TOXIC
SECRETS
Fluoride & the A-Bomb
Program
During the ultra-secret
Manhattan
Project, a report was commissioned to assess the effect of fluoride on
humans.
That report
was classified "secret" for reasons of "national security".
Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 5, #3(April-May
1998).
PO Box 30, Mapleton Old 4560 Australia. [email protected]
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From our web page at: www.nexusmagazine.com
� Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson 1997
4 West 104th Street
New York, NY 10025, USA
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 defense 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 analyzed 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 FLUORIDE'S 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 aluminum 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, pediatric 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 had 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 riveted 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 mobilization 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
specializes 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 psychological 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 FLUORIDE 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 organization, 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 center 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 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
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
pediatrician. 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 pediatric 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
finger bones 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-authorized 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
classified 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 [email protected].
