The Fluoride Deception, by Christopher Bryson

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[sSRI-Research] IS FLUORIDE REALLY ALL THAT SAFE?

 

August 16, 2004

Volume 82, Number 33

pp. 35-36

 

 

IS FLUORIDE REALLY ALL THAT SAFE?

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/books/8233/print/8233books.html

 

The Fluoride Deception, by Christopher Bryson, Seven

Stories Press, 2004, 374 pages, $24.95 (ISBN

1-58322-526-9)

 

 

 

REVIEWED BY SHELDON KRIMSKY

 

" The Fluoride Deception " reads like a whodunit.

There are conspiracies, cover-ups, human casualties,

and broken careers. The prime suspects in this toxic

thriller are compounds of fluoride; the coconspirators

represent industry, the military, and the public

health community. At the book's ending, the suspect

chemicals are not proven guilty beyond a reasonable

doubt, but we are left with compelling evidence that

powerful interests with high financial stakes have

colluded to prematurely close honest discussion and

investigation into fluoride toxicity.

 

 

 

Christopher Bryson has woven together an impressive

body of evidence that brings into question the near

universally held view in the medical and public health

communities that fluoridation of public water supplies

at current levels (about 1 ppm) is unambiguously safe

and does not involve any serious health or

environmental trade-offs. Bryson conducted extensive

interviews, read many scientific papers, and burrowed

through archival sources (there are more than 100

pages of reference notes) to make his argument that

fluoride toxicity, even at the levels found in public

water supplies, is not a closed case. Some private

interests, he alleges, will seek to destroy careers to

ensure that scientific studies that raise doubts about

the safety of fluoride never get funded--or if they

do, never get published.

Few people of prominence will stand up and contest the

issue of the safety of fluoride compounds, Bryson

claims. One exception is Arvid Carlsson, a Swedish

pharmacologist who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in

Physiology or Medicine. In a postscript to the book,

Carlsson writes: " Fluoride is a pharmacologically very

active compound with an action on a variety of enzymes

and tissues in the body already in low concentrations.

In concentrations not far above those recommended it

has overt toxic actions. " Carlsson was one of the

scientists who helped persuade the Swedish Parliament

to ban fluoridation of drinking water in that country.

 

The book summarizes 50 years of fluoride uses in

steel, aluminum, phosphate, gasoline, uranium

enrichment, refrigerants, and plastics. Bryson shows

how fluoride became the " lifeblood of the modern

industrial economy. " Notwithstanding fluoride's broad

industrial applications, its airborne emissions, and

its toxic by-products, the public's awareness of

fluoride comes primarily from its uses in drinking

water, toothpaste, and preadolescent fluoride

treatments as a prophylaxis against dental cavities.

 

There are many resemblances between the history of

fluoride regulation and that of other toxic

substances. The exigencies of World War II blinded

public health regulators to medical reports of

occupational hazards from fluoride exposure in those

industries where compounds of fluoride were used or

produced. The U.S government did not take kindly to

lawsuits filed by farmers for gaseous fluoride damage

to their families, their cattle, and their crops, an

unintended by-product of nuclear weapons facilities

during the Manhattan Project. Postwar economic growth

served as a convenient excuse to ignore evidence that

communities were exposed to unhealthy levels of

airborne fluoride emissions.

 

But what is distinguishable about fluoride politics is

the connection between this ion and the prevention of

dental cavities. Bryson shows us how fluoride's dental

applications were skillfully used by corporate

stakeholders in their campaign to derail more

stringent air and occupational standards for

industrial fluoride emissions. Similarly, defense

lawyers exploited the positive side of fluoride to

protect companies from worker-injury suits.

 

AS THE SAYING GOES in the public health community,

adopting an antifluoridation position is a career

breaker. This is illustrated in the book by the case

of Phyllis Mullenix, a neurotoxicologist hired by the

Forsyth Dental Center in Boston to investigate

materials used in dentistry. Mullenix found evidence

of fluoride neurotoxicity in experimental rats.

Mullenix showed that with chronic exposure, the

fluoride ion could cross the blood-brain barrier.

Moreover, when fluoridated water was fed to pregnant

rats, she found the offspring exhibited behavior

resembling hyperactivity.

 

 

PHOTODISC

 

Mullenix recalls the response of a Forsyth

administrator to her findings: " You are going against

what the dentists and everybody have been publishing

for 50 years, that this [fluoride] is safe and

effective. You must be wrong. ... You are jeopardizing

the entire support of this entire institution. If you

publish these studies, NIDR [the National Institute of

Dental Research] is not going to fund any more

research at Forsyth. " Her studies were published in

Neurotoxicology & Teratology. But within days after

the paper's acceptance, her contract with Forsyth was

not renewed.

Bryson's investigations into fluoride science led him

to a 1962 unpublished study conducted at Kettering

Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati, which he

found in the basement archive of the laboratory. An

industry group contributed nearly half-a-million

dollars for a series of toxicological studies that

they believed would help them against worker claims of

crippling skeletal fluorosis--thickening and fusing of

spinal vertebrae.

 

In one of the key experiments, 42 beagle dogs were

exposed to calcium fluoride dust for six hours a day,

five days a week--simulating human occupational

exposure. According to the results of the study,

calcium fluoride damaged the lungs and lymph nodes of

the dogs. If released, the study could have provided

the critical evidence needed to raise the industrial

standard on fluoride emission limitations.

 

" The Kettering data pointed an arrow directly at the

heart of key modern industrial enterprises, where the

extraordinary incidence of emphysema in workers

potentially 'dwarfed' even the silicosis crisis of the

1930s, " Bryston writes. He quotes one toxicologist who

was given the long-suppressed study data, who said,

" The fact that the Kettering data were not published

or made available is a crime against American

workers--with profound health consequences for the

rest of the nation. "

 

The positive spin of this unpublished report was that

the university researchers did not manipulate the

science to give the sponsors what they wanted to hear.

Scientists refused to fudge the data or give the study

a proindustry interpretation. However, there is also a

negative spin. The academic investigator at the

University of Cincinnati either chose not to or lacked

the contractual rights to publish the results.

According to Mullenix, " The Kettering Laboratory's

long-ago suppression of the dog study helped to

perpetuate a cover-up of fluoride's potential for harm

as an air pollutant. "

 

Even today there are no legal constraints against the

suppression of scientific data from privately funded

studies. Recently, New York State Attorney General

Eliot Spitzer filed suit against a major

pharmaceutical company, charging that it had

suppressed clinical trial data that was valuable to

the medical community on a drug used to treat

adolescent depression. A small group of prominent

journals have adopted a policy that they will not

publish studies unless the authors affirm their

control over the data and publication. Some members of

the medical community are calling for a public

database on clinical trials, so that data unfavorable

to a sponsor will not be suppressed.

 

In 1993, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued

a report on the health effects of ingested fluoride.

The study supported the Environmental Protection

Agency's fluoride drinking water standard of 4 mg per

L as an " interim standard. " It recommended additional

research on bone strength, bone fractures, and

carcinogenicity. NAS began a second study on fluoride

toxicity in November 2002 to review the new scientific

literature, as the academy considers the aggregate

exposure one can get from all sources of fluoride,

including drinking water, food, toothpaste, and dental

rinses.

 

Although most of the book focuses on inorganic

fluoride salts, it concludes with an epilogue citing

the potential dangers presented by another branch of

fluorine compounds--perfluorocarbons. Used in products

like Scotchguard and Teflon, these molecules come with

their own set of reactivities and toxicities. EPA is

taking formal action against DuPont for failing to

report birth defects among babies born to female

workers who were exposed to perfluorooctanoic acid, a

chemical used in its manufacture of Teflon. So there

is still plenty of life left in fluoride science and

politics.

 

" The Fluoride Deception " will leave any open-minded

readers feeling uneasy about the acceptable levels of

fluoride in drinking water, as well as the cumulative

sources from dental hygiene products. But the deeper

lessons of this story, going back to classified

military research during World War II, are the book's

insights into the threats to open inquiry in public

health and environmental science. Premature closure of

debate in science undercuts one of its unique

features--a feature that distinguishes it from other

forms of fixing belief--namely, science's

self-correcting function. Without a scientific culture

that supports reexamination of " no risk " results,

however strongly held, we may find our public health

and environmental policies resting on weak or faulty

foundations, which can prolong our blindness to

preventable illnesses.

 

 

--

 

Sheldon Krimsky is a professor of urban and

environmental policy and planning at Tufts University.

He does science policy research and is the author of

" Science in the Private Interest. "

 

 

Chemical & Engineering News

ISSN 0009-2347

2004

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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