Fluoridation: A Horror Story
By Wade Frazier
Compulsory Fluoridation: An Industrial Tale
Harold Hodge, the Nuclear Connection, and Our Brains
Fluoridation: A Chemistry Prelude, Now an Addendum
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October 1999
In May 1999, I was surprised to discover that Leading Edge published my original draft of this essay in their September 1998 issue (issue 114) of the Leading Edge International Research Journal. If you read this chapter and are not alarmed, then you probably do not drink fluoridated water or brush with fluoridated toothpaste. That fluoride is compulsorily added to America's water supply is a primary indicator of how far gone "medicine" in America is.
Earlier drafts of this essay, including the versions published by Leading Edge Research, had a several page chemistry lesson at its beginning. That chemistry section was an attempt at presenting some germane aspects of chemistry, so that the following essay on fluoridation was more understandable. A number of my readers felt that it was too much technical information for those in the lay audience to try digesting, particularly as they begin their reading experience. My chemistry prelude helps the reader understand the nature of fluoride and why it is used in industry like it is, why it is a waste product of certain industrial processes, and lays the groundwork for understanding why it was so important in the nuclear industry. To make it easier on my readers, I have changed that prelude to an addendum to this essay. If you want to see my essay in its fullness, read the prelude by taking this link. Reading the prelude is not imperative to understanding my essay, but it might make some things clearer.
In short, fluorine is the most reactive element known to science ("reactive" means its affinity to bonding with other elements). In nature, fluorine is found bonded to other elements, never floating around by itself, and is rarely found in its ionic state. The industrial processes of the nineteenth century created the most toxic pollutants that humanity had seen to that time. Taking ore from the earth and refining out the metal, especially in aluminum refining, created hazardous waste products. In its ionic state, fluorine is highly toxic to human chemistry. The fluorine that was bonded to metallic ore in the earth was liberated in the refining process, and is highly problematic to dispose of safely.
The aluminum refining industry was the biggest and most influential fluoride polluter around 1930, and in America there was only one company in the aluminum business: ALCOA. Fluorine is also useful in producing artificial chemicals like Teflon and Freon, because of its unique properties. Those unique properties also made fluorine indispensable in refining uranium to extract its most radioactive isotope, the isotope required to make the nuclear age possible. If you understand all about the chemistry surrounding those situations, or would rather not read such technical material today, skip my chemistry addendum and begin reading my essay right here.
The "progress" of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw an explosion in aluminum use. Aluminum is a ubiquitous substance in industrialized societies. It is everywhere, from electrical wiring to food and beverage cans to cookware to automobiles to airplanes. As the Industrial Revolution was really hitting its stride a century ago, the aluminum refiners had a major problem with the fluorides that attended aluminum production: they are deadly poisons. The fluorine that was once safely bound with metals like aluminum, copper and iron in the earth's crust was reintroduced into the environment in its ionic state, combined with reactive elements like sodium. The fluorides were not only being buried in the ground and put into the water, they were also being released into the air by industrial processes. Fluoride pollution was a major problem for a number of industries.
John Yiamouyiannis, in his influential book Fluoride and the Aging Factor, describes how the fluorine ion disrupts enzyme activity, and attacks DNA and protein. In his theories, apparently backed up by research, what the fluorine ion does is "replace" other atoms in chemical bonds, disrupting hydrogen bonds, among others. When you dump chemicals together, the elements that have a higher bonding affinity will "steal" the bonds from other elements. Fluorine ions do not like floating around, but bond with anything handy, so they will displace the bonds in enzymes, DNA, proteins, and anything else that it can bond with, basically damaging or destroying the original substance, disabling its biochemical usefulness. That is how the fluorine ion harms or kills you. Later in this chapter, I revisit some of the controversy regarding fluoride and human chemistry.
Another ubiquitous industrial element, chlorine, behaves similarly, and the chlorine issue is another big one where chlorine is undoubtedly carcinogenic, among other health hazards, but industrial propaganda and criminal activity keeps the heat off chlorine.(1) "Coincidentally," chlorine is the other element compulsorily added to the water supply, supposedly to purify it, though I believe there are better ways to do that, an area I visit in another chapter of this book.
There is no arguing that fluorides are deadly poisons. No scientist will argue the point, as it is universally accepted. Among the hazards of fluoride are dental fluorosis, skeletal fluorosis, sterility, birth defects, cancer and brain damage.
Dental fluorosis generally progresses with an increasing fluorine ion concentration that the teeth are subject to. The progress of dental fluorosis is as follows. First, the teeth develop a mottled look. Flecks can be seen on the enamel. Tooth mottling can begin at less than one part per million (PPM), which is the concentration added to the water supply in communities that fluoridate their water. As the concentration rises to two PPM, the teeth discolor, gradually turning brown. Accompanying this process, the teeth become hard and brittle. The teeth then begin chipping and disintegrating. In Frank McClure's Water Fluoridation, The Search and the Victory, there is a color photo section showing the disease's progress. In advanced cases, the teeth are reduced to blackened stumps. In skeletal fluorosis, the skeleton disintegrates.
In 1916, G.V. Black and F.S. McKay presented the first study of tooth mottling. Tooth mottling was common in children in Colorado, Texas and other western states, and a large effort was launched to determine its cause. In Colorado the condition was known as "Colorado Brown Stain," and in Texas it was known as "Texas Teeth." In 1931, three independent studies concluded that tooth mottling was caused by fluorine ions in the water supply, and it has been generally accepted ever since. Usually the fluorine ions were naturally occurring.
Because humankind is the only animal to drill wells, we often get exposed to water that has a high natural fluorine ion content, generally in areas where there is little rainfall, and the groundwater's dissolved mineral content is naturally high, and also in areas of volcanism. There are places on earth where well water has a naturally high fluoride content, where the people die at an early age from fluoride poisoning, and have other fluoride-related ailments. In Fluoride and the Aging Factor, John Yiamouyiannis devotes chapters of his book to presenting cases where that has happened. McClure's Water Fluoridation, The Search and the Victory and Waldbott's Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma extensively document the hazards of fluorine in the environment.
By the turn of the century, industrially created airborne and waterborne fluorides were becoming a major health hazard. In 1901, one study found that fluorides "are much more toxic than the other compounds that are of significance in the industrial smoke problem."(2) As early as 1850, people and livestock were being poisoned by fluoride emissions from the iron and copper industries.(3) In 1930, the world's first major air pollution disaster happened in Belgium's Meuse Valley, where thousands of people became violently ill, and sixty people died. The world's foremost authority on the issue, Kaj Roholm, concluded airborne fluorides were responsible.(4) The fertilizer industry was mainly at cause in that instance. As late as 1970, the US Department of Agriculture stated that airborne fluorides "caused more worldwide damage to domestic animals than any other air pollutant."(5)
In America, with the Industrial Revolution humming along, there was only one aluminum company in the 1930s, in the standard monopoly situation. The Aluminum Company of America, ALCOA, was probably the world's biggest fluoride polluter at the time. ALCOA, in its "damage control" activities, began funding scientists and universities to look into fluorine, seeing if a spin could be put on it, perhaps changing its image from a deadly industrial waste into something more benign. "Scientists" bankrolled by ALCOA's largess began to miraculously find that fluorine may not be that bad for you, and even good for your health. Imagine that.
On the heels of the discovery that fluoride caused tooth mottling, Public Health Service (PHS) scientist Trendley Dean, the first director of the National Institute of Dental Research, was sent out west. As Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon had authority over the PHS, and Mellon founded and owned a large part of ALCOA. Dean's mission was to research communities where naturally occurring fluoride was high in the water supply, to see how much fluoride children's teeth could absorb before disintegrating. Who thinks that there may have been a potential conflict of interest in Dean's research? Dean announced his results, and made the statement that fluoride in the water supply decreased tooth decay in children. Below is some of the pertinent data that Dean created.(6)
| City | Fluoride PPM | % of cavity-free children | % with fluorosis |
| Pueblo, CO | 0.6 | 37 | 2.4 |
| Junction City, CO | 0.7 | 26 | 1.7 |
| East Moline, IL | 1.5 | 11 | 24.5 |
| Monmouth, IL | 1.7 | 55 | 42.1 |
| Galesburg, IL | 1.8 | 56 | 35.1 |
| Colorado Springs | 2.5 | 41 | 67.6 |
The only unmistakable trend is the data showing dental fluorosis increasing with fluoride concentration, which was expressly what Dean went west to determine. The tooth decay data was a "bonus." That is one of the stranger conclusions in the history of science. A man is specifically assigned to do research on the damage a particular chemical does to teeth, but somehow concludes from his evidence that the chemical is actually good for teeth. To paraphrase Dean's findings: "As children's teeth disintegrate, they may have fewer cavities!" Dean was cautious with his original conclusion that fluoride might be good for teeth. It has now been admitted by virtually everybody involved in the fluoridation issue, even by Dean himself, that his early data gave zero evidence that increasing fluoride concentration in the water supply reduced tooth decay.
Dean later became one of fluoridation's propagandists, but he was initially tame in making his suggestion. Dean's cautious and highly questionable suggestion regarding the potential dental benefits of fluoride was all that ALCOA-related scientist Gerald Cox (he worked for the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, and the Mellons owned ALCOA) needed to begin proposing that the nation's water supplies be fluoridated. In 1937, Cox announced that "It is possible that fluorine is specifically required for the formation of teeth."(7) That was a surprising statement, given that only a few years earlier, fluorine was discovered as the cause of tooth mottling.
In another sidelight, naturally occurring fluoride in the water supply is usually composed of fluorine and calcium atoms. What part of dissolved calcium fluoride just might have a positive effect on bones and teeth? Incredibly, the calcium aspect was ignored, while the fluorine component was obsessively focused on. Fluoride artificially added to the water supply is sodium fluoride, an industrial waste byproduct.
In looking into the data supporting fluoridation, it quickly becomes evident that all the pro-fluoridation people have in their favor are highly uncertain statistics. The theories are weak and not agreed upon. Even giving the pro-fluoridation forces the benefit of the major doubt regarding their statistics, their data on the benefit of fluoride amounts to one tooth per mouth, not a very exciting benefit.(8) It is an alarmingly small benefit when the undeniable harm caused by fluoride is taken into account. In the game of statistics, there are a million ways to make statistics say what you want them to. As Benjamin Disraeli said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." Fluoridation data is a classic case of statistical gamesmanship. Even if the motivation of most pro-fluoridation researchers were not suspect, their empirical and statistical methods most certainly are. There have been many astute criticisms leveled at the methods of fluoridation researchers regarding uncontrolled variables, omission of pertinent data, mathematical errors, and just plain bogus science.(9) Fluoridation research is a highly suspect area of medical research.
Among the giants of the early days of fluoridation research were Trendley Dean, Frank McClure, Harold Hodge, Edward Largent, Wallace Armstrong, David Ast, and Gerald Cox. Dean worked for ALCOA owner Mellon at the PHS. Gerald Cox worked for the Mellon Institute. Largent was the most visible member of the research teams at Kettering Laboratories at the University of Cincinnati, funded by ALCOA and several other fluoride-polluting companies. Largent was a consultant for Reynolds Aluminum. McClure was one of fluoridation's greatest cheerleaders, of debatable motivation. I have not seen anybody question Armstrong's motivation, though he did consult for the ALCOA-dominated PHS. Some of Armstrong's early research, which was a cornerstone of fluoridation theory, and one of the biggest sources of data for Cox's fluoridation campaign, has since been found to be worthless, even admitted so by Armstrong himself.(10) Hodge had a sinister relationship to the fluoridation issue that has recently been discovered through declassified U.S. documents, also tainting Ast, which will be covered later in this essay.
Dean was not the first person to suggest that fluoride might be good for teeth. A Canadian chemist in 1926 may have suggested the relationship first.(11) Reading about those early days is surreal. It had not yet been established that fluoride caused "tooth mottling," but already scientists were trying to see if fluoride might be good for the teeth. There were health disasters happening throughout the industrialized world due to fluoride, but a handful of ALCOA-influenced/funded scientists were feverishly trying to see how fluoride might be good for health. They and their corporate sponsors eventually prevailed, as money talks loudly in our nation.
Although the ALCOA scientists' well-paid efforts were important, it was up to a lawyer to literally ram fluoridation down the American public's throat. In 1947, ALCOA's lead counsel, Oscar Ewing, was named to head the Federal Security Agency (FSA), which later became the U.S. Health, Education and Welfare Department (today it is called the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS). Ewing went on the ALCOA payroll in 1944 at the astounding salary of $750,000 per year. The FSA oversaw the PHS, and the same year Ewing began at the FSA, he kicked off a national fluoridation project through the PHS, helping to build a bandwagon for fluoridation, in the absence of any credible scientific data. At that time, there were two cities undergoing water-supply fluoridation tests: Grand Rapids, Michigan and Newburgh, New York. The tests were to run for ten to fifteen years to get some real data. Ewing began campaigning for a national fluoridation program when those tests were only two years old, and no significant data was available or even possible. None other than Edward Bernays, the "father of public relations" and one of the greatest propagandists of all time, designed Ewing's public relations campaign on fluoridation. Bernays also designed the campaign by the American Tobacco Company to addict American women to tobacco, and Joseph Goebbels adopted his work in his Nazi propaganda campaigns against the Jews.(12)
By 1950, 89 cities were fluoridated, despite no credible evidence ever being submitted that showed it reducing tooth decay, or doing anything other than causing disease, misery and death. By 1950, ALCOA was in a new line of business, selling sodium fluoride to cities to put into their water supply. ALCOA was actually advertising the blessed purity of their sodium fluoride.
Such an anti-scientific rush gathers its own momentum, like a stampeding herd. The bureaucracies like the PHS would never back down from their position, no matter what. That has even been admitted by some of fluoridation's proponents.(13) It has taken several centuries for the Catholic Church to admit that The Inquisition probably was not such a great institution. The Index of banned books was not discontinued until the 1960's, and the Holy Office has merely been renamed "The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," and it acts as a more genteel version of the heretic-burning office it once was, but its goal is the same: defending the Church's power.(14) The cost of admitting that you were wrong, especially on something so potentially damning as adding a poison to the water supply, is too high for most people, and virtually all bureaucrats, to contemplate. The rash and apparently dishonest decisions made fifty years ago will be enforced as long as there is the power to do so.
There was plenty of public uproar over fluoridation fifty years ago, but money not only talks in America, it dictates. Today, the average American has no idea of fluoridation's history, or the fact that there still is no credible data that shows fluoridation reduces tooth decay, and overwhelming, indisputable evidence that fluoride is a deadly poison. The logic, if it can be called that, is that fluoride is good for the teeth at one part per million, but begins causing health problems at concentrations of less than two parts per million. Harold Hodge, one of fluoridation's pioneers and a toxicology expert, whose epidemiological research was influential in giving fluoridation the green light, himself stated that there should be at least a 100-fold margin in the dietary use of a potentially toxic agent.(15) The PHS adopted a two-to-one margin, although plenty of credible evidence shows that fluoride at one part per million (what most Americans drink) causes many health ailments, including cancer.
It is illuminating to read the books for and against fluoridation. Two books that highlight the conflict are Water Fluoridation, The Search and the Victory, by Frank McClure, and Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, by George Waldbott and two other scientists. McClure devotes the first quarter of his book to outlining some of fluoride's serious health hazards, including dental and skeletal fluorosis. If you read his book only to page 74, you would think that fluoride would be undoubtedly one of the modern world's greatest health hazards. The first words on page 75 are "By 1930 the time had arrived when epidemiological research was on the verge of demonstrating with unequivocal certainty the alliance between dental caries prevention and an optimum quantity of fluoride in public drinking waters." The rest of the book is a paean to the virtues of compulsory fluoridation. The book was published in 1970. What made McClure's statement bizarre was that it was not until 1931 that fluoride was considered the cause of tooth mottling. Before the dangers of fluoride to teeth were discovered, there was almost "unequivocal certainty" that fluoride was good for teeth.
With his statement of "certainty" about fluoride's benefits, McClure's book was silent regarding some of the truly unequivocal issues of tooth decay. One unequivocal issue regarding tooth decay is that it is caused by the civilized diet. The modern diet is almost solely responsible for tooth decay. That is not even a source of legitimate debate. Fossil evidence demonstrates that tooth decay began when civilization did, the Sumerians being one early example of significant tooth decay. In ancient Egypt, the upper classes had significant tooth decay, while the lower classes, eating simpler food, had very little.(16) In Silesia, located in present-day Europe (Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia), tooth decay was found in 1.75% of the population at the end of the Stone Age, versus eighty percent (up to 95% in some populations) in recent years.(17)
There is dramatic evidence regarding the civilized diet's influence, and especially refined sugar. Wherever Western civilization has made its appearance over the past several centuries, tooth decay and other health problems have followed in its wake. In 1938, Weston Price undertook a global journey to the last remaining "primitive" civilizations on earth. Price studied primitive civilizations and what happened to them when introduced to the "civilized" diet. On the average, the "primitive" peoples exposed to civilized diets experienced a 3500% (thirty-five times) increase in tooth decay, of the fourteen cultures he studied. Their dental arches also degenerated, leading to crowded teeth.(18) It is obvious that Western dentistry and orthodontics owe nearly their entire existence to processed food.
In keeping with the time-honored, male-dominated, capitalistic style of Western medicine, true prevention is not a concept. Instead of somebody like McClure advocating eliminating sugar and processed food from the diet to prevent tooth decay, a highly-toxic waste byproduct of the aluminum processing and fertilizer industries, among others, becomes a miracle substance, compulsorily added to the water supply to "prevent" tooth decay. Thereby McClure and his friends not only kept the food processors in the chips, but they helped create a new market for toxic waste.
That was not the only area of blindness in McClure's work. The possible economic incentive of the fluoride polluters, and those they bankrolled, was mostly invisible. In light of recently declassified documents, and the now known corporate affiliations of McClure's pantheon of fluoridation's pioneers, McClure's work today looks more like a primer on the corruption of science.
The final chapter of Water Fluoridation, The Search and the Victory, deals with the opposition to fluoridation and how the pro-fluoridation forces became victorious. Especially enlightening is McClure's summary of a great fluoridation victory: the compulsory fluoridation of Ireland. McClure reprinted part of the judgment rendered by Justice Kenny. Kenny rejected the testimony of Waldbott and three other expert witnesses. The judge accepted wholly the testimony of Hodge, Yngve Ericsson, Armstrong and others. Armstrong would soon publicly admit the worthlessness of his early research. Ericsson was from Sweden, and was one of fluoridation's biggest proponents in Europe, and he got money from the corrupt U.S. PHS. He even received royalties from Sweden's toothpaste industry on fluoridation patents that he had.(19) Justice Kenny gave his reasons for rejecting Waldbott's and the others' testimony. He said that their views were fanatical, "passionate" and not supported by credible science. Kenny concluded that he thought Hodge, Armstrong, Ericsson and the others from the fluoridation establishment were models of objectivity and learned reason, with the weight of science behind them. Knowing the now public but then secret bias of Hodge, the payola of Ericsson, and all their affiliations to the corrupt PHS, which was essentially run by ALCOA for many years, the judge's comments make for astonishing reading.
If you can get beyond the corporate payola aspect of fluoride research and dental health, the hard science aspects surrounding the issue render water-fluoridation research highly suspect, if nothing else. The standard unit of tooth decay, known as DMF (decayed, missing, and filled), used by all fluoridation researchers, is not a bulletproof unit of measure. In chapter 12 of Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, the authors poke many and gaping holes in the research that supposedly supports compulsory fluoridation. One study showed that there was up to an 89% variation in cavities reported in a mouth, depending on which dentist performed the examination.(20) Does anybody think that who was funding the researcher had anything to do with the results discovered? In the case of pro-fluoridation research, like many others in the annals of science, it looks like the error rate was larger than the effect being studied, making the research worthless.
There is a great amount of contradictory data to the "unequivocal, undebatable" data that McClure lauded. See chapter 12 of Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, for a sampling of the data not conforming to the rush to fluoridate. In looking at the data, it was interesting that just as the death rates went down in the Western nations during World War II (and WW I, due to natural causes, at least) as they were reduced to being vegetarians and growing their own food, their dental health also improved. Their general and dental health also unraveled after the war years, as they went back to their normal diets and abandoned their Victory Gardens.(21) It is odd that in the trial fluoridation experiments in this country, the data at times showed an alarming increase in tooth decay after the war years, even though they were the new beneficiaries of artificial fluoridation. Even if we accept the highly suspect conclusion that fluoridation fights tooth decay, there are many hair-raising results that show that "safely" fluoridated water still causes dental fluorosis. In Massachusetts, a 1974 study showed a 63% incidence of dental fluorosis in children in a fluoridated community.(22) In India, a study showed that 81% of the children had dental fluorosis with water at 0.73 PPM fluoride, less than that artificially added to our water supplies.(23)
There are many cases of people having toxic reactions to fluoridated water, and even dying, but the fluoridation establishment has covered it up by intimidation and marginalization of scientists who speak out, including getting them fired, like in John Yiamouyiannis' case.(24) See the conservative chapter 18 of Waldbott's Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, or the highly-charged chapters 17 to 19 in Yiamouyiannis' Fluoride and the Aging Factor for many examples of the kind of abuse of power and outright gangsterism that I am unfortunately all-too-familiar with. Anne-Lise Gotzsche's The Fluoride Question, Panacea or Poison? is another good overview of how the establishment steamroller works. Doctors and dentists who spoke out against fluoridation risked losing their licenses and other unpleasant fates. Smear campaigns, book-bannings, secret police tactics, official censure and a wide assortment of bedevilments awaited any doctor, dentist, or scientist who spoke out against fluoridation, not to mention an ever-shrinking funding pool being made available to study fluoride's harmful effects. In the 1950's, apparently half of all U.S. dentists did not believe in fluoridation, but dared not speak out.
There was controversy in the early days as Ewing and his cronies were campaigning to get water fluoridated. One statement that I have seen many times was one of the few brave statements made by a doctor in standing up to the propaganda barrage. Here is the statement made in 1952 by a U.S. Congressman.
"Mr. Speaker, despite my best efforts, and from the evidence before my committee, I cannot find any public evidence that gave me the impression that the AMA, the Dental Association (ADA - ed.), or several other health agencies, now recommending the fluoridation of water, had done any original work of their own. These groups were simply endorsing each other's opinions.
"You will note that all of the experts grounded in the science of bio-chemistry have advocated the go-slow sign on the use of fluorides in drinking water. I believe that the dental profession and other public-minded individuals. like myself, have been misled by the PHS, because all of the facts have not been made available upon this subject."
"…I sometimes wonder if the Aluminum Company of America and its many subsidiary companies might not have a deep interest in getting rid of the waste products from the manufacture of aluminum, because these products contain a large amount of fluoride. In this connection it is interesting to know that Oscar Ewing, who now heads up the Federal Security Administration, and the firm of attorneys he was with - Hubbard, Hill and Ewing - represents the Aluminum Company of America."(25)
When looking into fluoridation, the same conflicts of interest and corruption that pervade organized medicine are clearly seen. For instance, if one examines the AMA's sordid history, it is evident that it has little or nothing to do with promoting the public's well being. That self-serving corruption can be found in the American Dental Association (ADA), where its financial relationship with candy companies is similar to the unsavory relationship the AMA had for generations with the tobacco interests. The AMA actively promoted cigarettes for many years, taking big money from the tobacco companies, and tobacco was the single greatest contributor to having a lucrative and steady stream of patients. In 1995, the ADA got 15% of its money from trade groups like the Sugar Association, Coca-Cola, and M & M. The ADA actively promotes compulsory fluoridation, which actually increases dentists' bank account balances. The ADA is also guilty of stating that the ACLU endorsed fluoridation when they in fact did not.(26) Since 1993, the ADA has had to drop ten organizations from its list of fluoridation supporters, including the EPA.(27)
In David Kennedy's How to Save Your Teeth, he devotes chapter seven to the fluoride issue. Kennedy is a dentist, and so was his father. Kennedy grew up believing the fluoridation propaganda. His eyes were opened when he read of a three-year-old child dying from the fluoride treatment his dentist gave him in 1974. A typical dentist's treatment is to apply topical stannous (tin) fluoride gel to the child's teeth, then have the child drink water, swish it around in his mouth, then spit it out. That is similar to the "swish" fluoride program that was popular in the early days of fluoridation.
The unfortunate three-year-old boy, on his first trip to the dentist, was handed the water by the dental hygienist, who did not tell him what to do with the water that he was being given. The child drank the water. The fluoride gel on his teeth went into his stomach, three times the dose necessary to kill him. The child immediately began vomiting and complaining of dizziness and headaches. The dentist downplayed the child's reaction, saying that his fluoride treatment was normal. The mother was not comforted by the dentist's assurances, and she was sent to a pediatric care unit in the same building. The care unit ignored the mother's frantic pleas to attend to her son. For over two hours, she waited for somebody to attend to her son, as he lapsed into a coma. When the medical staff finally got around to seeing the son, they injected adrenaline into his heart and he was rushed to a hospital, where they waited for another hour. The boy again lapsed into a coma, then the doctors attempted to pump his stomach, and he died of cardiac arrest. The dead boy's parents were eventually awarded $750,000.(28)
The only mistake was the boy drinking the water instead of spitting it out. That opened Kennedy's eyes. I have seen where the dental industry has said that the procedure was not quite orthodox, and the boy was told to spit out the water, but that is likely mainly damage control by the dental industry.(29) Kennedy began looking into fluoridation, and he found no credible data supporting fluoridation. Today, he is one of fluoridation's leading opponents.
Something really happens to teeth when exposed to fluoridation. Artificial fluoridation at 1 PPM appears to induce the early stages of dental fluorosis. Fluoridation's proponents tout the effect of hardening the enamel. That hardening appears to in fact take place. What does that hardening really represent? If you study metallurgy, and are around the forging of metals, it is well known that when you make metals harder, that often makes them more brittle also. I think that is exactly what is happening to teeth that are exposed to fluoride. Yes, the enamel gets harder, but it also gets more brittle. The hardening is only the first stage of fluorosis. The next stage is that the brittle teeth begin mottling, chipping and disintegrating. The process does not prevent cavities from forming, or if it does, it is like chopping off your nose to prevent head colds. That new hole in your head runs anyway, but you can say your nose does not run anymore. A double mastectomy ensures that you will not get breast cancer again, but the cancer will show up someplace else.
Let us assume, for the moment, that fluoridation is indeed a boon to the teeth, and cavities decrease when fluorine is introduced to the body. Let us assume that there is a health benefit to ingesting fluorine, although fluoridation's proponents say that those benefits apply mainly to children. Let us be even more optimistic, and say that everybody benefits from fluorine. Let us be the greatest believers in fluoride's benefits, and state that every tooth benefits from fluoride. Even if we were fluoride's biggest cheerleaders, we still have to admit that dental and skeletal fluorosis exists. People's teeth and skeletons disintegrate when exposed to too much fluoride, denied by nobody. The other documented health hazards we will ignore for the moment as unsubstantiated.
Numerous studies show that dental fluorosis occurs in people exposed to only one part per million fluoride in the water supply. Yet, let us call fluoride a medicine, like fluoridation's proponents do. Let us consider fluoride something like penicillin, as far as how universally wonderful it is for us. Some people are sensitive to penicillin, and should not take it, as they have adverse reactions. Similarly, some people are far more sensitive to fluoride and have reactions to it at levels that most of us endure with no obvious harm. That situation is typical of most drugs. How can you measure how much fluoride is in the rest of your ingestion, like from your food, your toothpaste, your dentist's fluoride treatments? If you were a doctor, prescribing penicillin to your patients (like a dentist and fluoride treatments), how would you feel if they also had penicillin in their food, water and toothpaste? Could you effectively control their overall dose of penicillin? There is not a sane doctor alive that would prescribe a medicine to the entire population, and in such a way that they could not tailor the dose for each patient. Nevertheless, that is what compulsory fluoridation does.
Using even better logic than fluoridation's proponents, we theoretically cannot overdose on vitamin C. Why not compulsorily add vitamin C to the water supply of America? It could only help our health, could it not? One problem with such an idea is that there is no cheap source of vitamin C, whereas fluoride has the marvelous distinction of being a hazardous waste of a few industries. Today, the fertilizer industry has beaten out the aluminum refining industry as the source of fluoride in our water supplies, as they provided the fluoride ion more cheaply. Today, 90% of the fluoride added to our water is in the form of fluosilicic acid, mainly provided by the phosphate fertilizer industry. In 1983, Rebecca Hammer of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) endorsed adding fluosilicic acid to the water supply, because it killed two birds with one stone. In Hammer's words,
"In regard to the use of fluosilicic acid as a source of fluorides for fluoridation, this Agency regards such as an ideal environmental solution to a long-standing problem. By recovering by-product fluosilicic acid from fertilizer manufacturing, water and air pollution are minimized, and water utilities have a low-cost source of fluoride available to them."
Instead of having to undertake costly measures to dispose of the hazardous waste, adding it to the water supply reduced both the costs of hazardous waste disposal and our medical bills. If only all the industrial waste problems could find themselves in such a win-win situation.
Much to my chagrin, I recently discovered that I might not have eliminated as much fluoride from my water supply as I thought, though I will be looking into it further. Apparently, because of the fluorine ion's size and the physical properties of what it reacts with in the water supply, neither reverse osmosis nor steam distillation will effectively remove the fluorine ion once it has been introduced. You may not be able to remove it from your water, if you live in a fluoridated area.
Today, well over half of America's children today have dental fluorosis, to some degree, and over 80% in some fluoridated areas. Millions of Americans have already had their teeth ruined by dental fluorosis, leading to dental work, up to and including dentures. Fluoridation promoters have continually minimized dental fluorosis as a mere cosmetic problem, but the facts are something else altogether. When cancer patients have chemotherapy and their hair falls out, it is only indicative of far more widespread tissue damage, hair falling out being the least of the damage. Similarly, dental fluorosis is visible evidence of systemic fluoride poisoning. Very ironically, research (even mainstream research, like by the National Institute of Dental Research) has shown that dental fluorosis increases tooth decay, and does not decrease it.(30)
Sadly, the long-term effect of fluoridation is increasing a dentist's business. The teeth still get their cavities, but when a dentist attempts to repair a tooth that has been fluoridated, the tooth has disintegrated to the point where a simple filling will not suffice. The tooth begins coming apart as the dentist tries working on it. Instead, the tooth gets a crown or other more extensive repair. Dentists have remarked on that phenomenon for many years. Great racket, eh?
Harold Hodge, the Nuclear Connection, and Our Brains
Let's investigate the career of Harold Hodge, one of the scientists who originally created the data showing fluoride's harmlessness in the doses that they planned to administer to the nation's water supplies. Very recently, Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson unearthed documents regarding Hodge's involvement in acts that are crimes against humanity. To better understand the situation, we will need to revisit chemistry, fluorine and the atom bomb.
Du Pont invented Freon early in this century. During World War II and our secret pursuit of the atom bomb, there were many technical hurdles to overcome in making the bombs. One of the greatest problems was getting the material to do the job. In nature, uranium exists in two basic isotopes. An isotope is a version of an element. What makes one isotope different from another is its number of neutrons. In nature, Uranium is found as Uranium 238 (U-238) and U -235. Uranium-238 is by far the most abundant isotope, making up over 99% of all uranium. Uranium-235 is less than one percent of naturally occurring uranium, but it is the isotope needed to make a bomb. The difference between U-235 and U-238 is three neutrons. Those three fewer neutrons make U-235 a much more unstable isotope (undergoing radioactive decay into more stable elements) than U-238, yet the numbers are numbing. Uranium-235's half-life (the time it takes for half of it to decay) is 700 million years, but that is short compared to U-238's 4.5 billion years. It is short enough to lump it together and create a nuclear chain reaction. That chain reaction is the required event for nuclear weapons and nuclear energy to be possible.
How do you separate U-235 from U-238? The answer was simple, and was the key to making nuclear weapons. Du Pont was the acknowledged master of refrigeration, and using fluorine to make a refrigerant was their specialty. The secret to separating the uranium isotopes was to somehow turn uranium into a gas, and uranium hexafluoride was born. The compound is what it sounds like: one uranium atom bonded to six fluorine atoms. It is the only known uranium compound that is a gas at near environmental temperatures (its boiling point is 134· F). From my earlier chemistry lesson, it should be obvious why that compound had such a low boiling point. UF6 is uranium gas, or you could call it radioactive Freon.
Here is how they separated it. The UF6 of U-235 is slightly lighter than UF6 of U-238 because of those three neutrons. What the people in the Manhattan Project did was send UF6 through a mile-long tunnel filled with screens. The maze was an obstacle course for the UF6. The UF6, U-235 made it to the maze's end faster than the UF6, U-238 did, because it was slightly lighter. It was a simple and ingenious solution. They accumulated the U-235 an atom at a time. The work of tens of thousands of people was directed at getting a lump of U-235 that I could hold in my hand. That was the active ingredient in the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The scientist in me was awed, while my humanity recoiled in horror.
Du Pont was the company producing the fluorine for the UF6. They were making vast amounts of it. One day in 1944 there was an accident at du Pont, and a cloud of deadly hydrogen fluoride was released into the air. When added to water, hydrogen fluoride becomes hydrofluoric acid, one of the most dangerous acids known to man.(31) There may have been more than one accident. The fluoride cloud sailed away to farms downwind, crops withered and people and animals became violently sick. The affected farmers in Gloucester and Salem counties, famous for their high quality produce, sued the federal government after the war. They were stifled in their lawsuits against du Pont and the Manhattan Project, largely because all the data regarding the damage done was kept secret in the interest of "national security." The farmers eventually gave up and settled their suits for a few hundred dollars per farm. Recently declassified documents show Harold Hodge's active role in the government damage control effort. In a secret Manhattan Project memo dated March 1, 1946, Hodge, who was the Manhattan Project's chief toxicologist for fluorine studies, wrote to the Manhattan Project's medical division chief, Colonel Stafford Warren. Hodge expressed his concern regarding the toxicity of fluorine and the New Jersey incident. Hodge outlined four major areas of concern:
"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."
Shortly after the farmers sued, the federal government mobilized tremendous resources to counteract the farmers' efforts. Secret meetings were held in Washington DC, attended by everybody from the FDA to the Bureau of Standards to the Justice Department. Why were they meeting? In a recently declassified memo from Colonel Cooper Rhodes of the Manhattan Project, all those government agencies were "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." If the farmers prevailed in court, the entire nuclear program in America could have been threatened.
Hodge also wrote to his boss, "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?" "F" stood for fluoride, and was the name of the top-secret program begun during those days to study the harmful effects of fluoride on the human body. "Project F" was performed at the University of Rochester. The University of Rochester is already infamous for other "research" it was performing at the same time for the Manhattan Project: they secretly injected people with plutonium without their knowledge, in the first of many guinea pig experiments performed on U.S. citizens to test chemicals and radiation. Over a thirty-year period, the U.S. government administered everything from plutonium to LSD to unwitting "subjects." Those are only the experiments that have been made public. God only knows what other secret experiments will remain hidden.
You cannot study the decision-making process that led to dropping the atom bombs, the CIA's hiring of Nazis, the U.S. military shenanigans, and the activities of the alphabet soup U.S. "security" organizations, without being amazed at how much information is still being kept secret, documents that are over fifty years old. I have seen it regularly while researching this book. It usually begins by a researcher discovering a newly declassified document. The document can be very revealing, but what is often more intriguing are other documents referred to by the declassified document. When the researcher tries finding the referred document, he finds it still classified.
I have seen the apologists for the secrecy, like UFO debunker Phil Klass, say that there are legitimate national security reasons for keeping 100% of the information secret that the National Security Agency has on UFO's, for instance.(32) The opinions of establishment apologists like Klass are refuted by the experience of somebody like ex-CIA agent Ralph McGehee, whose experience I chronicle in his section of this web site, whose bitter experience makes it clear that the government nearly never has a legitimate "security" reason for keeping anything classified. Secrecy and deception (lies of omission and commission) are the handmaidens of self-serving activities, as a cover for dark deeds or in keeping the grip on power and wealth, for a select few.
Griffiths' and Bryson's work on the fifty-year-old fluoridation research ran into the same obstacle. Hodge was involved with promoting fluoride before the New Jersey accident in 1944. In 1943, Hodge chaired the committee that decided the feasibility of fluoridating the water supply of Newburgh, New York, one of two American cities first targeted for artificial fluoridation. The committee was eventually composed of other Manhattan Project people, like Henry Barnett and John Fertig. The Manhattan Project affiliations of Hodge, Barnett, and Fertig were kept secret. The wolves were looking after the interests of the sheep. The man in charge of the Newburgh fluoridation project was David Ast, another fluoridation legend, who also attended the secret Manhattan Project meetings regarding the New Jersey accident, according to recently declassified documents.
The situation was so skewed that the Program F scientists published a 1948 paper that ran in the Journal of the American Dental Association, describing the health effects on humans. Griffiths and Bryson obtained the original report, now declassified, and found that the Atomic Energy Commission censored the harmful health effects documented. The censorship was so severe it was funny, in a sick way. To quote Griffiths and Bryson:
"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.'"
Animals avoided the facility where the hydrogen fluoride was used. All microorganisms were killed, so food left in the facility would not rot. The hydrogen fluoride etched the facility's windows and the workers' glasses, so they needed to be continually replaced. The workers also got lesions and a type of "sunburn" from working there.(33) Nearby elementary schools had their windows etched from hydrogen fluoride releases.
Hodge was dead when Griffiths and Bryson discovered the damning declassified documents, but Ast was still alive, and was named in the documents as active in the nuclear establishment's damage-control efforts. Ast oversaw the Newburgh New York fluoridation experiment. Griffiths and Bryson confronted Ast with the declassified documents' revelations. Ast pulled a Ronald Reagan, claiming no recollection of those activities.
There were major studies done by the government on fluorine during those World War II days and shortly thereafter. With the exception of the recently declassified version of the report published in JADA in 1948, the others are still classified, despite the significant efforts of Griffiths and Bryson to get them declassified using the Freedom of Information Act. One entire area of study still classified is that regarding the effects of fluorine on the central nervous system. Recently declassified memos show that on April 29, 1944, Colonel Warren approved a Central Nervous System (CNS) research proposal. Hodge wrote the proposal. The memo accompanying the proposal said: "Clinical evidence suggests that (uranium hexafluoride) may have a rather marked central nervous system effect with mental confusion, drowsiness and lassitude as the conspicuous features. It seems most likely that the F (code for fluoride) component rather than the T (code for uranium) is the causative factor."(34)
The proposal remains classified, as do the research results. Another declassified document made six months after the proposal orders the research to be stopped. Reading that sent my head spinning. The right wingers have been saying for over fifty years that fluoridation was a plot to numb American brains, so they could be easily herded. I had heard for years that fluoride, administered to a bull, made it much more docile and easier to handle. I have read repeatedly that both the Nazis and Soviets used it in their prison camps to keep the prisoners' brains numbed, to make them docile. In his right wing classic, Murder by Injection, Eustace Mullins makes the case that Alzheimer's disease is largely caused by the ubiquity of aluminum and fluorine in the nation's food and water supply. There is increasing evidence for that opinion.(35) He mentions the Soviet studies from 1940 showing how fluorine in the water supply was very helpful in running their Gulag system, with brain-numbed prisoners, attested to by others.(36)
In the appendix of Murder by Injection, Mullins presents one of the scariest stories surrounding fluoridation that I have ever read. At the end of World War II, as the United States was scrambling to snatch up as many Nazi scientists as possible and keep them from the Soviet Union's clutches, American industrialists were sent to Europe to perform many duties, including mopping up the German Industries. One prominent scientist sent over was Charles Eliot Perkins. His job was to help take over the I.G. Farben chemical plants. I.G. Farben was the most infamous and largest of the German cartels. Farben ran the rubber factory at Auschwitz that was staffed by concentration camp labor. Farben also made the Zyklon-B gas used in the Nazi gas chambers.
In a letter Perkins wrote on October 2, 1954 to the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, Perkins made the startling statement that one of the German chemists, who was a prominent Nazi, told him that the German General Staff had approved a comprehensive population control plan to use on subject populations. It amounted to mind control, and an essential plan element was to "medicate" the water supplies, mainly with sodium fluoride. Perkins wrote, "However, I want to make this very definite and very positive - the real reason behind water fluoridation is not to benefit children's teeth…The real purpose behind water fluoridation is to reduce the resistance of the masses to domination and control and loss of liberty." Perkins said that putting fluoride in the water supply eventually numbs the brain, making people easily manipulated. Perkins stated "…any person who drinks fluoridated water for a period of one year or more will never again be the same person, mentally or physically."(37)
The above revelations open a Pandora's Box regarding the mental effects of fluorinated drugs and chemicals. I wrote earlier that some Freons have psychoactive effects. That is the tip of the iceberg regarding fluorinated drugs and chemicals. The Germans were leaders in such research. During World War II, the Germans invented the first nerve gas, Soman. It is a fluorinated chemical. In 1939, the scientists at Farben invented Sarin, the most deadly nerve gas next to VX. Sarin is literally an acronym of the initials of the Farben scientists who developed it. Apparently, Sarin was going to replace Zyklon B in the gas chambers, but the war ended before mass production could begin. Sarin is also a fluorinated chemical, a close cousin of Soman, and the EPA recently published a chemical profile on Sarin, after Gulf War Syndrome veterans (who think Sarin may be responsible for their disease) pressured the government, showing that the fluorine atom in Sarin was its active ingredient.(38)
Rohypnol, the drug becoming notorious for being used in date rapes, is fluorinated Valium, making it over twenty times as potent as normal Valium. Prozac is another fluorinated drug. In all, there are hundreds of fluorinated drugs, and many have profound mental effects, including memory loss. The primary effect of psychoactive drugs is inhibiting enzyme production, which the fluorine ion is well known to do. In light of other facts surrounding fluoridation, this begins treading frightening territory.
Of course, fluoridation promoters laugh off such things as the workings of hopelessly paranoid minds, as I imagine that most people do, as ridicule is an effective method of deterring people from taking such things seriously. In light of declassified memos regarding the U.S. CNS experiments of fifty years ago (done at nearly the same time the Nazis and Soviets were doing similar kinds of experiments), and the studies that are now being done across the world on fluoridation and intelligence, I am not laughing. Recently two studies in China showed a drop in IQ of children exposed to fluoride in the water supply of between 5 and 19 points.(39)
In other unsettling recent revelations, documents have surfaced which revealed that when the Newburgh New York fluoridation trials were run, testing fluoride's mental effects on the subject children was planned, and tissue samples were secretly tested at the University of Rochester. The results of those tests have not been made public.
In Mullins' book, he chalks up the fluoridation push as a likely mind-control ploy by the "Rockefeller Syndicate." Mullins says that the Rockefellers paid Ewing's astronomical salary at ALCOA in order to set up his tenure at the Federal Security Agency. Before anybody laughs too hard at that bit of conspiracy theorizing, this is not the first time the name Rockefeller has come up in the area of social control in my studies. John Taylor Gatto is a two-time New York City Teacher of the Year. Gatto taught for twenty-six years in inner city New York. Gatto is an anomaly in teaching. He is widely recognized as one of the best teachers America has to offer, but he is highly critical of our educational system. In 1992, he wrote Dumbing us Down, a monograph he published after retiring from the New York City school system. Dumbing us Down is a devastating critique of our compulsory school system, and how it beats the humanity out of children, and "dumbs us down."
Gatto has become an education activist since he retired from the New York City school system. In Dumbing us Down is the speech he gave when he accepted the 1990 Teacher of the Year award, winning the award for the second consecutive year. Gatto identified two men, Sears and Harper, as primary designers of our modern schools, which he states are "instruments of scientific management of a mass population."(40) Sears and Harper were from the University of Chicago, an institution that John Rockefeller rebuilt in his own image at the turn of the century.
It is easy to get lost in bureaucratic and statistical tangles, losing sight of the bigger picture. Our nation was pursuing the most destructive technology of all time, and the first practical application of it was dropping bombs on women and children, then publicly lie about who it was dropped on and why.(41)
Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, a toxicologist at Children's Hospital in Boston, who also worked in neuropathology at Harvard Medical School, recently performed research into fluoride and the intelligence of rats. In 1982, she was asked to perform the research as part of her studies on the toxicity of therapeutic agents used in fighting diseases like leukemia. Mullenix was invited to work at the Forsyth Dental Center, arguably the leading dental research institute in the world. Five years later, her research got underway.
Mullenix found a significant diminishment of rat intelligence when subjected to fluoride in their water supply. During Mullenix's research, she was surprised that there were virtually no published studies regarding fluorine and its effects on the human brain.
Some interesting news was the help she had. Brought in as a consultant on the research Mullenix was doing was Harold Hodge. He was quite old at the time, in the early 1990's. During Hodge's consulting of Mullenix's work, he never mentioned the CNS studies he had proposed fifty years earlier. He almost certainly oversaw the 1940s research himself. When shown the newly declassified memos that spell out very clearly Hodge's active role in CNS research on fluorine, Mullenix said she was "flabbergasted." Hodge evidently knew what Mullenix was discovering with rats and fluoride, and I have to wonder if his real role was doing "damage control" on Mullenix's work, and providing misdirection where needed.
When Mullenix read the declassified study on fluorine and compared it to the originally published version, she said, "This makes me ashamed to be a scientist." Mullenix wonders if all other studies done on fluoridation safety were done like that one. Only the government knows for sure, in their secret archives.(42)
Mullenix is also one more casualty of the fluoride wars. She had nothing to do with the fluoride issue originally, but got involved as part of her work. All she "knew" about fluoride when she started was that it was supposedly good for your teeth. She was not excited about performing the research, but was doing it because she was asked. Her research results were published in Neurotoxicology and Teratology (Vol.17, No. 2, pp.169-177, 1995), the leading scientific journal in the field. Before that paper was published, she presented her findings at the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) in Maryland, a division of the National Institute of Health (NIH). When she arrived at the NIDR, in her words, "I had no idea what I was getting into. I walked into the main corridors there and all over the walls was 'The Miracle of Fluoride'. That was my first real kick-in-the-pants as to what was actually going on." She said that the display ridiculed the people against fluoridation. "I thought, 'Oh great!' Here's the main NIH hospital talking about the 'Miracle of Fluoride' and I'm giving a seminar to the NIDR telling them that fluoride is neurotoxic!"(43) After her presentation to the NIDR, she met with toothpaste representatives who asked her if she was saying that their products lowered the IQs of children, and Mullenix responded, "basically, yes." That marked the end of her career.
When she excitedly announced to her employers that her paper on the intelligence of rats was being published, three days later she was fired. Right after she was fired, her former employers asked her which journal was going to publish her work. By that time, she realized that they wanted to block its publication, so she did not tell them. Subsequently, funding has dried up for that kind of research, though immediately after Mullenix was fired, Colgate gave a $250,000 grant to Forsyth (for a job well done?). The unique equipment Mullenix developed to test rat intelligence was mysteriously destroyed before she could recover it.
Dr. Mullenix was then given an unfunded research position at Children's Hospital in Boston, but with no equipment or money. Mullenix said, "The people at Children's Hospital, for heaven's sake, came right out and said they were scared because they knew how important the fluoride issue was…Even at Forsyth they told me I was endangering funds for the institution if I published that information."(44)
Mullenix has since applied to the NIH for a research grant to further her research, and was turned down. The NIH told her that fluoride had no central nervous system effects, period. How the NIH concluded that, when about the only published research shows deleterious effects, is curious indeed. The work Mullenix did, as well as other recent studies(45), have shown that the fluoride ion is particularly damaging to the brain's hippocampal region, which is its learning center.
Mullenix' fate is common, and my book documents many instances of scientists and others arriving at the "wrong" answers, and having their careers destroyed. Other scientists who had their careers ruined for coming up with the "wrong" answer regarding fluoridation include Dr. Allan S. Gray of British Columbia and Dr. John Colquhon of Auckland, New Zealand.
In light of Hodge's secret work for the Manhattan Project, and the secret memos and secret studies that are the tip of the iceberg, every pro-fluoridation effort that uses Hodge's name is tainted. It was with interest that I read Fluoride and Dental Caries. It is a recent book on the subject, published in 1986. The book is a compendium on fluoridation, drawing on various experts in the field. Hodge co-wrote a chapter on fluoride toxicity, and he wrote a chapter dealing with objections to fluoridation. Reading that book was another enlightening process, when I got over my anger. The book gives the appearance of looking at fluoridation from many aspects, but appearance is the operative word. Hodge's work we already know is suspect, to put it mildly, and I looked there first.
Hodge's co-author on the toxicology chapter was another fluoridation luminary: Frank Smith from the University of Rochester. With that professional pedigree and affiliation with Hodge, it is nearly certain that Smith was also deeply involved with the Manhattan Project. I take it for granted that with that background, I can trust nothing they write. It is instructive to see the blind spots in their work, and what they are obviously hiding. When Smith and Hodge stated that "No substantive evidence of ill health has ever been offered in children or adults as a result of consuming drinking water containing optimal concentrations of fluoride,"(46) they are voicing the nuclear establishment's damage control opinion, because there is substantial evidence of harm, but they chose to ignore it. When they say, "Since the Danish experience (in the 1930s) crippling fluorosis in an industrial setting has never been seen in the United States or Europe,"(47) take a grain of salt with that statement. With just one declassified study, out of many that exist and are still secret, definite harm occurred, though by playing semantics games we could say they were not "crippled," just toothless, though the long-term effects are unknown, which might be in another classified study. People getting violently ill from du Pont's fluoride cloud is another invisible event, at least to the public, when Hodge and Smith wrote their masterpiece of disinformation.
Throughout Fluoride and Dental Caries, there were instances of "looking" at objections to fluoridation, and the appearance of looking at them was undertaken. The close relationship between ALCOA, the other fluoride polluters and the early fluoridation researchers is nowhere mentioned, although it is well documented and is consistently one of the biggest issues raised by fluoridation's opponents. A table on the "anti-science" arguments against fluoridation was even produced on page 130, in a chapter titled "Legal, Social and Economics Aspects of Fluoridation," that even mentioned the "Communist conspiracy" aspect of fluoridation. Nowhere was mentioned the obvious economic incentives of fluoride polluters to manage the fluoridation issue, and the well-documented instances of them funding and influencing the fluoridation research, even when it is merely the smoking gun of conflict of interest. The authors of that chapter, including the book's editor, trotted out the words "pseudoscientist" and "quack" to describe fluoridation opponents and their "anti-science." In the chapter purporting to look at the broad spectrum of issues regarding fluoridation, the ALCOA and fluoride polluter issue was spectacularly absent.
In Fluoride and Dental Caries, one area caught my interest. In Hodge's chapter on fluoridation objections, he presented experimental evidence by a group of chemists that showed the fluorine ion benign to human chemistry. The research was used to discredit John Yiamouyiannis, who uses the very same research to show how the fluorine ion wreaks havoc in the body. Hodge interpreted the original research, qualifying and minimizing the conclusions, and then he presented the experimental work of pro-fluoridation pal Armstrong. Hodge concluded that the research showed that the fluorine ion was relatively harmless by itself. That part was interesting, because it is the first time that I have seen Yiamouyiannis' science challenged, beyond his cancer statistic analyses with Dean Burk. With knowing Hodge's extreme and formerly secret bias, I cannot trust his writing, particularly regarding the fluoride ion and human harm, but it was interesting reading. When anybody is proven a systematic liar, can you believe anything they say? How do you separate fact from fiction in those cases? The only way I know is to entirely reject their work and become your own expert.
Here are quotes regarding the biological damage the fluorine ion does to human health, the kind you will not find in pro-fluoridation propaganda like Fluoride and Dental Caries. Yiamouyiannis' contentions are herein supported.
"Fluorides are general protoplasmic poisons, probably because of their capacity to modify the metabolism of cells by changing the permeability of the cell membrane and by inhibiting certain enzyme systems. The exact mechanism of such actions is obscure." - Journal of the American Medical Association, Sept 18, 1943. (Before the propaganda steamroller really got going in 1947.)
"The fluoride ion exerts its toxic effect by inhibiting the action of many enzyme systems." - Hugo Theorell, M.D., Nobel Prize winner for his research in the field of enzyme chemistry.
"We ought to go slowly. Everybody knows that fluorine and fluorides are very poisonous substances and we use them in enzyme chemistry to poison enzymes, those vital agents in the body. That is the reason things are poisoned; because enzymes are poisoned, and that is why animals and plants die." - James B. Sumner, Director of Enzyme Chemistry, Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition, Cornell University, and a Nobel Prize winner for his work in the field of enzyme chemistry.
"The data indicated that drinking water with as little as 1 PPM shortened the life span of mice an average of nine per cent. This was true whether death was due to cancer or non-cancerous diseases. The only notice proponents of fluoridation gave to this work was to discredit it as much as possible. ... In experiments where the drug was added directly to suspensions of cancer tissue before inoculation into eggs or mice, sodium fluoride stimulated the growth of cancer tissue in concentrations of one part in more than 20 million. Scientists at Cambridge University (British Medical Journal, Oct 26, 1963) discovered that concentrations of sodium fluoride as low as one part in ten million inhibited the growth of a culture of human tissue. ... the growing weight of scientific evidence that water-borne fluorides, even at 1 PPM, have toxic possibilities must finally be recognized." - Alfred Taylor, Ph.D., Clayton Foundation, Biochemical Institute, University of Texas, Austin Texas, 1965.
"The terrifying conclusion of the studies was that fluorine greatly induced a cancer tumor's growth. If doctors and the public can be made aware of this catastrophe, fluoridation shall end quickly. It will someday be recognized as the most lethal and stupid "Health Program" ever conceived by the mind of man, witch doctors and blood-letters not excepted."
"In 1969 the country of Sweden intended to fluoridate their water supply due to the strong advice of Professor Yngve Ericsson, a Swedish dentist who was also the senior representative on the World Health Organization's Expert Committee on Fluoridation. However, it was then found that Professor Ericsson coincidentally was the holder of two highly-profitable patents on fluoride toothpaste!" - Alfred Taylor, June 13, 1970 the Gothenburg Post (Sweden); August 5, 1970 the News Register (Sweden); and May 1, 1970 Norsk Folkehelselag (Norway).
"In 1978, the West German Association of Water and Gas Experts rejected fluoridation for legal reasons, and because 'the so-called optimal fluoride concentration of 1mg/liter is close to the dose at which long-term damage to the human body is to be expected.'" - Chemical and Engineering News, August 1, 1988.
All in all, the tremendous blind spots regarding fluoride polluters, diet and caries, the severe biases regarding the harm done by fluorides, and Hodge's secret mission on behalf of the nuclear establishment rendered Fluoride and Dental Caries virtually worthless, except as an instructive exercise in propaganda. With the now-known nuclear industry's very active though secret management of the fluoridation issue, books like Fluoride and Dental Caries are examples of "pseudoscience" in the strongest sense.
For an excellent survey of the fluoridation issue, read Anne-Lise Gotzsche's The Fluoride Question, Panacea or Poison? She was a medical journalist in London who investigated fluoridation for years. She holds a disinterested view, taking both the pro and anti-fluoridation people to task when needed. The book is an easy read, and covers the main issues surrounding fluoridation, though written before the more pernicious conflicts of interest of fluoridation's proponents were discovered. Like anybody who looks into fluoridation and is not on the payroll of a bureaucracy or corporation that promotes fluoride, Gotzsche's account demonstrates how shamelessly political the fluoridation effort was. Science was trampled in the rush to fluoridate. Many scientists went so far overboard in their support for fluoridation that they became evangelists instead of scientists. Some went so far as to start making up the science as they went along, like the infamous Frederick Stare. Stare made up a new concept that he called "mineral nutrient fluoride," a pro-fluoridation idea so unfounded that even the PHS shot it down.(48) Fluoridation legend Basil Bibby even recommended adding lead fluoride to the water supplies in 1945. Gotzsche discusses that whatever the propaganda about helping teeth, dentists' business goes up in fluoridated areas, not down.(49)
Gotzsche said that calling groups engaged in the huge international push to fluoridate water the "fluoridation Mafia" was "naïve," but felt that those thinking that way could perhaps be forgiven, given the facts. Her book was published in 1975. In light of the unsavory connections of people like Hodge coming forth, "Mafia" may not be far from the mark.
After looking into the fluoridation issue long and hard, I have my own conclusions, which I summarize here.
In ending this chapter, it comes down to common sense. Tooth decay is primarily caused by our diet, and changing our diet is the only real answer. Adding a well-known poison to the water supply to "prevent" tooth decay is not only insane, but also suicidal. It also has "coincidentally" been a great windfall for fluorine polluters, both corporate and governmental. Instead of having to bear the huge costs of disposing of their highly toxic fluoride waste, large corporations now can sell it to water suppliers and toothpaste manufacturers! Fluoridation may very well be part of a program of mind control. The situation is so stark, so dark, it is hard to look at for long. Most people have no idea about the situation, demonstrating how effective our propaganda and indoctrination systems are. Walk into your average grocery store and try finding toothpaste that does not have fluoride in it (I have been queried repeatedly on this issue; you can find non-fluoridated toothpaste in health food stores…for now.).
I have read people discussing why Orwell's grim prophecies were wrong, and why 1984 did not happen. From my research, it looks like we are living in Orwell's world today. The fluoride situation is just one of many that I am presenting in my book. Evidence of Orwell's prescience is that people do not think they live in that kind of world. The most effective propaganda and indoctrination system is one where its victims do not think they are being propagandized and indoctrinated. The United States has the most effective and subtle propaganda systems that the world has ever seen, by far.
(1) See John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge is Good for You!, pp. 209-212, for a copy of the public relations strategy of Clorox regarding bad environmental news regarding chlorine, and the book in general for how corporations wage war against environmental activists. See also David Helvag's The War Against the Greens for a broad overview of corporate efforts against environmentalists, including criminal acts.
(2) Roholm, Kaj. Fluorine Intoxication. London: H.K. Lewis & Co., 1937. pp. 64-65. Cited in Griffiths, "Fluoride: Commie Plot or Capitalistic Ploy." Covert Action, Fall 1992, p. 27.
(3) Ost, H. "The Fight Against Injurious Industrial Gases," Z Agnew Chem, Volume 20, 1907. pp. 1689-93, and Roholm, pp. 36-41. Cited in Griffiths, footnote cited above.
(4) Roholm, Kaj. "The Fog Disaster in the Meuse Valley: A Fluorine Intoxication," Journal of Industrial Toxicology, Vol. 19, 1937, pp. 126-137. Cited in Griffiths, footnote cited above.
(5) Lillie, Robert J. "Air Pollutants Affecting the Performance of Domestic Animals," US Department of Agriculture Handbook No. 380, August 1970, p.41 cited in Griffiths, footnote cited above. See also Gotzsche, The Fluoride Question, Panacea or Poison?, chapter 6.
(6) Reproduced in Yiamouyiannis, Fluoride and the Aging Factor, p. 99.
(7) Yiamouyiannis, Fluoride and the Aging Factor, p. 94.
(8) Gotzsche, Anne-Lise. The Fluoride Question, Panacea or Poison? p. 21.
(9) Sutton, P.R.N. Fluoridation: Errors and Omissions in Experimental Trials. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne Australia, 1959. Cited in Waldbott, Burgstahler and McKinney, Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, p. 205, n. 61. See also chapters 12, 17, 18, and 19 of Waldbott. See also Gotzsche, The Fluoride Question, Panacea or Poison?, p. 61-62.
(10) See Armstrong, W. D. and Singer, L. "Fluoride Contents of Enamel of Sound and Carious Human Teeth: A Reinvestigation." J. Dent. Res., 42:133-136, 1963. Cited in Waldbott, Burgstahler and McKinney, Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, p.84, n.24. Also see Waldbott, p.303. Armstrong performed an experiment to determine if teeth with cavities had less fluoride in them than teeth with no cavities. His original research confirmed that hypothesis, and was a cornerstone of early fluoridation theory. After his reinvestigation, he admitted that his early results were meritless.
(11) McClure. Water Fluoridation. p. 34.
(12) See John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge is Good for You!, pp. 1, 22-32.
(13) Gotzsche, Anne-Lise. The Fluoride Question, Panacea or Poison? p. 31. Here is one quote I found worth reproducing, "We have told the public that fluoridation works, so we can't go back on that." - F.A. Bull, at the 1951 Dental Health Conference in Washington, D.C.
(14) See discussion of The Inquisition's current state in chapter 7 of Baigent and Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception.
(15) Hodge, Harold. "Research Needs in the Toxicology of Food Additives." Food Cosmet. Toxicol., 1:25-31, 1963. Cited in Waldbott, Burgstahler and McKinney, Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, p.109, n.25.
(16) Waldbott, Burgstahler and McKinney. Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma. p. 55.
(17) Dalderup, L.M. "Nutrition and Caries." World Rev Nutr. Diet., 7:72-137, 1967. Cited in Waldbott, Burgstahler and McKinney, Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma. p. 55.
(18) Price, Weston. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. See chapter 22, table 2, for a summary. See also Kennedy, How to Save Your Teeth, pp. 2-3.
(19) See Waldbott, Burgstahler and McKinney, Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, pp. 283-285.
(20) Radusch, D.F. "Variability of Diagnosis of Incidence of Dental Caries." Journal of the ADA, 28:1959-1961, 1941. Cf. Ennis Ler.R. "Oral Roentgenology and its Possibilities." Journal of the ADA., 21: 1367-1421, 1934. Cited in Waldbott, Burgstahler and McKinney, Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, p. 205, n. 59.
(21) For dental decay, interesting data can be gleaned from Waldbott, Burgstahler and McKinney, Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, especially chapter 12. See also Whitaker, Julian. Reversing Heart Disease. pp. 60-62. See also Robbins, John. Diet for a New America. pp. 151-154.
(22) Aasenden, R. and Peebles, T.C. "Effects of Fluoride Supplementation from Birth on Human Deciduous and Permanent Teeth." Arch. Oral. Biol., 19: 321-326, 1974. Cited in Waldbott, Burgstahler and McKinney, Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, p. 202, n.17.
(23) Jolly, S. S., et al. Endemic Fluorosis in Punjab II. Dental Aspect, Fluoride, 6:106-112, 1973. Cited in Waldbott, Burgstahler and McKinney. Fluoridation, The Great Dilemma, p. 202, n.18.
(24) It could arguably go by the name "Fluoridation Mafia," similar to what Chernobyl scientist Chernousenko called the people who have been covering up radiation's harmful effects in general, and Chernobyl in particular, "The International Atomic Mafia."
(25) US Congressman, Dr. A. L. Miller, Chairman, Special Committee on Chemicals in Foods, "Fluoridation of Water, Extension of Remarks., Congressional Record, March 25, 1952. pp. A1899-A1901. Cited in Yiamouyiannis, Fluoride and the Aging Factor, pp. 140-142.
(26) Research of George Glasser. Glasser's investigation and the ACLU's response, both occurring in January of 1997 have been posted on the Internet.
(27) In 1990 William Marcus, an EPA scientist, was fired for a memo he wrote which called for a review of a cover-up of toxicology studies that showed fluoride was a "probable human carcinogen." Marcus won a whistle-blower lawsuit and was reinstated at the EPA. In 1997 the Union of Government Scientists of the United States Environmental Protection Agency voted unanimously to sponsor a California initiative to ban fluoridation, citing eleven years of review of the medical evidence which indicates a "causal link" between fluoride and "cancer, genetic damage, neurological impairment and bone pathology." Taken from their statement of July 2, 1997.
(28) New York Times. January 20, 1979. Cited in Kennedy, How to Save Your Teeth, pp. 133-135.
(29) Church, L.E. "Fluorides - Use with Caution." Journal of Maryland Dentistry, 1976, cited in Hodge, "Fluoride Toxicology" in Newbrun, Ernest, ed., Fluorides and Caries Prevention. pp. 203-204, 218, n. 9.
(30) See Duncan WK, Silberman SL, Trubman A - "Labial hypoplasia of primary canines in black Head Start children" ASDC J Dent Child 55(6):423-6 (1988). See Silberman SL, Duncan WK, Trubman A, Meydrech EF - "Primary canine hypoplasia in Head Start children" J Public Health Dent 49(1):15-8 (1989). See Li Y, Navia JM, Bian JY -"Caries experience in deciduous dentition of rural Chinese children 3-5 years old in relation to the presence or absence of enamel hypoplasia" Caries Res 30(1):8-15 (1996) Ellwood RP, O'Mullane D - "The association between developmental enamel defects and caries in populations with and without fluoride in their drinking water" J Public Health Dent 56(2):76-80(1996). Cited in "Fluoride - What's Wrong With This Picture?" Andreas Schuld, posted to the Internet in 2000.
(31) Hydrofluoric acid eats the glass containers it is stored in. I remember seeing a bottle of hydrofluoric acid in my first chemistry lab. The bottle was corroded and looked dangerous to touch. It is a highly dangerous acid to handle, eating the flesh it touches with gusto. What makes hydrofluoric acid doubly dangerous is that as it eats your flesh, it also produces anesthetic effects (those nervous system effects are discussed later in this essay), which deadens the pain as it eats your flesh, so you do not notice the damage done until far too late. In my years in chemistry labs I used hydrochloric, sulfuric, nitric, phosphoric and other acids, but I never, ever saw hydrofluoric acid used, even as a demonstration. It was simply too dangerous.
(32) Klass, Philip. "The 'Top Secret UFO Papers' NSA Won't Release." The Skeptical Inquirer. Fall, 1989, pp. 65-68.
(33) I heard this in an interview with Dr. Phyllis Mullenix on the Laura Lee radio show in March of 1998.
(34) You can view a copy this document at the Leading Edge Research Group's web site.
(35) High aluminum concentrations have been found in the brains of Alzheimer's victims, and the appearance of Alzheimer's has coincided with the introduction of aluminum cookware. Also, "In January 1987, experiments performed at the Medical Research Endocrinology Dept., Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and the Physics Dept of the Univ. of Ruhana, Sri Lanka, showed that fluoridated water at 1 PPM, when used in cooking in aluminum cookware, concentrated the aluminum up to 600 PPM, whereas water without fluoride did not." (Science News (131:73)). That research was also confirmed in America when the research results in England and Sri Lanka were investigated. A test was performed on Antigo Wisconsin water. Antigo had been fluoridated for 33 years. The water was examined by a certified Wisconsin laboratory, and showed that when used in cooking with aluminum cookware, it concentrated the aluminum by 833 times, and increased the fluoride content by 100%. That made that water's aluminum content 75 times higher than the maximum allowed by the WHO. That information is taken from a paper by Isabel Jansen, R.N. (Journal of the National Academy of Research Biochemists - Jan/Feb '90). If you wish to pursue the Alzheimer's-aluminum connection further, one place you can start is the letter and references of Dr. William Grant's letter to the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, p. 92, in the June 1999 issue.
(36) For instance, during the Un-American hearings during the McCarthy days, USAF Major George R. Jordan testified to his duties of securing vast quantities of sodium fluoride and shipping it to Siberia during World War II. The Russian fluoride recipients openly told Jordan that they were "... using the fluoride in the water supplies in their concentration camps, to make the prisoners stupid, docile, and subservient."
(37) Cited in Mullins, Eustace, Murder by Injection, pp. 353-354.
(38) This quote is from Section VII of the EPA Chemical Profile on Sarin of October 31, 1987, regarding the neutralization of Sarin: "Rapidly hydrolyzed by dilute aqueous sodium hydroxide or sodium carbonate forming relatively non-toxic products. Water alone removes the fluorine atom, producing a non-toxic acid (Merck 1983, p. 1204)"
(39) Studies cited in San Diego Business Wire, Nov. 29, 1996. Cited by Citizens for Safe Drinking Water, at AOLNewsProfiles@aol.net. Several Chinese studies have reported from places of naturally high fluoride concentration, and in coal mining areas. The news is not good. The Leading Edge Research Group has published those paper abstracts on the Internet.
(40) Gatto, John. Dumbing us Down. p. 26.
(41) Recently declassified documents have shed much light on other World War II-era events, like hiring the Nazis to staff the CIA's intelligence network in Europe, which took us to the brink of World War III, as the Nazis lied to us about Soviet military capability and intentions. See Christopher Simpson's Blowback for a chilling tale of the U.S. hiring the Nazis after World War II. There are cases of Nazi doctors performing human experiments in the death camps, and going on the U.S. payroll weeks later. Regarding the atomic bomb, it is now clear that dropping the bombs on Japan had little or nothing to do with saving American lives. Sure, the cannon fodder was relieved when they did not have to lay siege to the main Japanese islands, but dropping those bombs had much more to do with: 1, A demonstration of power to the Soviets; 2, Ending the war quickly so that the Soviets could not occupy most of eastern Asia; 3, Nagasaki appears to have been a human experiment on a grand scale; and, of course, 4, Revenge for Pearl Harbor. We were trying a different type of bomb on Nagasaki than was dropped on Hiroshima. We cracked the Japanese code several years before 1945, and knew everything in their diplomatic cables, and knew that the Japanese were trying to surrender. There was one condition they insisted on: to keep their Emperor (whom they regarded as sacred, kind of like how the English see Queen Elizabeth, except even more fanatically) and spare him from war crimes prosecution. The United States stonewalled their negotiations, telling them it had to be "unconditional" surrender. After the bombs we let them keep Hirohito anyway. The leading historian on the decision of dropping the bombs is Gar Alperovitz, who recently wrote the mammoth and acclaimed The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. For a hint of what it was like to be a Japanese school child, playing near Ground Zero in Hiroshima while that lone plane flew overhead, read Day One by Peter Wyden. Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia presents the audio clip of the announcement Truman made after we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. He lied to the American people by calling Hiroshima a "military base." That is like calling Salt Lake City a military base. At Ground Zero was a hospital, two hundred yards away from an elementary school.
(42) Mullenix's experiences with Hodge, the NIH, and her reactions to the newly declassified documents can be found in Griffiths and Bryson, "Fluoride, Teeth and the Atom Bomb", July 1997. The article was commissioned by the Christian Science Monitor, but as of July 1997 had not yet been published. It is published on the Internet, as well as other articles regarding Mullenix's findings and advocacy work that she is doing.
(43) Those Mullenix quotes are from The Winds' web site, which conducted an interview of her while researching their article.
(44) Those Mullenix quotes are from The Winds' web site.
(45) Dr. Robert Isaacson of Binghamton University, New York conducted two studies using low levels of aluminum fluoride and sodium fluoride. The results were published in 1992 and 1994, predating Mullenix' publication, and the results were similar. Isaacson's study was spurred by data that showed Alzheimer's disease having a higher incidence in fluoridated areas.
(46) Newbrun, Ernest, ed. Fluorides and Caries Prevention. p. 212.
(47) Newbrun, Ernest, ed. Fluorides and Caries Prevention. p. 206.
(48) Gotzsche, Anne-Lise. The Fluoride Question, Panacea or Poison? p. 79-80, 96, 168. Incredibly, such an irresponsible idea that fluoride is an essential nutrient is alive and well today, with the National Academy of Sciences publishing a report in 1997 titled "Dietary Reference Intakes" that lists fluoride right up there with calcium and Vitamin D. Many responsible scientists have protested it.
(49) In a 1972 report by the ADA, it is stated that dentists make 17% more profit in fluoridated areas as opposed to non-fluoridated areas (Douglas et al., "Impact of water fluoridation on dental practices and dental manpower", Journal of the American Dental Association; 84:355-67, 1972).
The next few pages will present a brief science lesson on fluorine, and why it is such an important industrial chemical. If you are a practicing chemist, or do not care about the chemistry of deadly chemicals coming from your faucet, you might want to skip these pages. Otherwise, I think they will be worthwhile reading.
Chemistry is one of the most empirical sciences. Much of chemistry is not theoretical, but the empirical result of what happens to substances under certain conditions. Chemicals are put together, and chemists see what happens. Those observations over the years, summarized within the profession, make up a great deal of chemistry textbooks. Chemists measure how much energy is given off or absorbed by reactions, what the byproducts are, and so forth.
There have been many theories developed to account for experimental results. Many theories have stood the test of time, while others have fallen by the wayside. That is the normal progress of any science, but chemistry has more empiricism and less theory than almost any other "hard" science, I believe. Chemistry is one of the more nascent sciences. We have many theories, and they are useful, until a new discovery happens. As Einstein said, every theory is eventually killed by a fact.
Chemistry is generally concerned with the ways that elements combine. There is an aspect of chemistry called nuclear chemistry that is new to the twentieth century, but most chemistry is not concerned with an atom's nucleus, but its electrons.
An atom's basic components are the nucleus and the electrons orbiting it. The nucleus is composed of two primary "particles": protons and neutrons. In classical chemistry, a neutron is considered pure mass, and has no net electrical charge, which is why it is called a neutron, meaning neutral. It is now known that the neutron is further divisible, composed of other "particles." That ventures into nuclear chemistry, which is not this essay's concern.
Science has discovered over one hundred elements so far. Over ninety are naturally occurring, and scientists have artificially created another dozen or so. All of the artificial ones are unstable, and thus are called radioactive, as they give off energy and particles when they decay into simpler, more stable elements. Hydrogen has one proton in its nucleus, while oxygen has eight, gold has seventy-nine, and so on. Each element has a unique number of protons. All of the elements have neutrons in their nuclei, except the most common form of hydrogen. The neutron adds to an atom's mass, but has no net electrical charge.
Orbiting the nucleus are electrons. Electrons, according to current theory, have little mass but an electric charge equal to a proton, but the opposite (I have seen at least one theory that argues that electrons have no mass, but that is not an accepted theory today.). In a "normal" atom, the protons' positive charges and electrons' negative charges balance each other, and the atom's net electrical charge is zero.
Electrons orbit the nucleus in strange ways. The science of electrons and how they orbit is perhaps the weirdest mainstream science, called quantum mechanics. Electrons do not orbit the nucleus like earth orbits the sun, in an orderly ellipse - they jump all around, appearing and disappearing. Because atoms are so tiny, and electrons move at a significant fraction of light speed, observing exactly what electrons do is currently impossible, and quantum physics is one of the oddest and most difficult studies in science. Richard Feynman said that nobody really understood quantum theory. Einstein took great exception to some of quantum theory's cornerstones, and I think that most observers today believe that quantum theory will be radically altered when more is known. Quantum theory has spawned rules and equations that agree well with what science has observed, so far.
It seems that electrons orbit the nucleus in "shells." Each shell has distinct properties. The shells are the same for every element. As an atom gets bigger, the shells closest to the nucleus are filled first, the more distant ones being filled later. The shells have been calculated to contain 2, 8, 18, 32, 32 and 50 electrons, respectively, though the outermost shell of fifty electrons has never been filled, because the theoretical element that would fill it has never been observed. Hydrogen, the simplest element, has one electron. That electron inhabits the first shell, so that shell is "half full." Helium has two electrons, filling the first shell. Oxygen has eight electrons, which fill the first shell and six of eight positions in the second shell. So goes the periodic table, each element having one more proton and electron than the previous one, each successive electron shell getting filled. It is also slightly more complicated. As the third shell gets filled, the first eight electrons fill the third, then the next go to the fourth shell, then the third and fourth shells get filled together. As the shells are filled, eight and eighteen become breaking points to begin filling subsequent shells. It is an orderly progression.
Those shells, and how full or empty they are, represent the essence of chemistry. An atom with a shell mostly filled "wants" another electron to help fill its shell. An atom with a shell mostly empty will give away those electrons in its outer shell easily. Oxygen, for instance, "wants" two more electrons to fill its shell. Sodium, element number 11, with one electron in its third shell, readily "gives away" that outermost electron. The closer an atom is to having its shells filled or empty, the more reactive it is. The periodic table of elements is designed along the electron shell layout. Elements with the same number of open positions in its shell, or excess electrons, behave similarly. Lithium, sodium, potassium and a few other elements have one "extra" electron, and belong to the "family" known as alkali metals. They are highly reactive, and react violently when put into water, forming caustic solutions. Sodium and water produces what we commonly call lye.
The elements having their electron shells perfectly filled, meaning 2, 10, 18, 36, 54 and 86 electrons, are in a family. Those elements "like" having their number of electrons, and do not want any more, nor do they want to give any away. Those elements are all gases. They are called "noble" gases. Those gases are helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon. Chemists thought for a long time that nothing would react with them, and they were called "inert." To "react" means to either give electrons to, or take them from, other atoms. It also means sharing electrons, forming a "bond" between the atoms.
There is another prominent family of elements: those that need but one electron to fill their shells. Hydrogen is the only element that belongs in two families. Because hydrogen has one electron in a two-electron shell, it is either half empty or half full, depending on what it reacts with. Hydrogen can either take an electron or give one away. Hydrogen is therefore in the family that wants one more electron, and it belongs to the alkali metal family, eager to give away one electron. The other elements that want one more electron are fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine. The family goes by the name "halogen," which means "salt formers."
In this short chemistry lesson, it may become obvious that the ideal match is putting an alkali metal with a halogen, as one wants to give away an electron, and the other wants to take one. That is precisely the most reactive situation that chemists know of. If you put potassium into fluorine gas, the reaction would happen so fast that it would be explosive. The halogens and alkali metals are the most reactive elemental families. Fluorine is the most reactive element known to science. The "inert" gases proved less inert than chemists originally thought. In 1962, chemists were able to combine xenon with fluorine, forming xenon tetrafluoride, made of one xenon and four fluorine atoms. Many "inert" gas compounds were subsequently made, usually quite unstable compounds. Chemists stopped calling those gases inert, and the term "noble" came into use.
The most abundant wedding of alkali metals and halogens on earth is sodium chloride, more commonly called salt. With salt, like the other alkali/halogen compounds, the electron is barely shared between the atoms; it is nearly seized from the metal by the halogen. Thus the chlorine atom has an extra electron, and the sodium atom has one less. The chlorine atom then takes on a net negative electrical charge, and the sodium atom a positive one. Those charged atoms easily become "ions." An ion is a free atom or molecule with a net electric charge. If you put salt into water, it dissolves, where the electron is cleanly taken from the sodium atom by the chlorine atom, and both atoms become ions, forming an "ionic" solution. Because of the electrically charged ions, salt water is a fairly reactive solution, which is why cars parked next to the ocean rust like they do.
Most reactions between the elements are not as "perfect" as salt is. Usually the elements share electrons. Water is a standard case of that electron sharing. An oxygen atom wants two electrons, and hydrogen will give its electron away under the right conditions. Hydrogen and oxygen will form water, or H2O. The oxygen atom does not seize the hydrogen's electrons; instead, they are shared. If you could see a water molecule, it would look like Mickey Mouse's head, where the ears are hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atom is Mickey's skull. Although the hydrogen atoms are not ionized, the oxygen hogs the electrons. In a water molecule, the oxygen atom takes on a negative charge, while the hydrogen atoms gain a positive charge. Because of that atomic relationship, water is known as a polarized molecule, with electrical poles. Water is an unusual compound because of that polarity. Few compounds are as polarized as water.
Because of that polarity, water molecules attract each other more than almost any other compound. The positively charged hydrogen atoms are attracted to the negatively charged oxygen atoms of neighboring molecules, forming a weak bond. That bond is known as a hydrogen bond. Hydrogen bonding makes water the unusual and miraculous substance that it is.
Every element and compound has "states." Every substance has its solid, liquid or gaseous "state." Oxygen is found as O2 in nature. Atmospheric hydrogen and nitrogen are also found in their "diatomic" state. Oxygen melts at about -360° F and boils at about -300° F. The melting and boiling points of elements and compounds relate to the substance's "weight." In chemistry, the weights are called molecular weights. Electron shells determine an element's chemical properties, and make at atom like lithium, with a molecular weight of three, a metal at room temperature, while Radon, with a molecular weight of 222, is a gas. Yet, similar families and elements have boiling point differences largely determined by their molecular weights. Within the elemental families and molecular families, like alcohols, the greater the molecular weight, the higher the melting and boiling point.
A molecule of water has a molecular weight of 18, oxygen weighing 16 (8 protons and 8 neutrons), and the hydrogen 2 (two atoms of one proton each). Atmospheric oxygen, O2, has a molecular weight of 32. All things being equal, a molecule's weight determines its melting and boiling points. We see that oxygen boils at -300° F, but the much lighter water boils at 212° F, at sea level. The reason for that huge difference is that water molecules have much more attraction to each other than oxygen molecules do, because of that hydrogen bonding. One of the few compounds with the high polarity of water is ammonia. Ammonia is composed of one nitrogen atom (The element next to oxygen on the periodic table, which needs three electrons to complete its shell.) and three hydrogen atoms. Ammonia has a molecular weight of 17, less than water. The ammonia molecule's boiling point is -28° F, far higher than atmospheric nitrogen, with a molecular weight of 28, which boils at -320° F.
Because of the great attraction between water and ammonia molecules, they are hard to separate, making their boiling points far higher than similar substances composed of heavier molecules. Adding enough heat energy so the molecules vibrate severely enough to overcome their mutual attraction, produces melting and boiling. If the molecules are highly attracted to each other, their boiling point is high. If the molecules are not attracted to each other, their boiling point is low.
In my book's chapter on Dennis' heat pump, I discuss refrigerants, boiling points and the latent heat of vaporization. I need not discuss that issue here, except to say that because of ammonia's low boiling point relative to the environment, and its high latent heat of vaporization, ammonia is the ideal refrigerant…well, not completely ideal. Ammonia is highly poisonous. Early refrigerators used ammonia as the refrigerant, but if the refrigeration lines sprang a leak at night, the whole family could die in their beds.
Early in this century, an old money empire that supplied virtually all American gunpowder and explosives, almost since the nation was founded, arming America for all of its wars, got into the fast-rising chemicals industry. Du Pont Corporation developed alternatives to ammonia as a refrigerant. The refrigerants went by the trade name Freon, and the most popular, R-12, was made of one carbon atom bonded to two chlorine and two fluorine atoms. Carbon has its eight-electron shell half full, so carbon ideally makes four bonds to other elements. Carbon makes complicated bonds with other atoms. There is an entire branch of chemistry solely devoted to carbon. It is called organic chemistry, because carbon is the chemical basis for life on earth.
R-12 has a boiling point of -22° F, low for a molecular weight of 119. Diatomic chlorine has a molecular weight of 71, but a boiling point of -30° F. The reason for Freon's low boiling point is the molecule's symmetry in shape as well as electric charge. The molecule is not polarized, the inter-molecular attraction is minimal, and therefore little vibration needs to be introduced to cause the molecules to separate.
The other attraction of R-12 and the other Freons was their relative inertness, which ventures into chlorine and fluorine's great reactivity. You never find chlorine or fluorine gas floating around in nature. They are so highly reactive, because of that unfilled electron shell, that they react to almost anything they touch, in search of that electron to fill their shells. Once they get that electron, they never let go. Most halogens have bonded to metals in the environment, which is where they are found. Sea salt is the classic example of a halogen bonding with a metal, particularly an alkali metal, eager to give up its spare electron. In those halide salts, the compounds are highly polarized because of the very unequal electron sharing. When such a salt is put into water, the highly polarized water reacts with the highly polarized salt, and the salt dissolves, creating salt ions in the water.
Carbon is not much of an ionizing element, as it would want to give up half its electron shell to ionize, or take on four more electrons. Carbon usually makes bonds where the electrons are shared; a bond called a covalent bond. The electron bonds in Freon are very stable: no atom wants to change the arrangement and react with something else. Because of that inert, stable nature, Freon is generally considered safe for human contact. It will not react with human flesh much, and even when inhaled produces little effect, though some of the less stable Freons can produce anesthetic and psychoactive effects, and can be corrosive.
Those tight bonds and molecular symmetry make Freon so useful. Teflon is another fluorocarbon. The stability and "safety" of fluorocarbons ironically are potentially a threat to life on earth. There is theory and evidence that the heavy Freon molecule can float up to the atmosphere's ozone layer, where the sun's radiation destroys the molecule. The resulting chlorine ions (The fluorine ions do also, though they do not get as much press and are less damaging than chlorine.) catalyze the ozone, which is O3, back to O2, destroying the ozone layer, which shields the earth's surface from ultraviolet solar radiation. That is what made the Freon/ozone controversy, which continues today. There are other theories regarding the observed ozone depletion, but the artificial chloro-fluorocarbon issue (of which Freon is only one of many chemicals) has significant evidence in its favor. Even if it is not the entire reason for ozone layer depletion, it is hard to argue to continue using it.
There are existing conspiracy theories that Freon was banned to make way for more expensive refrigerants, making even more money for chemical companies, which is the case today. That theory may be wrong, but it makes you think. Many natural substances can be used as refrigerants, like water and carbon dioxide, but chemical companies would not make much money off them. I do not discount the issue's capitalistic (greed) component; it could be major.
Fluorine is among the Industrial Revolution's most important chemicals. Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth's crust, making up about 8% of it. Iron is second at 5%. Oxygen and silicon are the most abundant crust elements, making up 47% and 28% respectively. Aluminum was not used in civilization until a century ago, because it was nearly impossible to effectively extract and refine. Even today, most aluminum is not commercially obtainable, because it is usually bound up in silicon compounds called silicates. Bauxite, a class of aluminum oxides, is the primary source of aluminum ore. It was not until 1886 that a method was discovered to economically refine aluminum. The process was to dissolve bauxite in cryolite, a ten-atom molecule composed of one aluminum, three sodium, and six fluorine atoms. The mix was then charged with electricity in an electrolysis process, which separated the aluminum. That process is still the main one used today. The process needs electricity, cryolite, and bauxite. When the aluminum is removed, sodium fluoride is the main byproduct, and it is a deadly poison.
What follows deals with fluoride waste and the real world. It is a terrifying tale of power and greed that continues today, with hundred of millions of victims, including most of the people reading this.
That was the original prelude to this fluoride essay, now an addendum to it. I hope that this change made the reading experience a better one for those who originally skipped it.
The Next Section:
Columbus, The Original
American Hero