIH panel, she says, flatly
told her that "fluoride does not have central
nervous system effects."
Declassified documents of the U.S. atomic-bomb
program indicate otherwise. An April 29, 1944
Manhattan Project memo reports: "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 --stamped "secret"-- is addressed to the
head of the Manhattan Project's Medical Section,
Colonel Stafford Warren. 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
the Second World War and the 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 of
the U.S. National Archives. "If you find the memos,
but the document they refer to is missing, its
probably still classified," said Charles Reeves,
chief librarian at the Atlanta branch of the U.S.
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." She went on, "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 that the
results were buried because they might create a
difficult legal and public relations problem for the
government.
The author of the 1944 CNS research proposal was Dr.
Harold C. Hodge, at the time chief of fluoride
toxicology studies for the University of Rochester
division of the Manhattan Project. Nearly fifty
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--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," says 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," she says. "You can't
just walk away from this."
Dr. Antonio Noronha,
an NIH scientific review advisor familiar with Dr.
Mullenix's grant request, says her proposal was
rejected by a scientific peer-review group. He terms
her claim of institutional bias against fluoride CNS
research "farfetched." He adds, "We strive very hard
at NIH to make sure politics does not enter the
picture."
Fluoride and National Security
The documentary trail begins at the height of WW2,
in 1944, when a severe pollution incident occurred
downwind of the E.I. du Pont du Nemours Company
chemical factory in Deepwater, New Jersey. The
factory was then producing millions of pounds of
fluoride for the Manhattan project, the ultra-secret
U.S. military program 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. Their tomatoes were bought up by
Campbell's Soup.
But in the summer of 1943, the farmers began to
report that their crops were blighted, and that
"something is burning up the peach crops around
here."
Poultry died after an all-night thunderstorm, they
reported. Farm workers who ate the produce they had
picked sometimes vomited all night and into the next
day. "I remember our horses looked sick and were too
stiff to work," these reporters were told by Mildred
Giordano, who was a teenager at the time. Some cows
were so crippled they could not stand up, and grazed
by crawling on their bellies.
The account was confirmed in taped interviews,
shortly before he died, with Philip Sadtler 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 riveted on the New Jersey incident, according to
once-secret documents obtained by these reporters.
After the war's end, in a secret Manhattan Project
memo dated March 1, 1946, the Project's chief of
fluoride toxicology studies, Harold C. Hodge,
worriedly wrote to his boss Colonel Stafford L.
Warren, Chief of the Medical Division, 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," continued Hodge;
"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."
The New Jersey farmers waited until the war was
over, then sued du Pont and the Manhattan Project
for fluoride damage -- reportedly the first lawsuits
against the U.S. A-bomb program.
Although seemingly trivial, the lawsuits shook the
government, the secret documents reveal. Under the
personal direction of Manhattan Project chief Major
General Leslie R.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 Army's Chemical Warfare Service
and Edgewood Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, and
du Pont lawyers. Declassified memos of the meetings
reveal a secret mobilization of the full forces of
the government to defeat the New Jersey farmers:
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 Manhattan Project Lieutenant Colonel
Cooper B. Rhodes, in a memo c.c.'d to General
Groves.
27 August 1945
Subject: Investigation of Crop
Damage at Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey
To: 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
"The Department of Justice is
cooperating in the defense of these suits,"
wrote General Groves in a Feb. 28, 1946 memo to the
Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on
Atomic Energy.
Why the 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 lawsuits were a serious roadblock to that
strategy.
"The specter of endless lawsuits haunted the
military," writes Lansing Lamont in his acclaimed
book about the first atomic bomb test, "Day of
Trinity."
In the case of fluoride, "If the farmers won, it
would open the door to further suits, which might
impede the bomb program's ability to use fluoride,"
said 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."
Indeed, du Pont 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
region's produce because of "high fluoride content,"
du Pont dispatched its lawyers to the FDA offices in
Washington, where an agitated meeting ensued.
According to a memo sent next day to General Groves,
Du Pont'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
du Pont 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, new tests for
fluoride in the New Jersey area would be conducted
-- not by the Department of Agriculture -- but by
the U.S. Army's 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.
Meanwhile, the
public relations problem remained unresolved --
local citizens were in a panic about fluoride.
The farmer's 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 March 26,
1946. Although he had been diagnosed with fluoride
poisoning by his doctor, Kille departed the luncheon
convinced of the government's good faith. The next
day he wrote to 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."
In a subsequent secret Manhattan project memo, a
broader solution to the public relations problem was
suggested by chief fluoride toxicologist Harold C.
Hodge. He wrote to the Medical Section chief, Col.
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 du Pont 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.
The farmers were pacified with token financial
settlements, according to interviews with
descendants still living in the area.
"All we knew is that du Pont released some chemical
that burned up all the peach trees around here,"
recalls 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, too, acted stiff and walked
stiff, recalls his sister Mildred. "Could any of
that have been the fluoride ?" she asked. (The
symptoms she detailed to the authors are cardinal
signs of fluoride toxicity, according to veterinary
toxicologists.)
The Giordano family, too, has been plagued by bone
and joint problems, Mildred adds. Recalling the
settlement received by the Giordanos, Angelo told
these reporters that "my father said he got about
$200."
The farmers were stonewalled in their search for
information, and their complaints have long since
been forgotten. But they unknowingly left their
imprint on history -- their claims 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. A secret 1945 memo from Manhattan Project
Lt. Col. Rhodes to General Groves stated: "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 safety in low doses
rests on the postwar work performed by the
University of Rochester, in anticipation of lawsuits
against the bomb program for human injury.
Fluoride and the Cold War.
Delegating fluoride safety studies to the University
of Rochester was not surprising. During WWII the
federal government had become 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, studying the health effects of
the new "special materials," such as uranium,
plutonium, beryllium and fluoride, being used to
make the atomic bomb. That work continued after the
war, with millions of dollars flowing from the
Manhattan Project and its successor organization,
the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). (Indeed, the
bomb left an indelible imprint on all U.S. science
in the late 1940's and 50's. Up to 90% of federal
funds for university research came from either the
Defense Department or the AEC in this period,
according to Noam Chomsky's 1996 book "The Cold War
and the University.")
The University of Rochester medical school became a
revolving door for senior bomb program scientists.
Postwar faculty included Stafford Warren, the top
medical officer of the Manhattan Project, and Harold
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 conducted at its Atomic
Energy Project (AEP), a top-secret facility funded
by the AEC and housed in 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-winning account by Eileen Welsome led to a
1995 U.S. Presidential investigation, and a
multimillion-dollar cash settlement for victims.
(Read Eileen Welsome's account of the U. of
Rochester's Medical Experimentation at http://www.fluoridealert.org/p-files.htm)
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
Harold C. Hodge, who had 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, of course, and the
claims of human injury were 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,
it might have opened the bomb program and its
contractors to lawsuits for injury to human health,
as well as public outcry.
Comments lawyer Kittrell: "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," adds
Kittrell, "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 center for establishing the safety
of fluoride, as well as its effectiveness in
reducing tooth decay, according to Dental School
spokesperson William H. Bowen, MD. The key figure in
this research, Bowen said, was Harold C. Hodge-- who
also became a leading national proponent of
fluoridating public drinking water. 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. The bomb
program needed human studies, as they had needed
human studies for plutonium, and adding fluoride to
public water supplies provided one opportunity.
The A-Bomb Program and Water
Fluoridation
Bomb-program scientists played a prominent -- if
unpublicized -- 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 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 Dr. Hodge, then chief of fluoride
toxicity studies for the Manhattan Project.
Subsequent members 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 Pentagon group which
sired the Manhattan Project. Their military
affiliations were kept secret: Hodge was described
as a pharmacologist, Barnett as a pediatrician.
Placed in charge of the Newburgh project was David
B. Ast, chief dental officer of the State Health
Department. Ast had participated in a key secret
wartime conference on fluoride held by the Manhattan
Project, 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 also selected the types of medical
studies to be done, and "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,
which 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 ten years its residents were studied
by the 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 - key information sought by
the bomb program: "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 pediatric
studies at Newburgh.
The final report of the Newburgh Demonstration
Project, published in 1956 in the Journal of the
American Dental Association, concluded that "small
concentrations" of fluoride were safe for
U.S.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 atomic bomb
program secretly shaped and guided the Newburgh
fluoridation experiment, and studied the citizen's
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 1950's, Mayor Carey was
taken to the old firehouse on Broadway in Newburgh,
which housed the Public Health Clinic. There,
doctors from the Newburgh fluoridation project
studied her teeth, and a peculiar fusion of two
finger bones on her left hand she had been born
with. Today, adds Carey, 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."
Contacted by these reporters, the director of the
Newburgh experiment, David B. Ast, says he was
unaware 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 du Pont case--as secret memos
state? He told the reporters he had no recollection
of these events.
A spokesperson for the University of Rochester
Medical Center, Bob Loeb, confirmed that blood and
tissue samples from Newburgh had been tested by the
University's Dr. Hodge. On the ethics of secretly
studying U.S 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 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),
successor to the Atomic Energy Commission.
A spokesperson for the DOE in Washington, Jayne
Brady, 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
du Pont 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, the
spokesperson stated, "Nothing that we have suggests
that the DOE or predecessor agencies -- especially
the Manhattan Project -- authorized fluoride
experiments to be performed on children in the
1940's."
When told that the reporters had several documents
that directly tied the Manhattan Project's successor
agency at the University of Rochester, the AEP, to
the Newburgh experiment, the DOE spokesperson later
conceded her study was confined to "the available
universe" of documents. Two days later spokesperson
Jayne 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 project," she said.
The crucial question arising from this investigation
is: Were adverse health findings from Newburgh and
other bomb-program fluoride studies 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 WW2--on "fluoride metabolism"--is
missing from the files of the U.S. National
Archives. Participants in the 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 Project, and U.S. Public Health
Service dentist H.Trendley Dean, popularly known as
the "father of fluoridation." "If it is missing from
the files, it is probably still classified,"
National Archives librarians told these reporters.
A 1944 WW2 Manhattan Project classified report on
water fluoridation is missing from the files of the
University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project, the
U.S. 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 "MP-1500 series"
is present. "Either those documents are still
classified, or they've been 'disappeared' by the
government," says 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 U.S. human radiation experiments.
Seven pages have been cut out of a 1947 Rochester
bomb-project notebook entitled "Du Pont litigation."
"Most unusual," commented chief medical school
archivist Chris Hoolihan.
Similarly, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests by these authors over a year ago with the
DOE for hundreds of classified fluoride reports have
failed to dislodge any. "We're behind," explained
Amy Rothrock, FOIA officer for the Department of
Energy at their Oak Ridge operations.
Was information 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.
Comparison of the secret with the published version
indicates that the U.S. 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, 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.
The published
version concludes that "the men were unusually
healthy, judged from both a medical and dental point
of view."
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 U.S. agency which today funds
fluoride research, said, "I wasn't aware of any
input from the Atomic Energy Commission."
Nevertheless, he insisted, fluoride's efficacy and
safety in the prevention of dental cavities over the
last fifty 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."
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-era fluoride safety
studies, she asks, "Were they all done like this?"
Archival research by
Clifford Honicker
About the authors :
Joel Griffiths is a medical
writer in New York City, author of a book on
radiation hazards and numerous articles for medical
and popular publications.
Chris Bryson holds a Masters
degree from the Columbia University Graduate School
of Journalism, and has worked for the British
Broadcasting Corporation, The Manchester Guardian,
The Christian Science Monitor and Public Television. |
