Opposing Digits

Fluorine compounds or fluorides are listed by the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) as among the top 20 of 275 substances posing the most significant threat to human health. Fluorides, hydrogen fluoride and fluorine have been found in at least 130, 19, and 28 sites, respectively, of 1,334 National Priorities List sites identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Consequently, under the provisions of the Superfund Act (1986), a compilation of information about fluorides, hydrogen fluoride and fluorine and their effects on health was required. This publication appeared in 1993.

Fluorides are cumulative toxins. The fact that fluorides accumulate in the body is the reason that U.S. law requires the Surgeon General to set a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for fluoride content in public water supplies as determined by the EPA. This requirement is specifically for the purpose of avoiding a condition known as Crippling Skeletal Fluorosis (CSF), a disease that progresses through three stages. The MCL, designed to prevent only the third and crippling stage of this disease, is set at 4ppm or 4mg per liter. It was assumed that people retain half of this amount (2mg), and therefore 4mg per liter is considered ``safe." However, a daily dose of 2-8 mg is known to cause the third crippling stage of CSF.

* Much of the original proof that fluoride is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists who had been secretly ordered to provide "evidence useful in litigation" against defence contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The first lawsuits against the American A-bomb program were not over radiation, but over fluoride damage, the documents show.
* Human studies were required. Bomb program researchers played a leading role in the design and implementation of the most extensive US study of the health effects of fluoridating public drinking water, conducted in Newburgh, New York, from 1945 to 1955. Then, in a classified operation code-named "Program F", they secretly gathered and analysed blood and tissue samples from Newburgh citizens with the cooperation of New York State Health Department personnel.
* The original, secret version (obtained by these reporters) of a study published by Program F scientists in the August 1948 Journal of the American Dental Association1 shows that evidence of adverse health effects from fluoride was censored by the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)-considered the most powerful of Cold War agencies-for reasons of "national security".
* The bomb program's fluoride safety studies were conducted at the University of Rochester-site of one of the most notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War, in which unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium. The fluoride studies were conducted with the same ethical mindset, in which "national security" was paramount.

# posted by madthumbs @ 9:13 AM