— THE A-BOMB PROGRAM AND FLUORIDES —
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”
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
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:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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”.
4. 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 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 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, "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 "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 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 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 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-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."
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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 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, "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,
PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER:
His Farewell Address To The Nation
17 January 1961 - Washington, D.C.
↓
❝ … In the councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.❞
In 1947 Albert Einstein Wrote:
❝ Through the release of atomic energy, our generation
has brought into the world the most revolutionary force
since the prehistoric discovery of fire.
This basic power of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense, there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world.
We scientists recognize our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of the simple facts of atomic energy and its implications for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope—we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not death. ❞
'Depleted' Uranium - Uranium Hexafluoride, DUF6
Time to think and stop
Please click on:
“ Read the rest of this entry ”
below or where ever a post seems incomplete.
BABIES ARE VULNERABLE INNOCENT VICTIMS
SUFFERING EXPLOITATION BY FLUORIDE
PROMOTERS
See also our catogories: “FLUORIDE AND HEALTH “ & ,“LEAD CONTAMINATION FLUORIDATION”
THE WOLFF-CHAIKOFF EFFECT
CRYING WOLF?
By Guy E. Abraham, MD
Former Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Endocrinology
At UCLA School of Medicine
(extract only )
…Removing iodine from the food supply is a form of domestic bioterrorism. Supplying daily intake of iodine for whole body sufficiency (100-400) times RDA gives protection against goitrogens and radioactive iodine/iodide fall-out; improves immune functions, resulting in an adequate defence system against infection; decreases singlet oxygen formation which is the major cause of oxidative damage to DNA and macromolecules, resulting in and anticarcinogenic effect in ever organ in the human body; results in a detoxifying effect by increasing urinary excretion of the toxic metals lead, mercury, cadmium, and aluminium, as well as the goitrogens FLUORIDE AND BROMIDE; normalizes hormone receptor functions resulting in improved responses to thyroid hormones both endogenous and exogenous; and results in better control of blood sugar in diabetic patients; stabilizes cardiac rhythm, obviating the need for the toxic sustained release for of iodine amiodarone; and normalizes blood pressure without medication in hypertensive patients. Iodine deficiency in the major cause of cognitive impairment, worldwide. Therefore, iodine sufficiency would result in optimal cognitive function. A properly functioning grey matter is the greatest asset of a nation…
For every 17 micrograms of lead in your body, your IQ is reduced by 10 points.
APOLOGIES TO THOSE WHO ALREADY SUBSCRIBE TO FAN (Fluoride Action Network)
This FAN bulletin is ranked extremely important and is being sent to both LIST A and list B recipients.
THE FLUORIDE ACTION NETWORK
FAN Bulletin 708: At last ADA gives sound advice!
Nov 10, 2006
Dear All,
In an announcement that should spell trouble for fluoridation, the ADA has advised parents not to make up milk formula with fluoridated water. Their actual words in yesterday’s ADA e-gram (Nov 9, 2006) referring to baby formula were: “If using a product that needs to be reconstituted, parents and caregivers should consider using water that has no or low levels of fluoride.” Of course, this is very sensible advice – and should have been made years ago – as soon as scientists had found out how low fluoride was in mothers’ breast milk.
According to table 2-6 on page 23 of the NRC (2006) review, the level of fluoride in mothers milk in a non-fluoridated community is 0.004 ppm. This means a baby bottle fed with formula made up with fluoridated tap water (at 1 ppm) will get 250 times more fluoride than a breast fed baby. Unless one is prepared to say (like the Chief Health Officer in Victoria, Australia) that nature screwed up on these matters, it is abundantly clear that a new born baby does not NEED fluoride, and it is quite likely that such levels could be dangerous at these very early days in its life. One of the reasons that Nobel Laureate Arvid Carlsson gave for opposing fluoridation in Sweden in the 1970’s was his concern with what such excessive levels would do to the baby’s developing brain. The baby’s blood brain barrier is not fully developed at birth.
In yesterday’s announcement, the ADA still sticks to phrases like “exceeding optimal levels” thus blindly ignoring that as far as “optimal levels” are concerned nature has said that there are NONE. Fluoride is not a nutrient period. Even the CDC (1999, 2001) has conceded what most dental researchers have found, namely that whatever slight benefit fluoride might have on teeth is TOPICAL not SYSTEMIC, so it is very hard to see what an “optimal level” means to a newborn baby before its teeth have erupted! Giving tap water to a baby, or to an infant before its teeth have erupted, gives no TOPICAL benefit, only SYSTEMIC risks.
For the ADA the concern is largely focused on the one SYSTEMIC toxic effect that they cannot hide – or deny – dental fluorosis. With 32% of kids in the US now afflicted with this damaged enamel (CDC 2005) – it is abundantly clear that kids are being grossly over-exposed to fluoride in this country (as well as other fluoridated countries like Australia, New Zealand and Ireland). One contributing factor to this is bottle feeding with fluoridated water and correctly the ADA now advises against it.
Read the rest of this entry »
FLUOROSIS AND THE WAYS TO CONTAIN IT
By Dr. D. Raja Reddy
Skeletal fluorosis continues to be a major
public health problem in India
Endemic skeletal fluorosis is a disease caused by excessive ingestion of fluoride through water, food or both. The upper limit of optimum fluoride level in drinking water for a tropical country like India is 0.5 ppm. The upper limit of safe total intake of fluoride from food and water per day for an adult is 5 milligrams (WHO-2002).
The total daily intake through water and food determines the development of fluorosis. First ever cases of endemic skeletal fluorosis and its neurological manifestations in the world were recorded from Podili, Darsi and Kanigiri areas of Andhra Pradesh in 1937. Subsequently cases of fluorosis were recorded from Nalgonda and other areas of the Andhra Pradesh state and other parts of India. It is now estimated that 60 million people are living in these endemic areas and are at risk of contacting the disease and 2 million people are crippled because of it. Th& incidence of fluorosis affected districts in India are listed alphabetically: Assam2; Andhra Pradesh= 17; lBihart=8; Delhi4; Gujarat= All except Dang; Haiyana 12; Jammu & Kashmir=1; Kamataka 14; KeraI=3; Maharashtra= 10; Madhya Pradesh= 10; Orissa= 3; Punjab=13; Rajasthan= All 32 districts; Tamil 4adu 8; Uttar Pradesh= 7 and West Benga=4. Hence, skeletal fluorosis continues to be a major public health problem in India.
The factors, which govern the development of fluorcsis, are the following:
1. High levels of fluoride in drinking water supplies and in the foodstuffs grown in these endemic areas.
2. Tropical weather and hard manual labor by affecting the intake of water.
3. Poor nutrition and diets deficient in their content of calcium, magnesium and vitamin C aggravate fluoride toxicity. High intake of calcium reduces the amount of absorbed into the bones. Magnesium has peculiar relationship with fluoride and its optimum intake helps in elimination of fluoride from the body. Vitamin C is beneficial in some way in reducing fluoride toxicity. Diets deficient in calories and calcium intake increase the incidence of fluorosis (WHO-2002).
4. Renal disease aggravates fluorosis by increased deposition of fluoride in the bones. A diseased kidney cannot handle fluoride excretion from the body and hence its increased deposition in the bones.
5. Presence of abnormal amounts of certain trace elements in the drinking water supplies such as strontium, uranium etc. Strontium levels in drinking water supplies in some endemic areas are high and strontium is a bone-seeking element like fluoride and both these aggravate the bony changes.
PATENTS ON FLUORIDE RAT POISON
& INSECTICIDES
© Peter Meiers 
Thank you Peter…
From the “Introduction” to Chapter 7, “Fluorine-containing insecticides”, by R. L. Metcalf (Handb. exp. Pharmacol. XX.1, pp. 355-386, Springer,
Berlin-Heidelberg-New York, 1966):
“Fluorine has played a significant role in insect control since about 1896 when sodium fluoride and various iron fluorides were patented in England as insecticides. Sodium fluoride was used in the United States for cockroach control before 1900 and was introduced in 1915 for the control of poultry lice. However, the use of fluorine insecticides did not become general until the 1930´s when the disadvantages of arsenical residues on food crops became apparent and the inorganic fluorine compounds were introduced as safer substitutes. Systematic investigation of organofluorine insecticides began about 1935 in the I. G. Farbenindustrie and the fluoroalcohols and fluorophosphates (phosphorofluoridates) were intensively investigated largely through the research of Schrader (1952). During World War II fluoro-DDT or “Gix” was used for the control of insects of medical importance. More recently, fluoroacetamide and analogues have been used as systemic insecticides and a large variety of other fluorinated organic compounds have shown insecticidal activity. Sulfuryl fluoride has recently been marketed as a fumigant for household and structural pests…”
Alvord and Dietz, of Grasselli Chemical Company, Cleveland, Ohio, point out certain problems with the use of soluble fluorides as insecticides (Ind. Eng. Chem. 25 (June 1933) 629-633):
“The fact that sodium fluoride would control certain types of insects had been known for many years, but all attempts to use it and other fluorine compounds on plants failed because of plant injury. Progress along the line of utilizing the fluorine compounds in this connection really began with the discovery by Roark that the relatively insoluble fluorides would not injure the foliage and would control certain insects. About the time of this discovery, the Grasselli Chemical Company began to experiment with barium fluosilicate. The development of this material was held back for several years because of plant injury following its use, and it was not until the discovery, quite by accident, that the injury was due to an unsuspected impurity and that the pure compound was in reality safe to most foliage, that rapid progress was made.”
S. Marcovitch gives some details as to how those fluoride insecticides work (Ind. Eng. Chem. 16 (1924) 1249):
“The value of sodium fluosilicate as an insecticide is due to the fact that it is both a contact and stomach poison. Shafer has determined that when a roach walks over powdered sodium fluoride a little of the powder adheres to the lower part of the body, antennae and tarsi of the feet, and dissolves in the exudations of the integument. This seems to cause some irritation and uneasiness; the insect soon begins to clean the moistened powder from the body by licking it. In doing this enough of the poison may be brought into the mouth and swallowed, to kill after a period varying in from five to ten days. Other insects, such as Mexican bean beetles, also have the habit of cleaning themselves and by putting their feet in their mouths become very easy to kill. For this reason the sodium fluosilicate is more effective against the adult beetles than the larvae, which do not have these habits.”
Because of such habits, toxicity to higher animals became of concern (Marcovitch S.: “The fluosilicates as insecticides”, Ind. Eng. Chem. 18 (June 1926) 572-573
The Patents:
1896
Charles Henry HIGBEE, of New York City, N.Y., Manager of Manufacturing Company: “An improved composition or material for destroying insects”, British Patent GB 8236; filed April 18, 1896; pat. May 23, 1896. (“The compounds of fluorine which I employ for the purpose of destroying insects, are certain soluble ones, viz.: sodium fluoride, ferric fluoride, the silico-fluorides of the same bases, hydro-fluo-silicic acid, and the boro-fluo-silicates”, which the inventor claims to be less toxic for humans then many of the compounds then in use for the same purpose, i.e. “arsenic, copper, phosphorus, and the like”)
1906
Karl Heinrich WOLMAN and Bernard DIAMAND, Idaweiche, Oberschlesien, Germany, assignors to Max Marschall, Nice-Cimiez, France: “Preserving composition for fibrous material”, US Patent 934,871; filed Nov. 6, 1906; granted Sept. 21, 1909 (uses “sodium fluorid” and “sodium silico-fluorid”. “We have also found that the salts of hydrofluoric acid and of silicofluoric acid both of which are weak, bactericidal acids when used in connection wioth a strong mineral acid, as above set forth, will produce good results …”)
1908
Carleton ELLIS, assignor, by mesne assignments, to Chadeloid Chemical Company, of New York, N.Y.: “Insecticide”, US Patent 1,082,507; filed March 11, 1908; pat. Dec. 30, 1913 (“The composition comprises a solution of wax in carbon bisulfid, or similar penetrating organic liquid, emulsified with an aqueous solution, considerably thickened for the purpose of emulsification, and carrying in solution a powerful insecticide such as inorganic compounds like bichlorid of mercury and ammonium fluorid, or organic compounds like ammonium formate, etc.”)
1911
Jacques WITTLIN, of Vienna, Austria-Hungary, assignor of one-half to Siegfried Schlewinger, of New York: “Antiseptic”, US Patent 1,044,840; filed Jan. 12, 1911; granted Nov. 19, 1912 (“… my present invention further contemplates the incorporation of ammonium fluorid or equivalent fluorin-containing salts or fluorin compounds in the preparation of the antiseptic, whereby the germicidal or disinfectant properties thereof are very materially increased.”)
1921
Henry Edward Percy HUTCHINGS, of Barking Essex, UK: “Improvements in or relating to rat and other vermin poisons”, British Patent GB 187,424; filed Sept. 15, 1921; pat. Oct. 26, 1922 (a bait for the purpose of rat and mouse extermination, with additions of either sodium fluoride, barium carbonate, squill or oxalic acid, to serve as a basic poison)
1923
Rurik C. ROARK, Baltimore, Md.: “Insecticide”, US Patent 1,524,884; filed Aug. 6, 1923; granted Feb. 3, 1925 (“The poisonous action of soluble fluorides is well known and has been utilized for the control of injurious insects. For example, sodium fluoride, a salt readily soluble in water, is a very effective roach poison and is a common ingredient of roach powders. Potassium and barium fluorides have been similarly employed …”)
“There is nothing new in the use of sodium fluosilicate as an insecticide. Its use for that purpose was described nearly thirty years ago by HIGBEE (English Patent No. 8236, May 23, 1896). More recently, WILLE has reported tests with sodium fluosilicate against roaches and COBENZL mentions it as a common ingredient of rat and insect poisons” (Roark C., Department of Agriculture: “Fluorides vs. fluosilicates as insecticides”, Science 63 (April 23, 1926) 431-2)
1926
Bernard GEHAUF and Harold W. WALKER, of Edgewood, Md.: “Method of making silicofluorides and products thereof”, US Patent 1,617,708; filed May 14, 1926; pat. Feb. 15,1927 (“This invention … also comprises a new composition of matter for insecticidal and other purposes … made by neutralizing hydrofluosilicic acid with the appropriate base … Hydrofluosilicic acid ordinarily is prepared by contacting various waste gases containing silicon fluorid with water.. Waste gases containing silicon fluorid arise in various industries, as in the manufacture of superphosphates.”)
Martin J. FORSELL, Seattle, Washington: “Insecticide”, US Patent 1,618,702; filed Aug. 30, 1926; granted Feb. 22, 1927 (“The insecticide consists of using apple after it is dried and powdered and mixing therewith any well-known poison in powdered form … any one of the compounds of fluorine preferably sodium or potassium fluoride or sodium or potassium silico fluoride …)
Howard S. McQUAID, Cleveland, Ohio, assignor to The Grasselli Chemical Company, of Cleveland, Ohio: “Production of Barium Silicofluoride”; US Patent 1,648,143; filed Nov. 22, 1926; patented Nov. 8, 1927 (Process for production of barium silicofluoride from sodium silicofluoride for use as an insecticide)
1927
Hermann STÖTTER, Leverkusen, assignor to I.G. Farbenindustrie Akt.-Ges., Frankfurt a. M.: “Verfahren zum Schützen von Wolle, Pelzwerk u. dgl. gegen Mottenfraß”, German Patent (DE) 485,101; filed May 26, 1927; granted Oct. 10, 1929 (ammonium bifluoride, potassium ammonium fluoride)
1929
Roscoe H. CARTER, Washington D.C. (Government employee): “Process for the manufacture of insecticides and method of making same”, US Patent 1,842,443; filed Nov. 15, 1929; granted Jan. 26, 1932 (“As pointed out in other patent applications of mine, the double fluorides of the alkali metals are useful insecticidal materials and can be formed from water soluble salts of aluminum by treatment with alkali metal compounds and fluorine acids in the proper molecular proportions.”)
1931
Arthur H. HENNINGER, assignor to General Chemical Company, New York: “Process of making potassium aluminum fluoride”, US Patent 1,937,956; filed June 18, 1931; pat. Dec. 5, 1933 (“… for use as an insecticide. It has heretofore been proposed to use potassium aluminum fluoride as an insecticide for the control of various insect pests. This material is considered to possess advantages over lead arsenate as an insecticide for the reason that, although poisonous, the fluoride compound is less toxic to human beings and animals than is lead arsenate.”)
1932
Earl B. ALVORD, assignor to Grasselli Chemical Company, Cleveland, Ohio: “Noncorrosive insecticdal compositions”, US Patent 1,931,367; filed Aug. 24, 1932; patented Oct. 17, 1933 (addition to their barium fluosilicate of a slightly water-soluble substantially neutral fluoride (such as cryolite, or barium fluoride) to overcome corrosive effects of the barium fluosilicate upon spray pumps)
1938
John E. MORROW, assignor to Aluminum Company of America: “Insecticide and method of producing same”, US Patent 2,210,594; filed Jan. 6, 1938; pat. Aug. 6, 1940 (“Double fluorides of sodium and aluminum, such as natural and synthetic cryolite, have been used as insecticides, and the usefulness of such compounds as stomach poisons for various insects has been established. It has been demonstrated, for example, that these fluorides are particularly useful in combatting the codling moth and the Mexican bean beetle.”)
1948
Alan BELL, Kingsport, Tennessee, assignor to Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, N. Y.: “Insecticidal compositions comprising either hexyl alkyl tetraphosphate or tetra-alkyl pyrophosphate and either an alkali metal fluoride or fluorosilicate”, US Patent 2,514,621; filed Dec. 26, 1948; granted July 11, 1950 (“Diethyl phosphate is the hydrolysis product produced by most of these phosphorus insecticides such as organic insecticides derived from triethyl phosphate – thionyl chloride reaction product, hexaethyltetraphosphate, tetraethylpyrophosphate. This hydrolysis product is not as toxic as parent compound in itself but mixed with NaF or Na2SiF6 has considerable toxicity.”)
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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
FLUORIDE:
DAMNING NEW EVIDENCE
Excerpted from:
“What Doctors Don’t Tell You”
March 1999
Researcher Doris Jones has unearthed startling new evidence
demonstrating that fluoride interferes with enzymes systems,
damaging many organs systems of the body.
Extract:
…. While much has been written about the effects of too much fluoride on teeth and bones, little is known about the effects of fluoride on the rest of the body. But new evidence has emerged demonstrating that it has devastating effects on just about every organ in the body, and may even be partly responsible for behavioral problems like hyperactivity and many puzzling illnesses like ME. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis /Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), The late fluoride critic George L Waldbott discovered that, besides teeth and bones, fluoride can damage soft tissue. According to his research, the small fluorine ion with a high-charge density can combine with other ions and penetrate every cell in the body. It interferes with the metabolism of calcium and phosphorus and the function of the parathyroid glands. It has a strong affinity to calcium, but will also readily combine with magnesium and manganese ions and so can interfere with many enzyme systems that require these minerals. The interruption of these enzyme systems, in turn, may disturb carbohydrate metabolism, bone formation and nerve-muscle physiology. Indeed, every vital function in the body depends on enzymes; because fluoride easily reaches every organ, many diverse toxic symptoms can result.
“Most diseases are results of disturbances of the enzyme systems,” says Professor Abderhalden. “Damage due to fluoride could be shown on 24 enzymes.” Enzyme systems react to fluoride in different ways; some are activated, others are inhibited. Lipase (essential for the digestion of fat) and phosphatases are very sensitive to fluoride. In patients with skeletal fluorosis, succinate dehydrogenase activity is inhibited. In chronic fluoride poisoning, this diminished enzyme activity accounts for muscular weakness and even muscle wasting. Human salivary acid phosphatase is diminished by half when exposed to 3.8 ppm of fluoride, while blood enzyme cholinesterase is inhibited by 61 per cent on exposure to 0.95 ppm fluoride-a level within recommended levels. So what does this do in the body? (Author, Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, Springer Verlag, 1970: 48-97).
Alkaline phosphatase, an enzyme involved in bone growth and liver function, may also be poorly affected by low-level fluoride intake. According to scientists from the Department of Chemistry of the University of California at San Diego, fluoride switches off an enzyme by attacking its weakest links-the delicately balanced network of hydrogen bonds surrounding the enzyme’s active sites (J Biol Chem, 1984; 259: 12984-88).
Their particular studies concerned the enzyme cytochrome C oxidase, an oxygen-carrying respiratory enzyme; deficiencies of this vital enzyme have been linked to cancer, severe diseases and even cot death.
— FLUOROSIS —
COAL BURNING - CHINA
106 Fluoride Vol. 36 No. 2 106-112 2003 Research Report
For Correspondence: Prof Wuyi Wang, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. E-mail: wangwy@igsnrr.ac.cn
ENVIRONMENTAL EPIDEMIC CHARACTERISTICS
OF COALBURNING ENDEMIC FLUOROSIS AND
THE SAFETY THRESHOLD OF COAL FLUORIDE IN CHINA
Yonghua Li, Wuyi Wang, a Linsheng Yang, Hairong Li
Beijing, China
SUMMARY: Data on coal-burning endemic fluorosis throughout China and on the exposure-response relationship between concentrations of fluoride determined in coal samples and the prevalence of dental fluorosis reported from 17 representative surveillance stations in Southwest China were used to estimate the safety threshold for coal fluoride. Coal-burning endemic fluorosis occurs mainly in the mountainous areas of this part of China, where the prevalence of the disease is closely linked to geochemical parameters of the local environment. In these regions the incidence of dental fluorosis has a significant positive correlation with the concentration of fluoride in coal. The safety threshold of coal fluoride is estimated to be 190 mg/kg by the criterion of 0% incidence of dental fluorosis.
Keywords: China; Coal fluoride; Endemic fluorosis; Safety threshold.
INTRODUCTION
Fluorine (F), the most electronegative and reactive of the halogens, is a common chemical element in the earth’s crust in combined form. F concentrations in rocks and soils are well documented, but data on the F concentration in coal are relatively limited.
1-4 Swaine reported the total F concentration in coal ranges from 20 to 500 mg/kg.
5 Statistical data indicate that the mean concentration of F in coal worldwide is 80 mg/kg, but in China it is 200 mg/kg.
6 In the mountainous areas of Southwest China, it is even higher— up to 3106 mg/kg in local coal.
7 Fluoride in coal can be released into the ambient environment as atmospheric F, waterborne F, and residue F during mining, handling, and combustion.
6-8 In Southwest China, F
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LEAD POISONING AT MOUNT ISA
AND FLUORIDATION
A new study has suggested one child develops lead poisoning
every nine days in the northwest Queensland mining
city of Mount Isa.
“…There are about 400 children born every year in Mount Isa and about 11 per cent of those children, according to the last blood lead study, have a blood lead level in excess of the current acceptable guideline value…”
The Environmental Protection Agency states on their website that exposure to lead in water that is being consumed above the action level, or 15 parts per Billion, can result in delays in physical and mental development in children, anemia, and muscle problems. In adults, it can cause increases in blood pressure and, eventually with heavy exposure, the development of kidney problems or nerve disorders.
For every 17 micrograms of lead in your body, your IQ is reduced by 10 points!
Read on …
WESTENDORF’S RESEARCH ON
INCOMPLETE DISSOCIATION OF
SILICOFLUORIDES UNDER
PHYSIOLOGICAL
CONDITIONS
The Kinetics of Acetylcholinesterase Inhibition and the
Influence of Fluoride and Fluoride Complexes on the Permeability of
Erythrocyte Membranes
Dissertation to receive Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Hamburg
by Johannes Westendorf
Hamburg, Germany – 1975
Reviewer: Prof Dr. A. Knappwost
Co-Reviewers: Prof, Dr, Malomy Prof, DR, Strehlow Prof,
Dr. Hilz Prof Dr. Gercken
The oral defense took place on 2/18/1975
A Foreword intended to place the Westendorf research in current context indicating why it is relevant to a wide range of contemporary health and behavioral problems has been prepared by Myron J. Coplan and Roger D. Masters whose credentials are also attached.
Foreword by
M J Coplan and R D Masters, April 2001
Westendorf’s 30-year PhD research work is important for reasons beyond its specific scientific findings. First his work was motivated by the assumption that ingested fluoride was beneficial. Knappwost, his thesis supervisor, believed that fluoride in saliva afforded protection against tooth decay and was seeking a means of enhancing the output of fluoride-bearing saliva for that purpose. Therefore, it can hardly be said that Westendorf’s work was biased against water fluoridation.
Second, Westendorf’s research was based on knowledge that fluoride ion is an enzyme inhibitor. Indeed, that feature of ingested fluoride seemed to offer multiple benefits. Knappwost believed that ingested fluoride, by inhibiting cholinesterase, could achieve both greater expression of total saliva and an increase in its fluoride content. The research of his student quite logically examined different forms of ingestible fluoride for their effect on several variants of cholinesterase, Westendorf’s results showed that fluoride in the form of the silicofluoride complex (SiF), as well as several other complexes, was a substantially more powerful inhibitor of cholinesterases than the simple fluoride ion released by sodium fluoride (NaF). This was simply an objective finding.
Third, to account for the more powerful inhibition effect of SiF, Westendorf studied the course of its fluoride release in fine detail. He found that under physiological conditions, dissociation was no more than 66% in the concentration range considered “optimum” for fluoridated water by United States health authorities. If the released fluoride came uniformly from all of the initially injected SiF, the molar concentration of the residual non-dissociated species would be the same as that of the injected SiF. It would follow that dilution of fluosilicic acid to a nominal 1 part per million of free fluoride in water at pH 7.4 induces each [SiF6]2- to release 4 fluorides to be replaced by hydroxyls. The partially dissociated residue would be the ion [SiF2(OH)4]2- which would then be present in the water at the same concentration as the originally introduced SiF. The biological consequences of ingesting such a species are probably not innocuous, with enzyme inhibition being only one of several possibilities.
Westendorf’s visualized course of SiF dissociation, based on actual experimental evidence, is materially at odds with the dissociation route assumed by US EPA and CDC, based on theory. In judging the reliability of the theoretical approach and claims of health safety presented by these government agencies, one should be aware that both the nature of the complicated mixture called “fluosilicic acid” and the course of its dissociation upon dilution remain unresolved despite nearly a century of research. Two recent documents demonstrate this. In the first, an expert in the recovery of fluoride in phosphate rock processing, addressing a group of his peers at a 1999 International Fertilizer Association (a) meeting held in the former USSR, said:
“The chemical formula of fluosilicic acid is H2SiF6. However, things are not as simple as that due to the fact that rarely is fluosilicic acid present as pure H2SiF6. . . There are well reported references to the existence of H2SiF6 SiF4. . . Hereon in this presentation, FSA [fluosilicic acid] means a mixture of HF, H2SiF6 and H2SiF6 SiF4.”
This is a highly significant statement coming from someone who ought to know the subject under discussion. It means that a key intermediate dissociation product postulated by CDC and EPA theories to be transient species only fleetingly after SiF is introduced into the water at the water plant, may be present in concentrated fluosilicic acid before dissociation begins. Such a starting condition would cast serious doubt on the postulated theoretical equations predicting “virtually 100%” dissociation that supposedly “guarantee” no adverse health effects from undissociated SiF residues in drinking water treated with these compounds.
Equally important is a letter (b) dated March 15, 2001, written by the Director of the EPA Water Supply and Water Resources Division, which concludes with the statement:
“In January, representatives from the [EPA] Office of Research and Development (ORD) and the Office of Science and Technology and Ground Water and Drinking Water met to discuss a number of water related issues including Fluoridation. Several fluoride chemistry related research needs were identified including; (1) accurate and precise values for the stability constants of mixed fluorohydroxo complexes with aluminum (III), iron (III) and other metal cations likely to be found under drinking water conditions and (2) a kinetic model for the dissociation and hydrolysis of fluosilicates and stepwise equilibrium constants for the partial hydrolysis products.”
In plain English, senior EPA research staff now believe their staff needs to go back to the lab for at least another year or two to find out if the EPA’s longstanding confidence in the “virtually total” dissociation of SiFs may have been misplaced. Whatever the outcome may be of their new study of SiF dissociation, it is clear the EPA does not intend to perform animal tests to ascertain health effects of chronic ingestion of SiF treated water under controlled conditions.
Animal experiments according to accepted toxicology testing protocols would be the logical way to examine health effects of enzyme inhibition by SiF that Westendorf observed at the cellular level. Three published reports bearing directly on this matter should be noted. In the early 1930s, the Ohio agriculture department wanted to develop a replacement for bone meal as a source of calcium and phosphorus in the feed ration of farm animals. Natural “rock phosphate,” comprising largely calcium phosphate, was a candidate, but it was known to carry about 2 to 5% of fluoride bound in some chemical form. Thus it was necessary to study possible adverse health effects due to ingestion of fluoride from several sources.
A report (c) issued in 1935 compared health effects primarily from calcium fluoride, sodium fluoride, and rock phosphate. Highly significant for present purposes was one small experiment that included sodium fluosilicate. With equal dosage and equal amounts of fluoride retained, rats fed sodium fluosilicate excreted three times as much non-retained fluoride in urine as rats fed sodium fluoride, who eliminated more fluoride in feces. Apparently about three times as much fluoride had crossed the gut/blood membrane into the bloodstream from SiF than from NaF. A second report, this one by the US PHS, (d) was published about ten years after water fluoridation had begun. The study compared the time, starting from the date of fluoridation either with sodium fluosilicate or sodium fluoride, for urinary fluoride level to reach equilibrium with ingested fluoride from fluoridated water. The study populations were boys and men. There were two noteworthy results. First, for either fluoridating agent, urine fluoride levels in older males reached equilibrium with ingested fluoride levels sooner than in younger males. The longer time for young males can be accounted for by the fact that the weight of the older males was essentially constant, while the younger males were adding bone mass over the several years of the experiment. The bodies of younger males were therefore providing a time-related increase in storage compartment capacity for ingested fluoride.
A more important finding was that for the younger males it took longer for their urine level of fluoride to reach equilibrium with ingested water fluoride from SiF than from NaF. Apparently in growing boys SiF fluoride must have been metabolizing differently from NaF fluoride.
A third relevant study (e), conducted around the same time as Westendorf’s research, involved feeding water treated with the same fluosilicic acid used to fluoridate the local water supply to squirrel monkeys for up to 14 months. Morphological and cytochemical effects were reported for the liver, kidney, and nervous system due to ingestion of 1-5 ppm of fluoride in water. Although the study did not compare results from exposure to NaF, the report emphasizes the fact that the kidneys of monkeys ingesting SiF treated drinking water “Éshowed significant cytochemical changes, especially in the animals on 5 PPM fluoride intake in their drinking water.”
The report later observes that work by others in the 1940s and 1950s “Éshowed that fluoride has an inhibitive effect on the activity of succinate dehydrogenase. These studies indicate that under the effect of fluoride intake, a serious metabolic distress may develop in the kidneys.” In concluding, the report notes that “Earlier, some workers had also indicated that inorganic fluorides have a strongly adverse effect on the activity of some enzymes and of these, mitochondrial enzymes, acid and alkaline phosphatases and ATP-utilizing enzymes and aldolase may be the most affected (Batenburg & Van den Bergh, 1972; Katz & Tenenhouse, 1973).”
This study of squirrel monkeys is a rare (possibly singular) American experiment with SiF. If the research team had known that Westendorf was finding greater effects of silicofluoride than sodium fluoride on enzyme activity at virtually the same moment, the U.S. study might have taken a different turn. In any case, two of these three American experiments compared effects from NaF and SiF, and both found that SiF and NaF do not produce the same effect. Moreover, all three studies found the strongest adverse clinical effect of silicofluoride in the kidney. But damage to the kidney is hardly the only possible health effect of ingested SiF.
“Life” involves an incalculable number of chemically active molecules initiating, continuing and terminating a bewildering variety of chemical events. Throughout this panoply of events and in every organ where they occur, various enzymes play crucial roles. A particularly important example is the quenching by enzymes of muscle stimulation induced by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh), an ester comprising the acetyl moiety bound by an oxygen bridge to the choline molecule. The principal “quenching” enzyme, acetylycholinesterase (AChE), comes in several variations and the ACh/Ache dyads operate in numerous ways in many organs. Related enzymes called pseudocholinesterases are found in serum and include the butyrylcholinesterases.
At latest count over 7,000 enzymes have been detected and catalogued, (f) and there is no reason to suppose that the effect of SiF is limited only to a sub-class. In any event, one would be hard put to identify a more important enzyme subclass than “esterases,” which cleave molecules called “esters” at the right time and place in the healthy organism. While a great deal is known about many of the ways these enzymes function, there are still large knowledge gaps to be filled. To do just that, an extensive survey of contemporary knowledge about cholinesterases has recently been published (g) by an employee of the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances in EPA’s Health Effects Division. The published article carries this disclaimer:
“Although this article was written as part of the author’s official duties as an EPA scientist, the opinions and conclusions expressed in it are his alone, and do not reflect the position of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
Dementi’s review deserves a great deal of attention, so one wonders why it was not published as official work of the EPA. The EPA has acknowledged (h) that it has no data on health effects of the SiFs, shown by Westendorf to be a significant cholinesterase inhibitor and being added to the diets of 140 million people at the rate of 200,000 tons a year. The many different biochemical responses this dosage can be expected to elicit may well support a recently published (l) hypothesis proposing an explanation for Fibromyalgia, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It is not at all unlikely that chronic ingestion of SiF treated water also bears on ADD/ADHD, teen violence, and even some of the ambiguities associated with Gulf War Syndrome.
Common sense suggests that wide-spread, albeit clinically vague, adverse health effects should be expected when a strong enzyme inhibitor is added to the daily diets of over half of US residents, as would be the case given the results of the research work described herein. With millions of people suffering from one or another poorly understood condition with likely roots in environmental toxins, it is time to re-examine entrenched governmental doctrines in the light of Westendorf’s research which, while 30 years old, has received little or no attention heretofore.
(Read Westendorf’s thesis)
Notes and Credits
NOTE 1. The following English language text, translated from the German in which it was written by Dr. Johannes Westendorf, (Toxicology Department, Eppendorf-Hamburg University Hospital) was submitted to him in March 2001 for his comments with a series of questions. This was his response.
“With respect to my thesis I finished this kind of work in 1976, when I changed to the Medical faculty, where I still am. After my thesis I continued the work on fluoride for another year and we especially worked on the stability of hexafluoro complexes of silicon and iron. We used radioactive isotopes, such as F-18 and Si-31 . . . when we analyzed the electrophoretic mobility. In the presence of silicon and iron, fluoride ions showed a different mobility compared to fluoride [ion] itself. Unfortunately I have no access to these old experiments and we did not publish it.
. . . During hydrolysis we got a continuous shifting of the mobility, indicating that the different forms of hydrolysis with 2-6 fluorine at the Si are present at the same time, ending up at the more stable form of Si(OH)4F2. If we increased the pH to 9 and higher, a total hydrolysis occurs.
…In answering your final paragraph I can say:
1) The English translation of my thesis is excellent.
2) I have no evidence from others that contradict to my old findings.
3) Your idea of the enzyme inhibition by the complex could be right, however slight changes in the pH, caused by the hydrolysis of hexafluorosilicate, would also result in an increased inhibition of acetylcholinesterase. Nevertheless, I agree with you that the toxicology of hexafluorosilicate should be investigated because it may be different from simple fluoride.
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance to you. Johannes Westendorf” Westendorf@uke.uni-hamburg.de
NOTE II. Although the main body of the Westendorf thesis was not published in a circulating journal as such, three short articles based on this work were. Copies of the two most relevant ones appear at the end of the English text of the full thesis.
CREDITS: The thesis was called to our attention and photocopied from the document on file in the archives at the University of Hamburg by Peter Meiers (Weissenburgerstr. 28, D-66113 Saarbrucken; the translation was prepared by Jakob von Moltke (Dartmouth College); final proof editing was done by Myron Coplan with the aid of Norman Mancuso.
References:
a) Smith, PA. “History of Fluorine Recovery Processes”: Paper delivered at the IFA Technical Sub-Committee and Committee Meeting in Novgorord, Russia; Sept 15-17, 1999 (http://www.fertilizer.org/ifa/publicat/techpprs/tech0999.asp)
b) Gutierrez, SB. (signed by Thurnau RC); Letter from the Director of the US EPA National Risk Management Laboratory to Roger D. Masters, dated March 15, 2001.
c) Kick CH, et al. “Fluorine in Animal Nutrition”; Bulletin 558, Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station; Wooster, Ohio; November 1935; pp 1-77.
d) Zipkin, I et al. “Urinary Fluoride Levels Associated with Use of Fluoridated Water”; Pub Hlth Rpts 71 PP 767-772; 1956.
e) Manocha SL, et al. “Cytochemical response of kidney, liver and nervous system to fluoride ions in drinking water”; Histochemical Journal, 7 (1975); 343-355.
f) On February 7, 2001, the Brookhaven Registry of Enzymes listed 7,164 enzymes on their web-site, http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/bsm/enzymes/
g) Dementi, B. “Cholinesterase Literature Review and Comment”; Pesticides, People and Nature; 1 (2); 59-126; 1999.
h) Letter to the Honorable Ken Calvert, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, US House Committee on Science, from EPA Assistant Administrator J. Charles Fox, June 23, 1999.
i) Laylander, J. “A Nutrient/Toxin Interaction Theory of the Etiology and Pathogenesis of Chronic Pain-Fatigue Syndromes: Parts I & II,” Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; 5(1), 67-126, 1999.
Synopsis of Foreward Authors’ Relevant Professional History
Roger D. Masters, Ph.D., is President of the Foundation for Neuroscience and Society and Nelson A. Rockefeller Professor of Government Emeritus at Dartmouth College. For the last 30 years, he has studied the implications of modern biological science in understanding human behavior. He serves as editor of the “Biology and Social Life” section of Social Science Information (an international journal published at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris) and member of the Council of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences. He is a published expert in the history of Renaissance politics, especially the contribution of Niccolo Machiavelli.
After undergraduate studies at Harvard (where his instructors included Henry Kissinger), he served in the US Army before graduate studies at the University of Chicago. Despite his work in other areas, he retained a strong professional interest in military and international affairs. In addition to writing The Nation is Burdened: American Foreign Policy in a Changing World (Knopf, 1967), he served as US Cultural Attache to France. Among his many other books are The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (Princeton, 1968), The Nature of Politics (Yale, 1989), Machiavelli, Leonardo, and the Science of Power (Notre Dame Press, 1996) and Fortune is a River: Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli’s Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History (Free Press, 1998). Before turning to issues of environmental pollution, health and behavior, he also published widely on the effectiveness of leaders’ nonverbal behavior on television (working with colleagues on experiments in France and Germany as well as in the US).
Among many other publications on biological factors in human behavior, he was co-editor (with Michael T McGuire) of The Neurotransmitter Revolution, Serotonin, Social Behavior and the Law (Southern Illinois University Press, 1994); senior author (with Brian Hone and Anil Doshi) of “Environmental Pollution, Neurotoxicity, and Criminal Violence,” in J. Rose, ed., Aspects of Environmental Toxicity (London: Gordon & Breach, 1998), pp. 13-45; and co-author (with MJ Coplan) of “Water Treatment with Silicofluorides and Lead Toxicity,” International Journal of Environmental Studies, 56: 435-449 (July-August 1999) as well as of other publications.
In addition to an earlier teaching position in political science at Yale, he served as US Cultural Attache to France, Fellow of the Hastings Center, Chair of the Executive Committee of the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research (a foundation specialized in linking biology to the study and practice of law), a visiting professor at Yale Law School and Vermont Law School, and a consultant to Upjohn Corp, to the Commissioner of Corrections of Vermont, and to several agencies of the Federal Government. As a result of these varied professional activities, Dr. Masters has had extensive experience applying new scientific research in biology of human behavior to the establishment of successful government policies.
Myron J. Coplan, PE is a consultant in chemical engineering and chemical sciences, doing business at “Intellequity” after retirement in 1987 as Vice President and General Manager of the Albany International Co. Membrane Development Venture. The fruits of this latter activity include a product line of membranes now used by a major multi-national company to supply a market for industrial gases measured in the $ billions.
Coplan’s working career started during WWII first as a civilian employee of the US War Department and then as a production chemist for a firm supplying the military with two crucial commodities: DDT, without which the S. Pacific campaign might not have been successful, and a wire insulating chemical, without which the US Navy’s capacity to deal with disastrous convoy damage by Nazi mines might not have been achieved. He was one of the few civilians deferred throughout WWII for his critical occupation status.
Post WWII, while pursuing his own advanced degree studies, Coplan headed an academic chemical engineering department, supervising doctoral research of others. This was followed by a 37-year relationship with an independent consulting and r/d firm specializing in material sciences (chemistry, polymer systems, statistical analysis, physics, fluid dynamics, statistical mechanics, etc.) which eventually became the central research laboratory of a large multinational corporation.
Coplan is recognized in American Men of Science, holds 32 patents, is a member of several professional organizations and has published many technical papers. He authored a series of bench-mark articles on mathematical probability statistics and wrote a manual on statistical quality control for internal corporate use. He also personally carried out a wide range of laboratory research and engineering tasks and supervised the work of as many as 35 other professionals of many disciplines. He has been consulted by research staffs and corporate executives from some of the world’s largest corporations. To mention only one example, over about ten years he had 28 assignments from GE.
His services were also engaged by NASA, USDA, EPA, Interior Dept, Post Office Dept and several other government agencies, including virtually every branch of the DOD. In these assignments, Coplan was cleared on a “need-to-know” high level security basis several times for consulting and research work in such diverse fields as “decoy” chaff used to frustrate radar-tracked anti-aircraft fire to protective measures for ground-troops at risk of exposure to chemical, biological and nuclear attack.
In due course, Coplan’s activities became more focused on the interests of the large company which in 1972 had acquired the firm he had joined in 1951. After 1972, he took on the corporate mission of identifying and exploiting science-based new business opportunities, including direct management of scientific entrepreneurial r/d for new products and technologies. He became Senior Corporate Scientist and then Vice President and General Manager of a membrane development venture that eventually licensed his patented inventions to other large corporations. Membrane treatment of phosphate waste pond waters was among the applications studied. Coplan, therefore, has first-hand knowledge of the processes from which the principal water fluoridating agents (the silicofluorides) are derived.
Water Treatment With Silicofluorides And Lead Toxicity
Authors: Roger D. Masters and Myron J. Coplan
(Roger D. Masters – Research Professor -Nelson A. Rockefeller Professor of Government, Emeritus Dartmouth College)
Abstract:
Toxic metals like lead, manganese, copper and cadmium damage neurons
and deregulateneurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine
which are essential to normal impulse control and learning.
Earlier studies show that — controlling for socio-economic and demographic factors — environmental pollution with lead is a highly significant risk factor in predicting higher rates of crime, attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity, and learning disabilities. Exposure and uptake of lead has been associated with industrial pollution, leaded paint and plumbing systems in old housing, lead residues in soil, dietary habits (such as shortages of calcium and iron), and demographic factors (such as poverty, stress, and minority ethnicity). We report here on an additional “risk co-factor” making lead and other toxic metals in the environment more dangerous to local residents: the use of silicofluorides as agents in water treatment. The two chemicals in question — fluosilicic acid and sodium silicofluoride — are toxins that, despite claims to the contrary, do not dissociate completely and change water chemistry when used under normal water treatment practices. As a result, water treatment with siliconfluorides apparently functions to increase the cellular uptake of lead. Data from lead screening of over 280,000 children in Massachusetts indicates that silicofluoride usage is associated with significant increases in average lead in children’s blood as well as percentage of children with blood lead in excess of 10μg/dL. Consistent with the hypothesized role of silicofluorides as enhancing uptake of lead whatever the source of exposure, children are especially at risk for higher blood lead in those communities with more old housing or lead in excess of 15 ppb in first draw water samples where silicofluorides are also in use. Preliminary findings from county-level data in Georgia confirm that silicofluoride usage is associated with higher levels of lead in children’s blood. In both Massachusetts and Georgia, moreover, behaviors associated with lead nurotoxicity are more frequent in communities using silicofluorides than in comparable localities that do not use these chemicals. Because there has been insufficient animal or human testing of silicofluoride treated water, further study of the effect of silicofluorides is needed to clarify the extent to which these chemicals are risk co-factors for lead uptake and the hazardous effects it produces.
Keywords: Lead; toxicity; pollution; children’s health; public water supplies
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” FLUORIDES, THE DEADLY TOXIN WITHIN ”
By Professor Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
National Poison Centre
Universitiy Sains Malaysia -
2 September 2001
The ability of fluoride to reduce thyroid hormone levels
has been know for over 100 years (Maumene 1855) —
Following the recent withdrawal of the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipobay, there is now a new perspective to the issue, the drug being a fluoride-containing compound. The drug, also known by its generic name, cerivastatin, is one of the many such compounds pulled off the shelves in the last few years.
Cerivastatin was taken off because of at least 40 deaths worldwide, 31 in the US alone. According to a recently released commentary by a Canadian group, Parents of Fluoride Poisoned Children, a series of fluoride containing drugs or so-called fluorinated drugs have been withdrawn from the market in the last 10 years due to their toxic effects on human beings. One notable example is the combination “Fen-Phen” (a generic combination of fenfluramine and phentermine, the former being a fluorinated drug type) which was said to have weight-reducing effects. Others are dexfenfluramine (Redux) and fenfluramine (Pondimin).
There are at least eight other examples of fluorinated drugs withdrawn so far, because serious side effects on the heart, and for suspected adverse influence on thyroid hormone activity.
They include, last year, cisapride (Propulsid) because of its severe side-effects on the heart. In 1999, two drugs were withdrawn.
These were an anti-allergy drug, astemizole (Hismanal); and grepafloxacin (an antibiotic, Raxar) because they too were associated with similar adverse events.
In 1998, patients with congestive heart failure using the drug mibedrafil (Posicor) showed a trend to higher mortality, causing it to be withdrawn.
Alredase (Tolrestat, an anti-diabetic) was withdrawn in 1997 after the appearance of severe liver toxicity and deaths among several patients. In the same year too fenfluramine (part of Fen-Phen) and dexfenfluramine were withdrawn.
In 1993, flosequinan (Manoplax, a heart drug) was withdrawn when it was shown that the beneficial effects on the symptoms of heart failure did not last beyond the first three months of therapy. After that, patients had a higher rate of hospitalization than patients taking a placebo.
Of the many fluorinated drugs that remain in the market some carry warnings of serious cardiac toxicity, for instance halofantrine, a schizonticidal drug. More specifically, other fluorinated drugs, although they have not yet been withdrawn, are known to cause muscle wasting or rhabdomyolysis; like cerivastatin.
For instance, the PFPC commentary noted that the fluorinated antibiotic fluoroquinolone, used to treat infections, is reported to cause tendonitis and rhabdomyolysis. In fact product information for such antibiotics (enoxacin, fleroxacin, norfloxacin, sparfloxacin, and tosufloxacin) was amended in Japan in October 1994, to state that rhabdomyolysis may occur. Reportedly, the tragic story involving fluorinated drugs (the fluorophenyls in particular, initially limited to industrial use involving dyes and pesticides) can be traced way back to the 1930s when they were used to treat hyperthyroidism.
The use followed a discovery by IG Farben (Bayer) and Knoll’s scientists that all fluoride compounds can interfere with thyroid hormone activity.
In the liver especially, organic fluoride compounds undergo extensive transformation, mainly via oxidative demethylation, involving the thyroid hormone (T3) mediated P-450 enzyme system. And the resulting metabolites may have higher activity and/or greater toxicity than the original compound.
The activity of organic fluoride compounds on the P-450 enzyme system is critical as it relates to the elimination of many other drugs. Inhibition of these enzymes can cause other drugs to accumulate to dangerous levels in the body, leading to hazardous drug interactions. In many cases fluorinated drugs are being implicated as documented in hundreds of well-established studies.
Moreover, adds PFPC, the metabolites produced by organic fluoride compounds in the liver can be transferred to the fetus through various pathways, including circulatory via placental passage, gastrointestinal via fetal swallowing, and respiratory secondary to fetal lung absorption. This may lead to congenital abnormalities as in the case of fluconsazole (Diflucan).
In short, going by the above evidence, fluorinated drugs seem to pose a number of risks associated with the fluorine or fluoride contained in them. It raises even more concern when fluoride itself is present in many industries and products, including food and drinks, without any rigorous evaluation or monitoring.
Of late, we have managed to label all toothpastes containing fluoride in this country. But this is clearly a minuscule effort in the attempt to regulate the use of fluoride as an inherent poison. We need to do more now.
For more information, contact the National Poison Centre at Universiti Sains Malaysia,
tel: 04-657 0099, fax: 04-656 8417,
Source: New Sunday Times (Focus) 2 September 2001
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