Poison Promoted As Health Benefit

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#CC9966" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="04600640dkesoe.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Medical Missionary Press</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#006633" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FF3300" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#CC0033" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Medical Missionary Press"><B>home</B></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=190 BGCOLOR="#CC9966" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <A HREF="id53.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Health"><IMG SRC="0410d0d0.png" border=0 width="13" height="13" ALT="up" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></A>       <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="13" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="7">      <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="13" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="7">      <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="13" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="13"></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 width="100%" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> Poison Promoted As Health Benefit</div> <bR> <div> <B>How A Toxic Poison Came to be Promoted as a Health Benefit</B></div> <div> <B>Part One</B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>A Popular Substance Promoted For Its Benefits,</B></div> <div> <B>But Actually Quite Toxic</B></div> <bR> <div> There is a common ingredient found in many manufactured items, and is also a byproduct of many types of industrial activities.</div> <bR> <div> It can be found in aerosol spray cans, non-stick cookware, in many carpets and fabric protectors, aluminum production, coal-burning electric generating plants, steel smelting, uranium enrichment, and, among many other things, most toothpastes. It is also found in refridgerator freon.</div> <bR> <div> What is the ingredient? Fluorine or some compound of it. Fluoride is one of the most common forms. Different fluorocarbons, as well as perfluorocarbons (PFCs), are other common forms.</div> <bR> <div> Fluorine, by the way, is a very corrosive chemical, and the fallout from some industrial plants can cause etching in the body surface and even in the glass of vehicles. Air concentration of 1 ppm will etch glass in two hours.</div> <bR> <div> Recently I finished reading a book about the history, development, and current use of fluoride and its related chemicals. It is extensively researched and heavily documented. It provides many startling facts and observations. It shows that much of the publicity regarding what are considered to be the effects of ozone pollution may in reality be due to fluoride pollution.</div> <bR> <div> There has been very little study done on fluoride pollution, even though it is one of the most widespread of toxic pollutants It is even listed as “most damaging air pollutant,” and has significant effects on plants, animals, and humans. For example, widely publicized air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and ozone, have  a threshold level for causing damage to plants at 0.05 ppm, while hydrogen fluoride (the gaseous form of fluoride emitted into the air by many industrial plants) produces toxic effects on plants at a threshold level of 1 ppb (meaning that it is 50 times more toxic).</div> <bR> <div> By the end of the 1960s, in country-regionplaceAmerica, industry was discharging 150,000 metric tons of fluoride into the air annually. It seems that even though highly toxic, fluoride has been given favored status by the EPA, when in the 1970s it was removed from the EPA list of most dangerous air pollutants hazardous to human health, thus ensuring little regulation of its poisoning effects in industrial emissions.</div> <bR> <div> Even though research regarding damage and effects of fluoride has been fairly little, some of the most revealing (and damaging) has been carefully suppressed, resulting in vast misinformation. For example, a well designed experiment involving forty-two beagle dogs and costing approximately half a million dollars, was conducted by the Kettering Laboratory under sponsorship and funding from a conglomeration of industrial companies such as Alcoa, Monsanto, Kaiser Aluminum, U.S. Steel, Harvey Aluminum, Olin Mathieson Chemical, Reynolds Aluminum, and others. One of the motivating factors for sponsoring the research was the fact that many of these companies were engaged in defending themselves in lawsuits regarding alleged fluoride poisoning of crops, livestock, and workers in industrial plants. Top officials felt confident, and were looking to prove that their industrial production of fluoride gases were non-toxic, and were not the cause of the alleged problems.</div> <bR> <div> The dog experiment, quite contrary to expectations, clearly showed that all dogs exposed to fluoride at similar absorption levels as industry workers, and even at any level, developed serious lung problems and problems in lymph nodes, as well as other parts of their body systems, including emphysema-like conditions. The Kettering Laboratory sent their report back to industry officials.</div> <bR> <div> “Frighteningly, long after the dogs had been removed from the inhalation chamber, dust particles remained lodged in their lungs. These particles continued to wreak havoc on the body, dissolving and freeing fluoride ions to mount fresh assaults on the pulmonary tissue, the report recorded. `The results obtained in this experiment are of more than casual interest, especially to investigators in the field of pulmonary physiology and pathology,' the CityplaceKettering report noted.” -<I>The Fluoride Deception</I>, page 189.</div> <bR> <div> “Industry's top lawyers received copies of the CityKettering dog study-but no one told country-regionplaceAmerica's workers or their doctors. Instead, the research was buried.” -Ibid., page 190. The study lay completely hidden until recent years when the author of <I>The Fluoride Deception</I> came across a copy of the report in the basement archive of the Kettering Laboratory at the PlaceTypeplaceUniversity of PlaceNameCincinnati.</div> <bR> <div> In 1925 the first recorded research on fluoride effects appears to have taken place. “As early as 1892 there had been medical speculation that because fluoride was found in dental enamel, it was necessary for strong teeth. In 1925 scientists at PlaceNameplaceJohns PlaceNameHopkins PlaceTypeUniversity tested that theory by feeding rats fluoride. They were disappointed; the fluoride made the teeth weaker, not stronger. They found `contrary to our expectations, that the ingestion of fluorine in amounts but little above those which have been reported to occur in natural foods, markedly disturbs the structure of the tooth.'” - Ibid., page 252. Even though it might have been found that some people's teeth had fluorine levels in them (possibly due to naturally occurring levels in their drinking water), other researchers, and even the editors of the <I>Journal of the American Medical Association</I>, noted that other factors in the drinking water such as higher levels of calcium and phosphorous could account for less tooth decay in these situations.</div> <bR> <div> In the 1930s a Swedish doctor, Kaj Roholm, was drawn to investigate some cases of fluoride toxicity. “Roholm saw that in the industrial world fluoride had become a bedrock for key manufacturing processes; 80 percent of the world's supply of fluorspar, the most commonly used fluoride mineral, was used in smelting; steel, iron, beryllium, magnesium, lead, aluminum, copper, gold, silver, and nickel all used it in production. (The word fluoride comes from the Latin root fluor meaning `to flux' or `to flow.' Fluoride has the essential property of reducing the temperature at which molten metal is `fluxed' from the superheated ore.) Brickworks, glass and enamel makers, and superphosphate fertilizer manufacturers each used raw materials that included enormous volumes of fluoride. And at DuPont's Kinetic Chemicals in StateplaceNew Jersey, scientists were giving birth to a new global industry of `organic' or carbon-based fluoride products, engineering man-made fluoride and carbon molecules to mass-produce a popular new refrigerant known as Freon.” -<I>The Fluoride Deception</I>, pages 31-32.</div> <bR> <div> Roholm noted that similar signs of toxicity were found in the plant, animal, and human realms where fluoride was being used and produced in industry. He “studied case after case in which factory fluoride hurt workers and contaminated surrounding areas-and where angry lawsuits had been launched for compensation. In CityplaceFreiburg, country-regionGermany, for example, smelters had been compensating their neighbors for smoke-damaged vegetation since 1855. In 1905 it was finally confirmed that fluoride smoke from those smelters had poisoned nearby cattle. Similar damage to plants and cattle was seen elsewhere in placeEurope, near superphosphate fertilizer plants, brickworks, iron foundries, chemical factories, and copper smelters. But although the damage was widespread, information about its chemical cause was less available. `The toxicity of fluorine compounds is considerable and little known in industry,' Roholm wrote.” -<I>The Fluoride Deception</I>, pages 32-33.</div> <bR> <div> He also concluded that notable incidents of industrial pollution causing damage and death had been attributed to sulfur compounds, such as released from burning coal, when the real cause was fluoride gas, also released from such industrial processes. Roholm subsequently published his findings and conclusions in 1937 in a book entitled <I>Fluorine Intoxication</I>. One of his recommendations to society was the elimination of fluorine from use in medicine.</div> <bR> <div> Very recently, in 2005, a report appeared describing PhD research that was done by Elise Bassin at PlaceNameplaceHarvard PlaceTypeUniversity PlaceNameMedical PlaceTypeSchool. Her research carefully examined cancer statistics and found a much higher incidence of bone cancers in fluoridated drinking water populations, particularly in male children under twenty years of age. Young boys ingesting fluoride have as much as a seven times greater chance of contracting bone cancer.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Part Two</B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>The Rest of the F</B><I><B>l</B></I><B>uoride Story</B></div> <bR> <div> It was December of 1943, and a man by the name of General Leslie Groves was in charge of the biggest and best wartime secret of the country-regionplaceUnited States military effort. The effort was called the “CityplaceManhattan project” and involved the development of the first atomic bomb. In complete secrecy, PlaceNameGeneral PlaceTypeGroves and the Army Core of Engineers were overseeing the work of many thousands of laborers, scientists, and engineers who were creating factories and laboratories across the country in places such as CityOak Ridge, StateTennessee; in StateNew Mexico, and StateplaceWashington state. The budget of the Manhattan Project was over 2 billion dollars (back when a dollars was worth many times what it is now). The project was so secret that congress knew almost nothing about. General Groves believed that the country-regionUnited States was in an arms race with country-regionplaceGermany to produce the atomic bomb, hence top priority was being given to the project.</div> <bR> <div> But disturbing reports were coming in of workers and scientists being gassed and burned in the bomb project's laboratories and companies. It seemed that fluoride gas might be a cause of the problem and some officials in the Medical Section of the Manhatton Project wanted to get more information.</div> <bR> <div> Project scientists were using a “gaseous diffusion” technology to refine unranium. In that process uranium is mixed with emental fluorine, forming a volatile gas called uranium hexafluoride, which is then “enriched” by diffusing the gas through a fine barrier, or membrane. The lighter molecules containing the refined uranium needed for nuclear explosion, pass through the membrane more readily and are quickly captured on the other side. But because only a handful of the lighter molecules make it through the membrane each time, many hundreds of tons of fluorine, and thousands of stages of progressive enrichment were needed to produce one atomic bomb.</div> <bR> <div> One gaseous diffusion plant on the banks of the Clinch River in StateplaceTennessee in 1945 was manned by 12,000 workers. It used as much electricity as the city of CityplaceNew York, and required 33 tons of uranium hexafluoride <I>each month</I>. The use of the fluoride gas was carefully disguised (in military memos being referred to as “the gas” or, ironically, “fresh air” because the knowledge could give clues as to the process being used. One major problem was that elemental fluorine and also the gas uranium hexafluoride are highly corrosive and toxic. Fluorine is one of the most reactive elements, often combining violently with other chemicals even at room temperature. It can vaporize steel in a flash of white heat, and its use presented engineers and scientists in the bomb project with nightmarish hazards and challenges.</div> <bR> <div> One of the breakthroughs in research occurred when it was found that when fluoride and carbon were combined in the laboratory, it produced a tight bond that was not broken even by the corrosive action of fluorine. Thus, “fluorocarbon” technology was born, and was used in the production of lubricants and other compounds that were needed in operating the uranium enrichment process at a mass volume scale. Fire was being used to fight fire.</div> <bR> <div> The unprecedented use of fluorine and fluoride compounds caused the exposures of thousands of lab scientists and industry workers to the toxic effects of the elements and their compounds. Numerous incidents started surfacing in which scientists and workers were showing effects of fluoride exposure that resulted in nausea and vomiting, mental confusion, loss of energy, teeth deterioration, slowness of healing, irritation and injury to mouth, throat, skin, eyes, and lungs from exposure to concentrations of hexafluoride gas. In 1944, with the Manhatton Project mushrooming to involve many industries and people, there developed more and more reports of death involved with exposure to fluoride and its compounds. But the nature of the project, and its status of top secrecy kept much of this information and any research regarding the effects of fluoride on people's health and the environment completely buried and hidden for over fifty years.</div> <bR> <div> Industry corporations involved in the manufacture of various compounds and components needed in the war effort, but which involved use and release of various fluoride compounds (corporations involved in the manufacture of aluminum, steel, plastic, chemicals, and fluoride chemical research, etc.), were not anxious for public exposure either. Yet people in communities that suffered from the environmental effects of local industrial plants, as well as workers in the plants, began connecting enough pieces of information and evidence to mount lawsuits and investigations into the problems developing. The resistance of the government partnered with involved industrial corporations who wanted to avoid publicity and wartime leaks of information about the atomic bomb effort, was very strong. There became a desperate need to both deflect growing concerns about fluoride among the general public, and a way to stop the mounting spread of lawsuits that began developing.</div> <bR> <div> This need was met by finding a way to promote fluoride as not only harmless but actually beneficial in human health. It had been observed that the incidence of tooth decay was lower in one town in the state of StateplaceTexas, than in a neighboring town. One observant researcher noted that the naturally occurring fluoride content of the town's drinking water was higher, and suggested that maybe there was a link. This suggestion formed the basis for what became an eventually widespread experimentation with fluoride being added to drinking water to see how it affected human health and the rate of dental disease.</div> <bR> <div> Two cities were selected by the government to conduct its initial experimentation. The records now available reveal the nature and purpose of the experimental nature of the endeavor, but the general public was told that they were going to receive great benefits from this new endeavor of exposing a mass of people to the effects of fluoride. Free physical and dental exams were conducted, but people were not aware that it was actually an experiment that necessitated careful observation and record keeping.</div> <bR> <div> The cities of CityGrand Rapids, StateMichigan, and CityplaceNewburgh, StateNew York, were chosen as the first experimental cities. Tests were to be carefully conducted on the populations over a ten year period. On dateYear1945Day25Month1Jan. 25, 1945, the experiment began in CityplaceGrand Rapids with fluoride being added to the drinking water. Then on dateYear1945Day2Month5May 2, 1945, the experiment began in CityplaceNewburgh. In both cities, carefully collected medical and dental data was to be gathered and compared with neighboring cities that did not have fluoride added to their water.</div> <bR> <div> One of the people living in CityplaceNewburgh as a child at the time recalls the beginning developments of the experiment. “`I can remember a lot of excitement as a young child,' remembered a lifelong placeNewburgh resident and former Mayer, Audrey Carey, who regularly attended the Broadway clinic in 1945 as a child. Carey's parents were poor she explained. Her father became the second African American on the placeNewburgh police force, and her family was grateful for the daughter's free health check-ups.” -<I>The Fluoride Deception</I>, page 79. Monthly check-ups included weight, height, urine analysis, and other body health signs.</div> <bR> <div> “The tests were designed to answer a simple safety question-whether the chemical produced <I>nondental</I> health problems (a medical agenda that, of course, was not publicized to local citizens). `Are there cumulative affects-beneficial or otherwise, on tissues and organs other than teeth-of long-continued ingestion of such small concentrations . . . [of fluoride]?' the doctors explained to their colleagues in various academic publications and conferences on the topic.” <I>Ibid.</I></div> <bR> <div> There were a growing number of leading figures who had been asking questions about the safety of fluoride, including James Conant, President Roosevelt's science advisor. In early 1943 he had organized a conference to be held that would include top medical men from the army (involved with the Manhatten Project to produce the atomic bomb, and other top people from industry and the medical profession. Conant prevailed on the Public Health Service to send out the invitations under their letterhead, and assured them that the conference expenses were all to be secretly paid by a special “consultant” who turned out to be “none other than Colonel Stafford Warren, the Manhattan Project's Medical Director.”</div> <bR> <div> In January of 1944 the conference took place at StateplaceNew York's Hotel Pennsylvania. “Mingling were the top medical men from the army and from companies and universities building the atomic bomb, including DuPont, Union Carbide, CityplaceColumbia, and Johns Hopkins. Also attending were Alcoa's top fluoride expert, Francis Frary; Helmuth Schrenk from the Bureau of Mines; the biochemist Wallace Armstrong from the University of StateplaceMinnesota; and Edward J. Largent from the Kettering Laboratory.” -<I>The Fluoride Deception</I>, page 80</div> <bR> <div> Also present from the National Institutes of Health was Dr. Paul A. Neal. He “outlined the critical importance of fluoride to the war economy-and emphasized how little doctors knew about health effects on workers. Aluminum, magnesium, refrigerants, aerosol propellants, insecticides, phosphates for animal feeds, hydrofluoric acid (`especially its use as a catalyst in oil refining'), and the employment of fluoride fluxes among an estimated 150,000 welders were just some of the burgeoning uses of fluoride in the war effort.” He also added that there was a “definite need for careful, thorough investigation on workmen who have been exposed for many years to fluorides.” He went on to explain: “However, it has been postponed until after the war since such an investigation could hardly be made at this time without undue interruption of the output of these industries.” -<I>The Fluoride Deception</I>, pages 80-81.</div> <bR> <div> It was at this conference that Dr. David B. Ast, chief dental officer of the New York State Health Department, boldly suggested that experimentation could be done by adding fluoride to the drinking water and see whether it produced harmful results. The “accumulated effects of small doses of fluoride in drinking water [could] be studied in the country-regionplaceU.S.” -<I>The Fluoride Deception</I>, page 80.</div> <bR> <div> At the end of the conference, a committee was appointed to set a standard of allowable fluoride levels for factory workers to be exposed to. Even though at the conference earlier DuPont's Dr. A. N. Benning had described how only 1 ppm (part per million) of hydrogen fluoride in the air would etch glass in two hours, the committee decided to set an acceptable level of 6 ppm that could be breathed in the factory air 8 hours a day and 6 days a week by workers. The committee, composed of ten men, apparently felt that workers in the factories could make some sacrifice for the war effort. The chairman of the committee, Dr. Carl Voegtlin of the PlaceTypeplaceUniversity of PlaceNameRochester, explained that they “did not want to set up standards that are so extreme on the lower side that it makes it hard to operate the plants.” He felt that “in the absence of definite evidence” of what could happen from long term exposure, they could set this kind of a standard at a higher level. A similar line of reasoning, that some sacrifice on the part of the workers and people is necessary in order to maintain production, was to be used later in defending industry in lawsuits. It was to be argued that to curtail the emissions of fluoride toxins in industry would so seriously compromise the production of materials needed by society that restrictions should not be imposed, even though serious health hazards resulted.</div> <bR> <div> Another one of the committee members, Francis Frary of the Aluminum Company of country-regionplaceAmerica didn't think that standards were even necessary. As long as conditions weren't uncomfortable for breathing, he didn't think there could be any damage. Only one committee member, Dr. Wallace Armstrong from the PlaceTypeplaceUniversity of PlaceNameMinnesota, ventured a concern that “someone is going to be hurt by the long exposure to the irritant.” -<I>The Fluoride Deception</I>, page 82.</div> <bR> <div> It was following this conference that the fluoridation experiment at CityplaceNewburgh, and the construction of a large gaseous diffusion plant for refining uranium to produce the atomic bomb, took place..</div> <bR> <div> Today, Audrey Carey is a nurse practitioner who performs routine physical examinations on children at a large public school which has 2500 students. The former mayor is in a unique position to evaluate the long-term effects of the fluoridation experiment in her city. “The most visible effects from fluoride in placeNewburgh water are not fewer cavities, but instead the high rates of speckled and mottled teeth. Carey's friends and family, among many others in the community, have this condition, which is known as dental fluorosis.” Both of her grandchildren exhibit fluorosis, inspite of the careful effort of their mother to keep all fluoride products out of the house. Today “the Newburgh children have virtually the same amount of dental decay as their counterparts in the neighboring town of CityplaceKingston, which was the `control' city in the original experiment. CityplaceKingston has resisted all efforts in subsequent years to add fluoride to its water supply. But following CityNewburgh's fluoridation, the rate of fluorosis was always higher there than in CityplaceKingston, and during the 1990s it rose again.” -<I>The Fluoride Deception</I>, pages 217-218.</div> <bR> <div> According to recent surveys by the New York Health Department, African American children have a higher incidence of fluorosis. The same results of fluoride's toxic effects are evident in the rest of the nation. In some cities as many as 3 out of 4 children have fluorosis. Across the country in country-regionplaceAmerica, 1 in 3 children show obvious signs of fluoride toxicity (which can produce bone cancers, higher fracture rates, decreased mental ability, hyperactivity in younger children, with loss of energy in later years. Fluoride readily combines with aluminum which it carries to the brain.</div> <bR> <div> Avoiding the obvious things such as fluoridated toothpaste and fluoridated water are essential. Avoid non-stick cookware, also watch for things with the word fluoro in it, such as fluorocarbons from aerosol spray cans, etc. Avoid living near or downwind from chemical or industrial plants which output fluoride from their manufacturing processes. Keep in mind that much of the fluoride that is added to city drinking water supplies is actually scrubbed from the smokestacks of industrial manufacturing plants.</div> <bR> <div> If you would like to read the complete story of how a toxic poison came to be promoted as a health benefit and how toxic industrial waste came to be dumped into the drinking water of many cities, you may obtain and read the book “The Fluoride Deception” by Christopher Bryson, available from the address below for $18.00 plus $3.00 shipping and packaging.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> Prepared by Bob Jorgensen, September 2011</div> <bR> <div> Additional copies are available from:</div> <div> Medical Missionary Press, 474 Blue Hill Road, Marshall, NC  28753</div> <bR> <div> Additional materials on health and other topics are available</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>