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.12In 1983 the EPA's Rebecca Hamner acknowledged that fluoridatingwater with phosphate-industry waste was a fix for Florida's environmentalpollution."This Agency regards such use as an ideal environmentalsolution to a long standing problem," the Deputy Assistant Administratorfor Water wrote."By recovering by-productAS VITAL TO OUR NATIONAL LIFE.151fluosilicic acid from fertilizer manufacturing, water and air pollutionare minimized, and water utilities have a low-cost source of fluorideavailable to them," she added.13DID COLD-WAR PLANNERS also encourage water fluoridation toguarantee an alternative supply of fluoride for war industries or toreduce the cost of disposing of fluoride waste generated by uraniumproduction? On June I, 1950, as communist troops prepared for aninvasion of South Korea, the Public Health Service abruptly reversedits opposition and declared that it now favored adding fluoride towater supplies.14 The PHS now smiled upon fluoride, announcedOscar Ewing, whose Federal Security Agency was in charge of thePHS.He attributed this change of opinion to results from the waterfluoridation experiment in Newburgh, New York, which showed a 65percent reduction in dental cavities in local children.15But the origins of the Newburgh study, as we saw in chapter 6, weremanifestly suspicious.And irrespective of the dental data ( which havebeen seriously questioned16), the Newburgh fluorida-tion experimentwas a safety trial designed to last for ten years to research potentialside effects of drinking fluoridated water.When Ewing announced thegovernment's about-face in 1950, the safety study was only halfcomplete.Ewing was well placed to act on ulterior national security concernsor on behalf of industry.His Federal Security Agency was one of themost powerful cold-war government bureaus.He had been Alcoa'slegal liaison to Washington during World War II, shaping the massiveexpansion of the nation's aluminum industry.And the former WallStreet lawyer was a member of an inner circle of Truman confidantsknown as the Wardman Park group, who ate each Monday night atEwing's Washington apartment and whose cigar-smoking,steak-dining members included Clark Clifford, who was famouslyclose to the Pentagon and the CIA.""No Injury Would Occur"Harold Hodge Turns the TideWATER-FLUORIDATION ADVOCATES greeted the government flip-flopwith rapture.Two Wisconsin dentists were especially elated.152 CHAPTER ELEVENDr.John Frisch and Dr.Frank Bull, the state dental officer, had beenamong the nation's earliest profluoridation activists, lobbying federalofficials with an enthusiasm that bordered on the perverse.In 1944 Dr.Frisch began giving his seven-year-old daughter Marylin water from a jughe'd prepared with 1.5 ppm fluoride.(That same year the Journal of the"American Dental Association had editorialized, Our knowledge of thesubject certainly does not warrant the introduction of fluorine incommunity water supplies.") Frisch placed "Poison" labels on theunfluoridated kitchen faucets, to remind Marylin to drink his potioninstead.Three years later the father's passion was rewarded, according tohistorian Donald McNeil as related in his 1957 book, The Fight forFluoridation.Sitting in a Madison restaurant, Dr.Frisch noticed a "flash"on his daughter's teeth."He could hardly believe his eyes," McNeil wrote."It looked like a case of mottling.He rushed her out -side in the brightsunlight and thought he noticed it again.Next day he excitedly askedFrank Bull over to get his opinion.Bull con curred.It was mottling."(Remember, fluorosis does nothing to strengthen a tooth, may in factweaken it, and is a visible indicator of systemic fluoride poisoning duringthe period that the teeth were being formed.No matter how mild the"mottling, it is an external sign of internal distress," according to thescientist H.V.Smith, one of the researchers who in the 1930s discoveredthat fluoride was mottling teeth.)'Now, as the PHS endorsed water fluoridation for the rest of theUnited States, a similar thrill ran through the Wisconsin dentists."Cease firing!" wrote Frisch."The hard fight is over," added FrankBull.19But the fight was just beginning.Almost immediately citizens began tolearn some disturbing information.The world's leading fluoride authority,Kaj Roholm, had opposed giving fluoride to children.The AMA and theADA had all editorialized against fluoridation as recently as the early1940s.And leading scientists, such as M.C.and H.V.Smith, also worried"about adding fluoride to water supplies.Although mottled teeth aresomewhat more resistant to the onset of decay, they are structurally weak;when the decay does set in the result is often disastrous," thehusband-and-wife team reported.153AS VITAL TO OUR NATIONAL LIFE.The Smiths sounded an obvious warning."If intake of fluoride( through drinking water) can harm the delicate enamel to such anextent that it fails to enamelize the unborn teeth in children, is thereany reason to believe that the destructive progress of fluoride endsright there?" "The range between toxic and non-toxic levels of fluoride"ingestion is very small," Drs.Smith added.Any procedure forincreasing fluorine consumption to the so-called upper limits oftoxicity would be hazardous."21Fluoride was put to the vote for the first time on September 19,1950.It was a gloriously unruly and democratic spectacle.The Wisconsin town of Steven's Point had been fluoridating its water for fivemonths, but local activists including a poet, a railroad repair -man,and a local businessman forced the town council to put the issue tothe ballot.After a colorful debate in the pages of the local newspapers,and rallies with activists caroling "Good-bye, Fluorine" to the tune of"Good Night, Irene," fluoridation was defeated in Steven's Point by avote of 3,705 to 2,166.A wildfire of citizen protest now flashed across the United States.The antifluoride camp found one of their most distinguished voices ina Michigan doctor, George L.Waldbott.The German-born physicianwas a medical pioneer and allergy specialist who had carried out thefirst ever pollen survey in Michigan in 1927 and the first nationalfungus survey in 1937.22 In 1933 he reported on sudden deaths fromlocal and general anesthetics, and was the first scientist to report onsimilar fatal allergic reactions to penicillin, drawing the attention ofTime magazine [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]