From meuser@mapcruzin.com Wed Sep 27 18:53:11 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id SAA24484 for ; Wed, 27 Sep 2000 18:53:10 -0700 Received: from mail.cruzio.com (mail.cruzio.com [165.227.128.37]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id SAA12485 for ; Wed, 27 Sep 2000 18:53:09 -0700 Received: from ekim (sa-165-227-129-27.cruzio.com [165.227.129.27]) by mail.cruzio.com with SMTP id SAA12124 for ; Wed, 27 Sep 2000 18:53:04 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200009280153.SAA12124@mail.cruzio.com> From: "Michael Meuser" To: waphgis@u.washington.edu Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 17:49:46 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: info on fluoride Reply-to: meuser@mapcruzin.com X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01d) FYI - interesting info on fluoride. Mike Forwarded from waterforum: i seem to recall a news article that thousands of epa employees refused to drink fluoridated water fairly recently. might have been the washington office of the epa. might be worth searching their website. rgds leelock ps if u want to dig some more attached is from nexus magazine on the web, go www.nexusmagazine.com and ponder. " Fluoride was the key chemical in atomic bomb production, according to the documents. Massive quantities-millions of tons- were essential for the manufacture of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. One of the most toxic chemicals known, fluoride emerged as the leading chemical health hazard of the US atomic bomb program, both for workers and for nearby communities, the documents reveal. Other revelations include: ? Much of the original proof that fluoride is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists who had been secretly ordered to provide "evidence useful in litigation" against defence contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The first lawsuits against the American A-bomb program were not over radiation, but over fluoride damage, the documents show. ? Human studies were required. Bomb program researchers played a leading role in the design and implementation of the most extensive US study of the health effects of fluoridating public drinking water, conducted in Newburgh, New York, from 1945 to 1955. Then, in a classified operation code-named "Program F", they secretly gathered and analysed blood and tissue samples from Newburgh citizens with the cooperation of New York State Health Department personnel. ? The original, secret version (obtained by these reporters) of a study published by Program F scientists in the August 1948 Journal of the American Dental Association1 shows that evidence of adverse health effects from fluoride was censored by the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)-considered the most powerful of Cold War agencies-for reasons of "national security". ? The bomb program's fluoride safety studies were conducted at the University of Rochester-site of one of the most notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War, in which unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium. The fluoride studies were conducted with the same ethical mindset, in which "national security" was paramount. EVIDENCE OF 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". +++++++++++++++++++++ Michael R. Meuser, Environmental Sociologist meuser@mapcruzin.com http://www.mapcruzin.com/ Environmental Communication, GIS, Pollution Maps, WebMaps, Training, Research Environmental Justice, Right-to-Know Advocacy "Making Data Make Sense" Join RTK-Watch. Send a blank message to: rtk-watch-subscribe@topica.com .