The A-Bomb Programme and Water Fluoridation
Bomb-program scientists played a prominent -- if unpublicized --
role in the nation's first-planned water fluoridation experiment,
in Newburgh, New York. The Newburgh Demonstration Project is considered
the most extensive study of the health effects of fluoridation,
supplying much of the evidence that low doses are safe for children's
bones, and good for their teeth.
Planning began in 1943 with the appointment of a special New York
State Health Department committee to study the advisability of adding
fluoride to Newburgh's drinking water. The chairman of the committee
was Dr. Hodge, then chief of fluoride toxicity studies for the Manhattan
Project.
Subsequent members included Henry L. Barnett, a captain in the Project's
Medical section, and John W. Fertig, in 1944 with the office of
Scientific Research and Development, the Pentagon group which sired
the Manhattan Project. Their military affiliations were kept secret:
Hodge was described as a pharmacologist, Barnett as a pediatrician.
Placed in charge of the Newburgh project was David B. Ast, chief
dental officer of the State Health Department. Ast had participated
in a key secret wartime conference
on fluoride held by the Manhattan Project, and later worked with
Dr. Hodge on the Project's investigation of human injury in the
New Jersey incident, according to once-secret memos.
The committee recommended that Newburgh be fluoridated. It also
selected the types of medical studies to be done, and "provided
expert guidance" for the duration of the experiment. The key
question to be answered was: "Are there any cumulative effects
-- beneficial or otherwise, on tissues and organs other than the
teeth -- of long-continued ingestion of such small concentrations...?"
According to the declassified documents, this was also key information
sought by the bomb program, which would require long-continued exposure
of workers and communities to fluoride throughout the Cold War.
In May 1945, Newburgh's water was fluoridated, and over the next
ten years its residents were studied by the State Health Department.
In tandem, Program F conducted its own secret studies, focusing
on the amounts of fluoride Newburgh citizens retained in their blood
and tissues - key information sought by the bomb program: "Possible
toxic effects of fluoride were in the forefront of consideration,"
the advisory committee stated. Health Department personnel cooperated,
shipping blood and placenta samples to the Program F team at the
University of Rochester. The samples were collected by Dr. David
B. Overton, the Department's chief of pediatric studies at Newburgh.
The final report of the Newburgh Demonstration Project, published
in 1956 in the Journal of the American Dental Association, concluded
that "small concentrations" of fluoride were safe for
U.S.citizens. The biological proof -- "based on work performed
... at the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project" --
was delivered by Dr. Hodge.
Today, news that scientists from the atomic bomb program secretly
shaped and guided the Newburgh fluoridation experiment, and studied
the citizen's blood and tissue samples, is greeted with incredulity.
"I'm shocked -- beyond words," said present-day Newburgh
Mayor Audrey Carey, commenting on these reporters' findings. "It
reminds me of the Tuskegee experiment that was done on syphilis
patients down in Alabama."
As a child in the early 1950's, Mayor Carey was taken to the old
firehouse on Broadway in Newburgh, which housed the Public Health
Clinic. There, doctors from the Newburgh fluoridation project studied
her teeth, and a peculiar fusion of two finger bones on her left
hand she had been born with. Today, adds Carey, her granddaughter
has white dental-fluorosis marks on her front teeth.
Mayor Carey wants answers from the government about the secret history
of fluoride, and the Newburgh fluoridation experiment. "I absolutely
want to pursue it," she said. "It is appalling to do any
kind of experimentation and study without people's knowledge and
permission."
Contacted by these reporters, the director of the Newburgh experiment,
David B. Ast, says he was unaware Manhattan Project scientists were
involved. "If I had known, I would have been certainly investigating
why, and what the connection was," he said. Did he know that
blood and placenta samples from Newburgh were being sent to bomb
program researchers at the University of Rochester? "I was
not aware of it," Ast replied. Did he recall participating
in the Manhattan Project's secret wartime conference on fluoride
in January 1944, or going to New Jersey with Dr. Hodge to investigate
human injury in the du Pont case--as secret memos state? He told
the reporters he had no recollection of these events.
A spokesperson for the University of Rochester Medical Center, Bob
Loeb, confirmed that blood and tissue samples from Newburgh had
been tested by the University's Dr. Hodge. On the ethics of secretly
studying U.S citizens to obtain information useful in litigation
against the A-bomb program, he said, "that's a question we
cannot answer." He referred inquiries to the U.S. Department
of Energy (DOE), successor to the Atomic Energy Commission.
A spokesperson for the DOE in Washington, Jayne Brady, confirmed
that a review of DOE files indicated that a "significant reason"
for fluoride experiments conducted at the University of Rochester
after the war was "impending litigation between the du Pont
company and residents of New Jersey areas." However, she added,
"DOE has found no documents to indicate that fluoride research
was done to protect the Manhattan Project or its contractors from
lawsuits."
On Manhattan Project involvement in Newburgh, the spokesperson stated,
"Nothing that we have suggests that the DOE or predecessor
agencies -- especially the Manhattan Project -- authorized fluoride
experiments to be performed on children in the 1940's."
When told that the reporters had several documents that directly
tied the Manhattan Project's successor agency at the University
of Rochester, the AEP, to the Newburgh experiment, the DOE spokesperson
later conceded her study was confined to "the available universe"
of documents. Two days later spokesperson Jayne Brady faxed a statement
for clarification: "My search only involved the documents that
we collected as part of our human radiation experiments project
-- fluoride was not part of our research effort.
"Most significantly," the statement continued, relevant
documents may be in a classified collection at the DOE Oak Ridge
National Laboratory known as the Records Holding Task Group. "This
collection consists entirely of classified documents removed from
other files for the purpose of classified document accountability
many years ago," and was "a rich source of documents for
the human radiation experiments project," she said.
The crucial question arising from this investigation is: Were adverse
health findings from Newburgh and other bomb-program fluoride studies
suppressed? All AEC-funded studies had to be declassified before
publication in civilian medical and dental journals. Where are the
original classified versions?
The transcript of one of the major secret scientific conferences
of WW2--on "fluoride metabolism"--is missing from the
files of the U.S. National Archives. Participants in the conference
included key figures who promoted the safety of fluoride and water
fluoridation to the public after the war - Harold Hodge of the Manhattan
Project, David B. Ast of the Newburgh Project, and U.S. Public Health
Service dentist H.Trendley Dean, popularly known as the "father
of fluoridation." "If it is missing from the files, it
is probably still classified," National Archives librarians
told these reporters.
A 1944 WW2 Manhattan Project classified report on water fluoridation
is missing from the files of the University of Rochester Atomic
Energy Project, the U.S. National Archives, and the Nuclear Repository
at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The next four numerically
consecutive documents are also missing, while the remainder of the
"MP-1500 series" is present. "Either those documents
are still classified, or they've been 'disappeared' by the government,"
says Clifford Honicker, Executive Director of the American Environmental
Health Studies Project, in Knoxville, Tennessee, which provided
key evidence in the public exposure and prosecution of U.S. human
radiation experiments.
Seven pages have been cut out of a 1947 Rochester bomb-project notebook
entitled "Du Pont litigation." "Most unusual,"
commented chief medical school archivist Chris Hoolihan.
Similarly, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by these authors
over a year ago with the DOE for hundreds of classified fluoride
reports have failed to dislodge any. "We're behind," explained
Amy Rothrock, FOIA officer for the Department of Energy at their
Oak Ridge operations.
Was information suppressed? These reporters made what appears to
be the first discovery of the original classified version of a fluoride
safety study by bomb program scientists. A censored version of this
study was later published in the August 1948 Journal of the American
Dental Association. Comparison of the secret with the published
version indicates that the U.S. AEC did censor damaging information
on fluoride, to the point of tragicomedy.
This was a study of the dental and physical health of workers in
a factory producing fluoride for the A-bomb program, conducted by
a team of dentists from the Manhattan Project.
* The secret version reports that most of the men had no
teeth left. The published version reports only that the men had
fewer cavities.
* The secret version says the men had to wear rubber boots
because the fluoride fumes disintegrated the nails in their shoes.
The published version does not mention this.
* The secret version says the fluoride may have acted similarly
on the men's teeth, contributing to their toothlessness. The published
version omits this statement.
The published version concludes that "the men were unusually
healthy, judged from both a medical and dental point of view."
Asked for comment on the early links of the Manhattan Project to
water fluoridation, Dr Harold Slavkin, Director of the National
Institute for Dental Research, the U.S. agency which today funds
fluoride research, said, "I wasn't aware of any input from
the Atomic Energy Commission." Nevertheless, he insisted, fluoride's
efficacy and safety in the prevention of dental cavities over the
last fifty years is well-proved. "The motivation of a scientist
is often different from the outcome, " he reflected. "I
do not hold a prejudice about where the knowledge comes from."
After comparing the secret and published versions of the censored
study, toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix commented, "This makes
me ashamed to be a scientist." Of other Cold War-era fluoride
safety studies, she asks, "Were they all done like this?"
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