Fluoridation: A Horror Story

 

By Wade Frazier

Introduction

Compulsory Fluoridation: An Industrial Tale

Harold Hodge, the Nuclear Connection, and Our Brains

Conclusion

Footnotes

Fluoridation: A Chemistry Prelude, Now an Addendum

Introduction

Earlier drafts of this essay had a several page chemistry narrative at its beginning, which presented some germane aspects of chemistry, to make this essay more understandable.  Early readers felt it was too much technical information for those in the lay audience, particularly as they begin their reading experience.

The original chemistry prelude was designed to help the reader understand the nature of fluoride, why it is used in industry how 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 readers, that prelude is now an addendum to this essay.  Reading the prelude is not imperative to understanding this essay, but 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).[1]  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 removing the metal, especially in aluminum refining, created hazardous waste.

In its ionic state, fluorine is highly toxic.  Fluorine bonded to metallic ore in the earth was liberated during the refining process and is difficult-to-impossible to safely dispose.  The aluminum refining industry was the biggest and most influential fluoride polluter around 1930, and in America only one company was in the aluminum business: ALCOA.

Fluorine is also useful in producing artificial chemicals such as Teflon and Freon, because of its unique properties.  Those unique properties also made fluorine indispensable in refining uranium to extract its most radioactive isotope, which made the nuclear age possible.

Compulsory Fluoridation: An Industrial Tale

The increasing industrialization 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 hitting its stride a century ago, the aluminum refiners had a major problem with the fluorides attending aluminum production: they are deadly poisons.  Fluorine once safely bound with aluminum, copper and iron in the earth’s crust was reintroduced into the environment in its ionic state.  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 industrial problem.

John Yiamouyiannis, in his influential Fluoride and the Aging Factor, described how the fluorine ion disrupts enzyme activity and attacks DNA and protein.  In his theories, backed up by research, the fluorine ion particularly disrupts hydrogen bonds.  When chemicals are dumped together, the elements that have a higher bonding affinity will “steal” the bonds from other elements.  Fluorine forms the smallest negatively charged ions of all the elements, and that small size allows them to go where larger ions cannot.  Those fluorine ions can get into the nooks and crannies of larger molecules, such as enzymes and DNA, and wreak biological havoc.  Those fluorine ions disrupt weaker bonds in those larger molecules, damaging or destroying the original substance, disabling its biochemical usefulness.  The fluorine ion acts similarly to “free radicals” in the body, with its net electrical charge interfering with biochemical reactions.  That is how the fluorine ion harms or kills people. 

Another common industrial element, chlorine, behaves similarly, and the chlorine issue is another one where chlorine is undoubtedly carcinogenic, among other health hazards, but industrial propaganda and criminal activity keeps the heat off chlorine.[2]  Chlorine is the other element compulsorily added to the water supply, to kill microorganisms.

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 progresses with an increase in the fluorine ion concentration that teeth are subject to.  Dental fluorosis progresses 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 (images of this process are easily available on the Internet).  With 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 an effort was launched to determine its cause.  In Colorado the condition was known as “Colorado Brown Stain,” and in Texas it was “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.[3]  Usually the fluorine ions were naturally occurring. 

Because humankind is the only animal to drill wells, we are often 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 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 environmental fluorides.

By the turn of the 20^th 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.”[4]  As early as 1850, people and livestock were being poisoned by fluoride emissions from the iron and copper industries.[5]  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 that airborne fluorides were responsible.[6]  The fertilizer industry was mainly responsible in that instance.  As late as 1970, the U.S. Department of Agriculture stated that airborne fluorides “caused more worldwide damage to domestic animals than any other air pollutant.”[7] 

In America, with its industrialized economy, 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. 

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 west.  As Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon had authority over the PHS, and Mellon founded and was the controlling shareholder 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.  There was an obvious 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 Dean created.[8]

The only unmistakable trend is the one showing dental fluorosis increasing with fluoride concentration, which was expressly what Dean went west to determine.  Black and McKay noted that mottled teeth did not seem to have a higher incidence of tooth decay, and Dean extended those findings, although that was not his job.  A man was specifically assigned to investigate the damage a particular chemical did to teeth, but somehow concluded that the chemical was actually good for teeth.  To paraphrase Dean’s findings: “As children’s teeth disintegrate, they may have fewer cavities.”  Dean is known today as the “father of fluoridation.”  It has now been admitted by virtually everybody involved in the fluoridation issue, even by Dean himself (given under oath on a witness stand), 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 was initially cautious with his suggestion.  Dean’s 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) needed to begin proposing that the nation’s water supplies be fluoridated.  In 1937 Cox announced, “It is possible that fluorine is specifically required for the formation of teeth.”[9]  Cox was the first to suggest the compulsory fluoridation of entire communities.  Ironically, the PHS spent the ten years after 1931 trying to eliminate fluorine ions from the water supply, given the tooth mottling findings.  Cox partly based his fluoridation suggestion on the work of Gerald Armstrong, who in 1938 published findings that decayed teeth seemed to have lower fluorine content than healthy teeth.  In 1963, Armstrong published a reinvestigation of his 1938 findings, and concluded that his earlier findings were wrong, and that there was no detectable difference in the fluoride content of healthy and decayed teeth.[10]  The discovering scientists themselves admitted that the two major scientific findings of the 1930s that showed that fluoride might be good for the teeth, and were the basis of later campaigns to compulsorily fluoridate water supplies, were worthless. 

Naturally occurring fluoride in the water supply is usually composed of fluorine and calcium atoms.  What component of dissolved calcium fluoride might have a positive effect on bones and teeth?  The calcium aspect was ignored, while the fluorine component was obsessively pursued.  The fluoride compounds artificially added to the water supply are sodium fluoride and fluosilicic acid, which are industrial waste byproducts.  By the 1950s, the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) became a corrupt organization that produced “research” that fluoride polluters used to protect themselves from liability lawsuits.[11]

If the data supporting fluoridation is analyzed, it quickly becomes evident that all the pro-fluoridation people have in their favor are highly uncertain statistics.  The theories are conflicting, as is the data.[12]  While fluorine is found in bones and teeth, so are other elements that nobody says are essential for health (and even toxic), and more than 80% of fluorine given to humans and animals in experiments is immediately excreted.[13]  The same mechanisms that supposedly protect teeth also cause tooth mottling.  It is quite the double-edged sword.  Even giving the pro-fluoridation forces the benefit of the doubt regarding their statistics, their data on the benefit of fluoride amounts to one tooth per mouth, not an exciting benefit.[14]  It is an alarmingly small benefit when the undeniable harm caused by fluoride is considered.  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 are.  Many astute criticisms have been leveled at the methods of fluoridation researchers regarding uncontrolled variables, omission of pertinent data, mathematical errors, and outright bogus science.[15] 

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, working for the industry-influenced National Institute of Dental Research.  Armstrong was a comrade-in-arms with Dean and McClure, promoting fluoridation.  Hodge had a sinister relationship to the fluoridation issue, recently discovered through declassified U.S. documents, also tainting Ast. 

Dean was not the first person to suggest that fluoride might be good for teeth.  It was suggested as early as 1892, as it was detected in bones and teeth, although experiments in the 1920s disproved the notion.[16]  It had not yet been established that fluoride caused “tooth mottling,” but already scientists were trying to see if fluoride might be good for teeth.  There were health disasters happening throughout the industrialized world due to fluoride, but a handful of ALCOA-influenced/funded scientists tried seeing how fluoride might be good for health.  They and their corporate sponsors eventually prevailed, as money talks loudly in America. 

Although the industrial 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 initiated 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 collect 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 for fluoridation.  Bernays also designed the campaign by the American Tobacco Company to addict American women to tobacco, and Joseph Goebbels adopted Bernays’ work in his Nazi propaganda campaigns against the Jews.[17] 

By 1950, 89 cities were fluoridated, despite no credible evidence ever submitted demonstrating that it reduced 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 advertising the blessed purity of its sodium fluoride.  Reality had been inverted, with a deadly industrial waste being forced down the American public’s throat as “medicine.”  That reality remains inverted to this day.  Eventually, the fluoridation results for Newburgh and Grand Rapids were partially published and have largely been ignored ever since.  Although there was no measurable decrease in tooth decay, Newburgh boys had twice the incidence of skeletal deformities and a higher tooth-mottling rate as compared to the unfluoridated control group in nearby Kingston.  Seeing how Newburgh fared, Kingston has successfully resisted having its water supply fluoridated for nearly sixty years.  Other Newburgh data was noteworthy, although largely suppressed: Newburgh developed one of the highest heart disease rates in the United States, and girls came to puberty earlier than the control group.  The heart disease rate in Grand Rapids doubled after the first five years of the fluoridation experiment.[18]

Such an anti-scientific rush gathers its own momentum, similar to a stampeding herd.  The PHS and other bureaucracies would never back down from their position, no matter what.  Fluoridation’s proponents have even admitted that.[19]  It has taken several centuries for the Catholic Church to admit that the Inquisition was probably not such a great institution.  The Index of banned books was not discontinued until the 1960s, 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.[20]  The cost of admitting that one was 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 possibly 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 familiarity with fluoridation's history or the fact that there still is no credible data that demonstrates that fluoridation reduces tooth decay, and overwhelming, indisputable evidence that fluoride is a deadly poison.  The logic 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.[21]  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.

Reading the books for and against fluoridation can be illuminating.  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 health hazards, including dental and skeletal fluorosis.  If people read his book only to page 74, they might think that fluoride would be 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 truly unequivocal issues of tooth decay.  One unequivocal issue is that the civilized diet is almost solely responsible for tooth decay.  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.[22]  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.[23] 

There is dramatic evidence regarding the civilized diet's pernicious influence on teeth, 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 the 1930s, Weston Price journeyed to earth’s last remaining “primitive” civilizations.  Price studied primitive civilizations and what happened to them when introduced to the “civilized” diet.  On 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.[24]  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 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.  McClure and his friends not only kept the food processors in business, but they also helped create a new market for toxic waste.

That was not the only blind spot in McClure’s work.  The possible economic incentive of the fluoride polluters, and those they bankrolled, was largely 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 resembles 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 triumphed.  Particularly 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 Europe’s biggest fluoridation proponents.  Ericsson received money from the corrupt U.S. PHS, and even received royalties from Sweden’s toothpaste industry on fluoridation patents that he held.[25]  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 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 PHS, which was dominated by ALCOA for many years, the judge’s comments make for astonishing reading.

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 far from bulletproof.  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.[26]  In the case of pro-fluoridation research, as with many others in the annals of science, it appears that the error rate may have been larger than the effect being studied, making the research worthless. 

There is a mountain of contradictory data to the “unequivocal,” undebatable data that McClure lauded.[27]  In looking at the data, it was interesting that just as death rates went down in the Western nations during World War II (and WW I, due to natural causes) 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.[28]  It is odd that in America’s trial fluoridation experiments, 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 it is accepted that fluoridation fights tooth decay, there are many 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.[29]  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 fluoridated water supplies.[30] 

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, such as in John Yiamouyiannis' case.[31]  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 for studying fluoride’s harmful effects.  In the 1950’s, about half of all U.S. dentists did not believe in fluoridation, but dared not speak out.[32]  If they did, a McCarthy-like witch hunt could be visited upon them. 

There was controversy in the early days as Ewing and his pals were campaigning to get water fluoridated.  Below is one of the few brave statements made by a medical doctor in standing up to the propaganda barrage, 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."[33]

In the fluoridation issue, the same conflicts of interest and corruption that pervade organized medicine are clearly seen.  The AMA has never has had much to do with promoting the public’s well being, instead promoting cigarettes and helping to cover up health disasters.  That dynamic can also be found in the American Dental Association (ADA), where its financial relationship with candy companies is similar to the relationship the AMA had for generations with the tobacco interests.  In 1995, the ADA received 15% of its money from trade groups such as the Sugar Association, Coca-Cola, and M & M.  The ADA actively promotes compulsory fluoridation.  The ADA was also guilty of stating that the ACLU endorsed fluoridation when it in fact did not.[34]  Since 1993, the ADA has had to drop many organizations from its list of fluoridation supporters, including the EPA.[35] 

In David Kennedy’s How to Save Your Teeth he devoted 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 a fluoride treatment 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/her mouth, then spit it out.  That is similar to the “swish” fluoride program that was popular in fluoridation’s early days. 

The 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.  The child swallowed 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 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 more than 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 boy's parents were eventually awarded $750,000.[36] 

The only mistake was the boy swallowing the water instead of spitting it out.  Dental industry apologists have said that the procedure was not quite orthodox, and the boy was told to spit out the water, which is a weak defense.[37]  Kennedy began looking into fluoridation, and 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 take place.  What does that hardening represent?   In metallurgy and the forging of metals it is well known that when metals are made harder, that often makes them more brittle.  That may be exactly what is happening to teeth that are exposed to fluoride.  Yes, the enamel gets harder, but it also becomes 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, and makes cavities more catastrophic to the teeth than they would otherwise be.

For argument’s sake I will accept that fluoridation is indeed a boon to the teeth, and cavities decrease when fluorine is introduced to the body, and there is a health benefit to ingesting fluorine, although fluoridation's proponents say that those benefits mainly apply to children.  Let me be even more optimistic and say that everybody benefits from fluorine.  Let me be the greatest believer in fluoride's benefits and state that every tooth benefits from fluoride.  Even if I was fluoride's biggest cheerleader, I 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 I 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 me call fluoride a medicine.  Let me consider fluoride similar to penicillin, as far as how universally wonderful it is for us.  Some people should not take penicillin because they have adverse reactions.  Similarly, some people are far more sensitive to fluoride and have reactions to it at levels that most endure with no obvious harm.  Millions of Americans today have that problem.  That situation is typical of most drugs.  How can I measure how much fluoride is in the rest of my ingestion, such as from my food, my toothpaste, and my dentist's fluoride treatments?  If I were a doctor, prescribing penicillin to my patients (similar to a dentist and fluoride treatments), how would I feel if they also had penicillin in their food, water and toothpaste?  Could I effectively control their overall dose of penicillin?  There is not a sane doctor who would prescribe a medicine to the entire population, and in such a way that he/she could not tailor the dose for each patient.  Nevertheless, that is what compulsory fluoridation does. 

Using even better logic than fluoridation's proponents, people theoretically cannot overdose on vitamin C.  Why not compulsorily add vitamin C to America’s water supply?  It could only help our health, could it not?  One problem is there is no cheap source of vitamin C, whereas fluoride has the marvelous distinction of being a toxic waste byproduct of several industries.  Today, the fertilizer industry has beaten out the aluminum refining industry as the source of fluoride in America’s water supplies, as they provided the fluoride ion more cheaply.  Today, 90% of fluoride added to America’s 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 industrial waste problems could find themselves in such a win-win situation. 

Today, well more than half of American children have dental fluorosis, to some degree, and the rate is greater than 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.  When cancer patients have chemotherapy and their hair falls out, it is indicative of far more widespread tissue damage, hair falling out being the least of it.  Similarly, dental fluorosis is merely the visible evidence of systemic fluoride poisoning.  Ironically, research (even mainstream research, by the National Institute of Dental Research) has shown that dental fluorosis increases tooth decay, and does not decrease it.[38] 

Although reverse osmosis removes about 90% of the fluoride, and steam distillation removes well over 99%, people can still absorb it through their skin while in the shower and through other contact.  I have consumed purified water for more than twenty years, avoiding not only fluorine, but also chlorine and other pollutants.  Actively putting fluoride into the water supply has helped create an industry that removes it. 

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 works on it.  Instead, the tooth gets a crown or other more extensive repair.  Dentists have remarked on that phenomenon for many years. 

Harold Hodge, the Nuclear Connection, and Our Brains

Harold Hodge’s career is worth investigating.  He was the leading scientist who created the data showing fluoride's harmlessness in the doses they planned to administer to the nation’s water supplies.  In the late 1990s, Joel Griffiths and Christopher Bryson unearthed documents regarding Hodge’s involvement in acts that are crimes against humanity.  To better understand the situation, this essay will need to revisit chemistry, fluorine and the atom bomb. 

Du Pont invented Freon early in the 20^th century.  During World War II and America’s secret pursuit of the atom bomb, there were many technical hurdles to overcome.  A major problem was obtaining 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.  U-238 is by far the most abundant isotope, comprising more than 99% of all uranium.  U-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 less stable (undergoing radioactive decay into more stable elements) than U-238.  U-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 making nuclear weapons and nuclear energy possible.

How does one separate U-235 from U-238?  The answer was simple and 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 somehow turning uranium into a gas, and uranium hexafluoride was born, which is 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).  It is called “Hex” in the industry.  From this essay’s chemistry lesson addendum, it should be obvious why that compound had such a low boiling point.  Hex is uranium gas, or one could call it radioactive Freon. 

Here is how they separated it.  The Hex of U-235 is slightly lighter than Hex of U-238 because of those three neutrons.  What Manhattan Project personnel did was send Hex through a mile-long tunnel filled with screens.  As the Hex made its way to the end of the tunnel, the Hex, U-235 rose in comparison to the Hex, U-238, because it was slightly lighter.  A membrane then filtered it out.  It was an 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. 

Du Pont produced the fluorine for the Hex.  They were making vast amounts of it.  During 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.[39]  There were probably numerous releases.[40]  The fluoride clouds sailed away to farms downwind.  Crops withered, and people and animals became violently ill.  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’s 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, 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, America’s entire nuclear program 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.  “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.[41]  God only knows what other experiments will remain hidden.

Studying 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 regularly elicits amazement at how much information is still being kept secret, documents that are more than fifty years old.  A researcher discovering a newly declassified document can discover other classified documents.  The first document seen can be revealing, but what can be more intriguing are other documents referred to by the original document.  When the researcher tries finding the referred document, he/she can find it still classified. 

Apologists for the secrecy, such as 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 UFOs, for instance.[42]  Ex-CIA agent Ralph McGehee, whose bitter experience makes it clear that the government nearly never has a legitimate “security” reason for keeping anything classified, refutes the opinions of establishment apologists.  McGehee is far from alone.  In a recent interview, ex-CIA operative Mark Phillips stated that the 1947 National Security Act had nothing to do with protecting national security.  Phillips stated that everybody who worked under it knew that its true purpose was to “cover crimes.  It was not to cover secrets.”[43]  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 regarding the fifty-year-old fluoridation research ran into the “national security” obstacle.[44]  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, such as 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.  Trendley Dean himself was opposed to the Newburgh test, fearing fluoride’s toxicity.  Manhattan Project personnel, led by Hodge, covered up Dean’s opposition.[45]  The man in charge of the Newburgh fluoridation project was David Ast; another fluoridation legend who 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 that were documented.  The censorship was so severe it was funny, in a sick way.  Griffiths and Bryson wrote:

“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 never decay.  The hydrogen fluoride etched the facility’s windows and the workers' glasses, so they needed to be continually replaced.  The workers also developed lesions and a type of “sunburn” from working there.  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 performed 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 significant efforts by 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."[46]

The proposal remains classified, as do the research results.  Another declassified document dated six months after the proposal orders the research stopped.  That sent my head spinning.  Right-wingers have been saying for more than 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 docile and easy 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 made 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.[47]  Mullins mentioned the Soviet studies from 1940 showing how fluorine in the water supply was helpful in running their Gulag system, with brain-numbed prisoners, attested to by others.[48] 

In the appendix of Murder by Injection Mullins presents a frightening fluoridation story.  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 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 gas chambers. 

In a letter Perkins wrote on October 2, 1954 to the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, Perkins made the startling statement that a German chemist, 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.”[49]

One friend remarked, when he heard the history of fluoridation, that at least the Soviet Union and Nazis used it or intended to use it on prisoners.  In the United States it is used on the general population. 

The above revelations open a Pandora’s box regarding the mental effects of fluorinated drugs and chemicals.  Freons have psychoactive effects, and 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 an acronym of the initials of the Farben scientists who developed it.  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 that Sarin may be responsible for their disease) pressured the government, showing that the fluorine atom was its active ingredient.[50] 

Rohypnol, the notorious drug used in date rapes, is fluorinated Valium, making it more than 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.  Fluoridation promoters and others often laugh off such situations as the workings of hopelessly paranoid minds.  In light of declassified memos regarding U.S. CNS experiments of fifty years ago (at nearly the same time the Nazis and Soviets were doing similar kinds of experiments), and the studies that are performed 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.[51]

In other unsettling 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 yet to be made public.

In Mullins’ book he chalks up the fluoridation push as a 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.  The Rockefeller name has come up repeatedly 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 America’s 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.”[52]  Sears and Harper were from the University of Chicago, an institution that John Rockefeller rebuilt at the turn of the century.  Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie also took over American medicine a century ago, leading to the knives and drugs paradigm that dominates Western medicine today. 

It is easy to become 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.[53] 

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 treating leukemia and other diseases.  Mullenix was invited to work at the Forsyth Dental Center, arguably the world’s leading dental research institute.  Five years later, her research was underway.

Mullenix found a significant diminishment of rat intelligence when they were 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 Mullenix’s research was Harold Hodge.  He was quite old in the early 1990s.  During Hodge’s consulting of Mullenix’s work, he never mentioned the CNS studies that he proposed fifty years earlier.  He almost certainly oversaw the 1940s research himself.  When shown the newly declassified memos that clearly spell out Hodge’s active role in CNS research on fluorine, Mullenix said she was “flabbergasted.”  Mullenix eventually came to see Hodge as a “monster” who actually steered her research toward studying fluoride effects on the central nervous system, probably to see what the results would really be, as the CNS experiments from the 1940s apparently were prematurely terminated.  Mullenix today feels that Hodge and one of his University of Rochester pals used her “like a little puppet.”[54]  When Mullenix tried interesting the NIDR in the declassified memos, she was rudely treated like a “crackpot.”  The NIDR is evidently part of the U.S. government’s damage control effort on fluoride’s harmful effects. 

When Mullenix read the declassified study on fluorine and the dental health of Manhattan Project workers 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 federal government knows for sure, in its secret archives.[55]  

Mullenix is one more casualty of the fluoride wars.  She had nothing to do with the fluoride issue originally, but became involved as part of her work, when steered into it by Hodge.  All she “knew” about fluoride when she started was that it was supposedly good for teeth.  She did not initiate her 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 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 the display ridiculed people who were 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!"[56]  After her presentation she met with toothpaste representatives who asked her if she was saying that their products lowered the IQs of children, and Mullenix responded with, “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.  Her 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, although 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."[57] 

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 virtually the only published research shows deleterious effects, is curious indeed.  The work Mullenix did, as well as other recent studies, has shown that the fluoride ion is particularly damaging to the brain's hippocampal region, which is its learning center.[58]

Mullenix’s fate is common, and this web site 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 relatively 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 also wrote a chapter dealing with objections to fluoridation.  Reading that book was another enlightening process, when I recovered from my anger.  The book gives the appearance of looking at fluoridation from many aspects, but appearance is the operative word.  Hodge’s work 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.  Smith co-authored many works with Hodge and was active in producing/massaging data to protect industry and government from liability claims.[59]  It is instructive to see the blind spots in their work, and what they were 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,”[60] they were voicing the nuclear establishment’s damage control opinion, because there is substantial evidence of harm, but they chose to ignore it.  When they wrote, “Since the Danish experience (in the 1930s) crippling fluorosis in an industrial setting has never been seen in the United States or Europe,”[61] a grain of salt needs to be taken with that statement.  With just one declassified study, out of many that exist and are still secret, definite harm occurred, although by playing semantics games they were not “crippled,” merely toothless, although the long-term effects are unknown, which may be in another classified study.  People becoming violently ill from du Pont’s fluoride cloud are invisible victims, at least to the public, when Hodge and Smith wrote their masterpiece of disinformation.  The worst air pollution disaster in U.S. history happened in October 1948 in Donora, Pennsylvania, when an air inversion layer formed over the town for four days, and fluoride emissions from U.S. Steel’s zinc and steel facilities killed twenty people and seriously injured hundreds more.  If the inversion layer had lasted one more day, a thousand people may have died.  U.S. Steel and the PHS conspired to cover-up the disaster, with records missing to this day.[62] 

Throughout Fluoride and Dental Caries there were instances of “looking” at objections to fluoridation, and the appearance of carefully considering 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 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, used 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 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.   It was the first time that I had 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, how can anything they say be believed?  How can fact and fiction be separated?  The only way I know is to entirely reject their work and become my own expert.

Here are some quotes regarding the biological damage the fluorine ion does to human health, the kind not found in pro-fluoridation propaganda such as Fluoride and Dental Caries. 

"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.

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 active though secret management of the fluoridation issue, books such as Fluoride and Dental Caries are examples of “pseudoscience” in the strongest sense.

The situation of industry and government corrupting science is far from confined to the fluoridation issue.  Today, ethyl alcohol, the substance that every drunkard knows well, is added to American gasoline to increase its octane rating.  It works great.  It was also used eighty years ago.  In the 1920s, ethyl alcohol was replaced by tetraethyl lead as an octane booster.  Why?  As it turns out, nobody could patent ethyl alcohol and make monopoly profits from putting it into gasoline.  Therefore, General Motors, Standard Oil and du Pont conspired to make a new, patentable chemical, and tetraethyl lead was introduced into American gas tanks.  Although Ben Franklin remarked on lead’s well-known toxic qualities hundreds of years ago, and even ancient Romans and Greeks wrote of its toxic properties, industrially-funded scientists in the 20^th century labored mightily to make lead appear safe to ingest, even though they knew how deadly tetraethyl lead really was.  It is unknown just how many people became sick and died from the effects of lead being spewed into the air during the era of tetraethyl lead, but it is not inconsiderable.  In 1985, the EPA estimated 5,000 lead-related heart disease deaths per year, prior to the tetraethyl lead phase out.  The lead content of American bloodstreams has fallen precipitously since tetraethyl lead was outlawed. 

The most notorious of the industrial laboratories that produced the lead “research” was Kettering Laboratories.[63]  For generations, Kettering and its industrial sponsors controlled all lead research.  The “Kettering” of Kettering Laboratories was Charles Kettering, the inventor and General Motors executive.  Kettering Laboratories is not the only “medical” foundation that he helped bankroll.  The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the world’s leading cancer research institute, is named after Kettering and his buddy, General Motors CEO Alfred Sloan, another noted “philanthropist.”  Kettering Laboratories was also instrumental in making aluminum appear benign.  McClure had high praise for Edward Largent and Kettering Laboratories in his Water Fluoridation: The Search and the Victory.  Largent and Kettering were involved in covering-up the harmful effects of fluoride, and Largent secretly worked for the federal government, possibly on the Manhattan Project.[64]  Christopher Bryson unearthed original research that Kettering performed in the 1950s, which showed that inhaling airborne fluorides caused an emphysema-like condition, something that countless Americans downwind from fluoride facilities have suffered from.  Kettering buried the research results because they came up with the “wrong” answer, but did not have “national security” to cover their tracks, so Bryson discovered it in his research.[65] 

On a lighter note, here is a cartoon that sums up fluoridation, although it was a general-purpose cartoon dealing with similar corporate malfeasance.  Replace the words “toxic sludge” with fluoride, and this cartoon sums up the story of fluoridation.  Tom Tomorrow is the funniest political cartoonist I have ever seen, and might be the best.  The below cartoon was so inspired that a book was named after it.[66]

  Click on image to enlarge   

Anne-Lise Gotzsche’s The Fluoride Question, Panacea or Poison? is an excellent survey of fluoridation.  She was a medical journalist in London who investigated fluoridation for years.  She has a sensible attitude, 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, although written before the more pernicious conflicts of interest of fluoridation’s proponents were discovered.  As with anybody who looks into fluoridation and is not on the payroll of a bureaucracy or corporation that promotes fluoride, Gotzsche demonstrated how shamelessly political the fluoridation effort was.  Science was trampled in the rush to fluoridate.  Many scientists went so far overboard that they became evangelists instead of scientists.  Some began making up the science as they went along, such as 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.[67]  Fluoridation pioneer Basil Bibby even recommended adding lead fluoride to the water supplies in 1945.  Gotzsche discussed that whatever the propaganda about helping teeth, dentists’ business goes up in fluoridated areas, not down.  By 1970, Newburgh, New York and Grand Rapids, Michigan, the recipients of the first trial fluoridation experiments, had twice the dentists per capita as the national average.[68] 

Gotzsche said that calling groups engaged in the huge international push to fluoridate water the “dental 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 Harold Hodge’s connections, “mafia” may not be far from the mark.  

Conclusion

After looking into the fluoridation issue long and hard, here are my conclusions. 

• Preventing tooth decay in children is the only rationale ever put forth by fluoridation’s proponents.  Tooth decay is unequivocally caused by processed food, and particularly by refined sugar.  I have never seen anybody refute that who did not work for the sugar and food processing industries, and fluoridation’s supporters always seem to ignore that issue.

• Instead of proposing that we eliminate most processed food from our diet as a way to eliminate tooth decay and the vast majority of American health problems, an industrial waste was added to the water supply as a “preventive.” 

• All data regarding the benefit of fluoridating the water supply is suspect.  Many important variables were not accounted for, such as increasing dental hygiene in the West, other elements present in the water, the fluoride content that is already in food, the extreme variability as to what constitutes a cavity and so forth.  Most of fluoridation’s proponents worked for or were affiliated with the Public Health Service, which was dominated by agents of fluoride-polluter ALCOA during the years that the seminal research and political action was carried out.  Other private foundations that performed original and influential fluoride research, such as the Kettering Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati, also turn out to have been bankrolled by fluoride polluters.  No doubt, many conflicts of interest are still hidden.  The recent revelations of Harold Hodge’s relationship with the nuclear establishment, and their motivation to prove fluoride safe, cast grave doubts on the reliability of all pro-fluoridation research results published after 1942, which includes all studies regarding the results of artificial fluoridation.  The ALCOA/Mellon-connection casts a shadow across much of the pro-fluoridation research performed before 1942.  Water fluoridation induces dental fluorosis in many, if not most, people subject to it.  The first stage hardens the enamel, coinciding with making it more brittle.  Then the slow disintegration of the teeth ensues.

• The data regarding the harm fluorine does to teeth and human biology is unequivocal, denied by nobody in the debate.  What the proponents argue is that a substance well known to cause adverse health effects at two PPM, is not only safe but good for people at one PPM.  In health science history there may be no instance with such a small window of health promotion/health destruction for a "health" additive.  Even one of fluoridation's greatest proponents, Harold Hodge, stated that a margin of 100-fold should be the minimum-sized window for beneficial/toxic food additives when he was not being a fluoridation propagandist.  There is a great deal of suppressed evidence of the harm that 1 PPM fluoridated water causes, and even harm at concentrations of far less than 1 PPM.

• Scientists and doctors who have either witnessed the adverse health effects of artificial fluoridation or campaigned against it have been silenced.  Often they are simply ignored or denied access to the mainstream media to make their cases, which is common for anybody who challenges mainstream dogma.  There is also a clear pattern of active attack, such as what happened to John Yiamouyiannis, Phyllis Mullenix, William Marcus and many others.  Scientific and medical inquisitions are standard behavior where wealth and power are affected.

• In light of recent studies on fluoridation and intelligence, nobody can easily dismiss the opinion of right wing activists that fluoridation is part of a mind control program.  With recently declassified documents showing the United States performing extensive research on fluoride and the central nervous system, research that is still classified fifty years later, anybody who drinks fluoridated water or uses fluoridated toothpaste has every reason to be alarmed.  In finishing this summary, and seeing how the nuclear establishment and large industries have managed the “science” of fluorine, we may not be able to trust any radiation research that the nuclear establishment has produced on its effect on humans, something that John Gofman has written extensively about.  In disturbing instances, the same organizations that managed the “fluoride problem” also managed the “radiation problem.” 

• The good news is that there have been some significant victories.  For one thing, the vast majority (95%) of humanity does not drink artificially fluoridated water.  The largest populations subject to compulsory fluoridation are England and its former colonies, such as Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.  U.S. citizens consume nearly half of the world’s fluoridated water.  Europe’s population is less than two percent fluoridated, and many places have stopped fluoridating their water supplies, while others have successfully resisted having fluoride added to their water, including American and Canadian cities.  EPA scientists spoke out against fluoridation in the late 1990s.  There are many sources of fluoridation information on the Internet.  I am one of many people writing about fluoridation.  There are many scientists and others waging political action today to end the insanity of fluoridation, and they need all the help they can get.  We all will determine whether we keep drinking poison every day.  It is up to all of us.

In ending this essay, it comes down to common sense.  Tooth decay is primarily caused by our diet, and changing our diet is the only effective solution.  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 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 also be part of a mind control program.  The history of fluoridation is a horror story.  Most people subject to fluoridation have no idea of its dark history, demonstrating how effective our propaganda and indoctrination systems are.  Walk into an average grocery store and try finding toothpaste that does not have fluoride in it (I have been queried repeatedly on this issue; Americans can find non-fluoridated toothpaste in health food stores…for now). 

Many people discussed why Orwell’s dark prophecies were wrong, and why 1984 did not happen.  The irony is that it appears as if we are living in Orwell’s world today.  The fluoride situation is just one of many that this web site presents.  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.

Footnotes

Fluoridation: A Chemistry Prelude, Now an Addendum

The next few pages will present a brief chemistry narrative on fluorine, and why it is such an important industrial chemical.  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. 

Many theories have been developed to account for experimental results, and many 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, and is one of the more nascent.  We have many theories, and they are useful, until a new discovery happens.  Einstein said that every theory is eventually killed by a fact. 

Chemistry is generally concerned with the ways that elements combine.  An aspect of chemistry called nuclear chemistry is new to the twentieth century.  Most chemistry, however, is not concerned with an atom's nucleus, but with its electrons. 

In “classic” chemistry, 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 begins venturing into nuclear chemistry, which is not this essay's concern. 

As of 2002, science had discovered 114 elements.  A little more than ninety are naturally occurring, and scientists have artificially created the rest.  All artificial elements 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 generally accepted 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 as the 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 many observers believe that quantum theory will be radically altered when more is known.  However, quantum theory has spawned rules and equations that agree well with what science has observed so far. 

Electrons orbit the nucleus in “shells.”  Each shell has distinct properties.  The shells are the same for every element.  As an atom gets larger, the shells closest to the nucleus are filled first, the more distant ones filled later.  The shells have been calculated to contain 2, 8, 18, 32, 50,72 and 98 electrons, respectively, the last shells being more theoretical than actual, as those shells could accommodate 280 electrons, but the largest element yet observed is element 116 (even though its life is measured in milliseconds, before it decays into simpler elements).  There are also subshells within electron shells, which form further patterns in how shells are filled.  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 are filled together.  For instance, potassium has 19 electrons, the 19^th residing as the first electron in the fourth shell, but the third is not yet filled (the first shell has 2, electrons, 8 in the second, and only 8 in the third, not the 18 it takes to fill it, so the electron layout for potassium is: 2 + 8 + 8 + 1 = 19).  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 (2 + 8 + 1 = 11), 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 is commonly called 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 also 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 narrative, 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 potassium were put into fluorine gas, the reaction would happen so fast it would be explosive.  Halogens and alkali metals are the most reactive elemental families.  Fluorine is the most reactive element known to science (although that can be disputed by chemists, who prefer saying that fluorine is the most “electronegative.”  See footnote 1.).  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, and were usually 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, as with 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 salt is put 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 as 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 a water molecule could be seen, it would look similar to 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. 

Because of that polarity, water molecules attract each other more than similar compounds.  Water has a boiling point far higher than its constituent elements oxygen or hydrogen have, and water’s boiling point is also higher than methyl and ethyl alcohol, both of which have larger and heavier molecules.  That is because the alcohol molecules are not as polarized.  In water, 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 atomic and molecular weights.  Electron shells determine an element's chemical properties, and make at atom such as lithium, with an atomic weight of 7, a metal at room temperature, while radon, with an atomic 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, such as 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.  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.  Ammonia is another compound with relatively high polarity because of hydrogen bonding.  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. 

Adding enough heat energy so the molecules vibrate 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. 

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 entire family could die in their beds. 

Early in the 20^th 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 basis for life on earth. 

R-12 has a boiling point of -22° F, low for a molecular weight of 121.  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 relatively less 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.  Chlorine or fluorine gas never float around in the atmosphere.  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, unless a chemist subjects them to tremendous energies not found in nature.  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 highly 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, called a covalent bond.  The electron bonds in Freon are 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, although some of the less stable Freons can produce anesthetic and psychoactive effects, and can be corrosive. 

Those tight bonds and molecular symmetry make Freon 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, although 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 difficult 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 is worth pondering.  Many natural substances can be used as refrigerants, such as water and carbon dioxide, but chemical companies would not make much money off them, as was the case when lead replaced alcohol to boost gasoline’s octane rating.  The issue's capitalistic (greed) component 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, comprising 47% and 28% respectively.  Aluminum was not used in civilization until the late 19^th century, because it was difficult 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.

This site’s main fluoridation narrative 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.

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