SOME OF

FLUORIDATION’S EARLY HISTORY

The promotion of adding fluoride to the drinking water took place first with presentations to public officials and dental association leaders, and then the campaign was carried to the grass roots.  The history of how and why such a controversial policy has been pushed is fascinating, at least for those who have an interest in the exercise of political and economic power and influence.

What Happened:  Once upon a time there was the wisp of a scientific conjecture or question about whether fluoride in the water helped prevent tooth cavities.  Some beginning studies

seemed to support this theory, but some did not.  There were many variables to measure.

Some fluoridation researchers, notably Gerald Cox,  were hired by the Mellon Institute.  One of the problems with this is the Mellon Institute wanted the studies to show that fluoride was an effective cavity fighter.  You are probably ahead of me.  Yes, the studies were positive in favor of adding fluoride to the water.

The Mellon Institute was started and funded by Andrew Mellon who was the founder of ALCOA—an aluminum company that had fluoride as an industrial waste product.  Since fluoride was toxic, this waste by-product had to be detoxified, a very expensive process.  So adding it to municipal drinking water converted it from an expense item to a source of income.

To be fair, we can assume that Mellon also wanted to see the rate of dental cavities go down.  People often have multiple motives in their actions or preferences.

From 1921 to 1932, Andrew Mellon served as U. S. Treasury Secretary.  At that time, the Public Health Service (PHS) was a division of the Treasury Department.  H. T. Dean, research employee of the PHS, later figured prominently in work supporting fluoridation.

Prior to the work of Gerald Cox , H. T. Dean and others, there was research showing danger signals.  These warnings came to be ignored by government health officials.  An example was an experiment at John Hopkins University in 1925 where rats were fed fluoride with the hope that it would strengthen their teeth.  Instead it made them weaker.

In the first half of the 20th Century, the world’s foremost expert on fluoride was Kaj Roholm, a Danish scientist whose work identified fluoride as a poison to the central nervous system, probably because of its impairment of enzymes. 

Roholm’s conclusions on fluoride and teeth were blunt.

“The once general assumption that fluorine is necessary to the quality of the

enamel rests upon an insufficient foundation.  Our present knowledge most decidedly

indicates that fluorine is not necessary to the quality of that tissue, but that on the

contrary the enamel organ is electively sensitive to the deleterious effects of fluorine.”

[emphasis in original]  His medical recommendation:  “Cessation of the therapeutic use

of fluorine compounds for children.”  In other words, more than sixty years ago the

world’s leading fluoride scientist rejected the notion that fluoride was needed for stronger

teeth, agreeing with earlier studies that found that fluoride weakened the enamel—and

explicitly warning against giving fluoride to children.

Roholm’s work took him throughout the industrial areas of Europe, and as he read widely in the great libraries of Berlin and London, a clear picture emerged.  The scientist saw how fluoride’s chemical potency was causing problems with cattle and plants, and was increasingly causing problems with humans.  Areas where wells had a high content of fluoride were noted for mottling and staining of teeth, in the U.S. called Colorado Brown Stain or Texas Teeth.  Today that deformity is known by the medical term of dental fluorosis.  This is an early indicator of systemic fluoride poisoning.  A more severe form of poisoning, produced by earth-bound natural fluoride, known as crippling skeletal fluorosis, is also widespread in much of the Third World, where lack of adequate nutrition often worsens the fluoride’s effects.

In the industrial world fluoride had become a bedrock for key manufacturing processes; fluorspar, the most commonly used fluoride mineral, was used in metal 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 superheated ore.  Brickworks, glass and enamel makers, and superphosphate fer-tilizer manufacturers each used raw materials that include fluoride. 

At DuPont in New Jersey, scientists were giving birth to a new global industry using fluoride to mass-produce a popular new refrigerant known as Freon.

  Industry’s growing appetite for fluoride presented a special threat to workers and surrounding communities.   Roholm studied case after case in which factory fluoride hurt workers and contaminated surrounding areas—and where angry lawsuits had been launched for compensation. 

As early as 1855 in Freiburg, Germany, for example, smelters had been compensating their neighbors for smoke-damaged vegetation.  In 1907 it was finally confirmed that fluoride smoke from those smelters had poisoned nearby cattle.  Similar damage to plants and cattle was seen elsewhere in Europe, near superphosphate fertilizer plants, brickworks, iron foundries, chemical factories, and copper smelters.  Even though 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.

“Science was partly to blame, he suggested.  The industrial revolution, for example, had been fueled with coal, which had darkened the skies over cities such as Pittsburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, and London.  But air pollution investigators had focused the blame for subsequent environmental damage and human injury on sulfur compounds rather than on the large quantities of fluoride frequently found in coal.” (Christopher Bryson, The Fluoride Deception, p 34)

In the century’s worst industrial air pollution disaster to date, in Belgium’s Meuse Valley—which killed sixty people and injured several thousand in December 1930—Roholm thought that disaster investigators had overlooked both the toxicity and the prevalence of fluoride pollution from nearby zinc, steel, and phosphate plants. 

“Roholm also focused on the new global aluminum industry.  Animal injury was found near an Italian aluminum plant in 1935;  scientists found health problems inside a Norwegian aluminum smelter, where workers suffered sudden gastric pains and vomiting, bone changes, and symptoms resembling bronchial asthma.  “A special position is occupied by aluminum works,” Roholm wrote, “inasmuch as the damaged vegetation especially has caused secondary animal diseases.” He advocated government action: “Factories giving off gaseous fluorine compounds should be required to take measures for their effective removal from chimney smoke.”

Roholm’s monumental 365-page study, Fluorine Intoxication, was published in 1937 and was quickly translated into English.  It contained references to 893 scientific articles on fluoride.  The trust and cooperation of the Danish cryolite industry was necessary to make his study.  Nevertheless, the book was a warning to corporations:  they must pay attention to their factory conditions and to the insidious—often misdiagnosed—effects of fluoride on workers.  Roholm had several clear recommendations for employers and doctors.”

Roholm’s recommendations included the following:

• Recognition of chronic fluorine intoxication as an occupation disease rating for compensation
  

• Prohibition against employment of females and young people on work with fluorine compounds developing dust or vapor
  

• Demand that industrial establishments should neutralize waste products containing fluorine
  

• A prohibition against the presence of fluorine in patent medicine may be necessary
  

(Christopher Bryson, The Fluoride Deception, p 32, 33, 34)

(Continued)  Click here for page 2.

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