Nexus - 0503 - New Times Magazine-pages

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TOXIC SECRETS Fluoride & the A-Bomb Program Fluoride & the A-Bomb Program During the ultra- secret Manhattan Project, a report was commissioned to assess the effect of fluoride on humans. That report was Classified "secret" for reasons of “national security". ome 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-controver- sial 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 WWIlI-era documents obtained by these reporters [authors Griffiths and Bryson], includ- ing declassified papers of the Manhattan Project—the ultra-secret US military program that produced the atomic bomb. Fluoride was the key chemical in atomic bomb production, according to the documents. Massive quantities—millions of tons—were essential for the manufacture of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. One of the most toxic chemicals known, fluoride emerged as the leading chemical health hazard of the US atomic bomb program, both for workers and for nearby communities, the documents reveal. Other revelations include: * Much of the original proof that fluoride is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists who had been secretly ordered to provide "evidence useful in litigation" against defence contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The first lawsuits against the American A-bomb program were not over radiation, but over fluoride damage, the documents show. * Human studies were required. Bomb program researchers played a leading role in the design and implementation of the most extensive US study of the health effects of fluori- dating 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 Association‘ 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 agen- cies—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. by Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson © 1997 4 West 104th Street New York, NY 10025, USA 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. APRIL - MAY 1998 NEXUS - 13