Fluoride

Fluoridation with a Hazardous Waste Among the first things that became apparent when we began looking at fluoride was that the source of most of the fluoride going into drinking water was a hazardous waste (as defined in the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act)  product of the phosphate industry. In producing phosphate fertilizers an early step is to heat phosphate ore containing, among other contaminants, lots of silica and fluoride minerals, with sulfuric acid.

How it Forms This releases silicon tetrafluoride (SiF4) and hydrogen fluoride (HF), both gases which are eventually vacuum stripped from the process stream by water scrubbers, producing hydrofluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6, HFSA). Prior to regulations under the Clean Air and Clean Water Act the gases were vented to the atmosphere, and any liquid waste steams discharged to waterways. After regulations, the HFSA was captured as a ~24% w/w solution, then trucked or send via railcars (which required rubber lining to withstand the corrosive nature of HSFA and residual HF) to the nation’s drinking water systems for disposal, hamner_letter, as shown in this letter from Deputy Assistant Administrator of Water Rebecca Hanmer in reply to a citizen inquiry. This practice remains in place as of early 2017.

Money, Money, Money… seems to be a major reason why there is so little interest in Congress or EPA in stopping the addition of HFSA to drinking water supplies.  In 2011, for instance, the U.S. Geological Survey Reported that about 275,000 tons of HFSA was sold for water fluoridation. At $700/ton, a conservative estimate, that amounts to over $190,000,000 in pure profit. That, coupled with avoidance of disposal cost of about $1.50/gallon for hazardous liquid waste yields an economic advantage to industry approaching $300,000,000 per year.

The Hanmer letter explains why EPA is happy to let the practice continue: “…water and air pollution are minimized and water authorities have a low-cost source of fluoride…” – to the enormous benefit of the phosphate fertilizer industry. EPA’s rationale for defending fluoridation that is implied in that phrase is, “The solution to pollution is dilution…as long as the dilution occurs in drinking water systems and not in rivers or other waterways.”

Over 95 percent of  the HFSA…paid for by taxpayers at an average price of about $500-$800/ton, though New York and Phoenix pay an average of $2000/ton…goes down shower drains, flushes toilets, washes clothes and dishes, waters lawns and puts out fires…then….it goes into ambient waterways. F Use Calculation In this way EPA and the phosphate industry turn a hazardous waste, whose disposal would cost the phosphate industry many millions of dollars, into a pure profit item for industry worth many more millions of dollars. Dilution is the “ideal”solution to pollution, indeed.

Is this a great business model, or what!?

In 1982 EPA asked the Surgeon General for advice on various aspects of the Agency’s efforts toward setting drinking water standards for fluoride under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Here is a link to the Surgeon General’s response.Surgeon Genl 1983

How the Union Got Involved  An employee came to the union with an ethics complaint. He was tasked with writing the Federal Register notice proposing EPA’s new drinking water standards for fluoride. The Criteria Document supporting thos standards is here.EPA 1985 Criteria Doc  The non-enforceable health based standard was known at the time (1985) as the Recommended Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (RMCL). (It is now called the Maximum Contaminant Level Goal [MCLG]). The MCLG must be set at a level to prevent any known or anticipated adverse effect on health, with an adequate margin of safety. The enforceable standard is the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL), and it must be set as close to the MCLG as technically and economically feasible. The MCLG EPA was proposing would allow a large fraction of children to have severe dental fluorosis, like this :or this:  Severe Dental Fluorosis

EPA had by fiat defined severe dental fluorosis as merely an adverse cosmetic effect, not a health effect, and therefore not anything EPA had to prevent in its health based regulation. (Note:  In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council opined that severe dental fluorosis was, indeed, an adverse health effect, and advised EPA to revise its drinking water standards.)

In those days before email at EPA, mass communication was by posting on bulletin boards throughout Headquarters. This is what the complaining employee posted: Paul Price Posting on F MCLGS

Union Gets Involved  The employee came to union president Dr. Robert Carton complaining of this situation asking for help. During the Summer of 1985, after people outside the “EPA Fishbowl” learned of the union’s existence and advocacy for truth and good science in decision making on the asbestos issue, folks concerned about fluoride toxicity invited EPA employees to a seminar on the subject by Dr. John Yiamouyannis. That seminar coupled with the employee’s ethics complaint prompted Drs. Carton and Hirzy to visit the Director of the Office of Drinking Water. We tried to settle this ethics issue quietly, within the family, e.g.but EPA was unable or unwilling to resist external political pressure. We two also visited with Ralph Nader about the issue and he suggested we work with outside entities if they should approach us on the issue.

In 1991 Bob Carton  gave a presentation before the Agency’s premier science advisory group, the Science Advisory Board’s Drinking Water Committee. In it, he detailed how the Office of Water used fraudulent “science” to create a health-based standard, the MCLG, that virtually guaranteed adverse health outcomes in many citizens. The following text is from the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1996, Section 1412(b)(4)(A) “MAXIMUM CONTAMINANT LEVEL GOALS.—Each maximum contaminant level goal established under this sub- section shall be set at the level at which no known or anticipated adverse effects on the health of persons occur and which allows an adequate margin of safety.”

And the following text is from the section on assessing costs and benefits of regulation, which must take into account:

Here is a publication from the journal Nephrology Dialysis Transplanation

Thus the clear implication that protection is mandatory for all citizens, including children, pregnant women, and those with conditions like diabetes and kidney disease. 

NRDC Asks for Help as a result of the union’s asbestos publicity, we were solicited by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to join in their 1986 lawsuit over fluoride drinking water standards filed against EPA.  NRDC asked the union to file an amicus curiae brief – SEE ABOVE –that laid out the science, which after a vote, we did. NRDC wrote the legal portions of the brief and Dr. Carton wrote the science portions, digging deeply into the extant literature on fluoride. The more union scientists looked into the fluoride issue, the more obvious became the political subversion of science around this issue. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia reviewed the brief, then refused to enter it into the record, holding that if it did, “It would be like EPA suing itself.” We argued that the union had a separate legal existence from the Agency, but the Court still was not willing to accept our brief.

By Other Means….In spite of the Court’s rejection, the union’s views about the scientific invalidity of EPA’s fluoride drinking water regulations began to be sought by citizens wanting to keep fluoridation out of their communities. After consulting with NFFE National office about keeping out of legal trouble and getting National’s approval of our pursuing an EPA mission (and coincidentally making friends for organized labor in the Civil Service) by other means, Dr. Carton started making trips around the country, using his annual leave for that purpose. The National Union recognized Local 2050 for Honorable Mention for this work, and NRDC’s Amicus Journal published an article about the Local in 1990. Amicus Journal Summer 1990.

When we met with Nader, he referred us to attorney Jim Turner, one of the original “Nader’s Raiders,” the group of attorneys that worked with Nader during the 1960’s when he began his work on consumer protection investigations. Those included his work on the hazardous placement of gasoline tanks in the Chevrolet Corvair which resulted in many rear-end collisions that caused fatal catastrophic fires. “Unsafe at Any Speed” was a book that came from that work and caused Chevrolet to ultimately to discontinue that model after costly lawsuits. One of the outcomes of  our discussions was  agreement that using Section 21 of the Toxic Substances Control Act to get at the unregulated risks from fluoride exposures via drinking water made sense. Over several years that idea was pursued people opposed to water fluoridation with varying degrees of success. Here, for example are letters from one (John P. Flaherty) of the several trial judges who have adjudicated lawsuits aimed at preventing fluoridation of drinking water, which were written in response to letters received by him on the subject.

Finally, with the advent of the Fluoride Action Network and its resources of talented and energetic people, that approach was brought to life. The TSCA Section 21 petition was filed in November 2016. By October 2019 plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgement (see link below) in our favor. As of August 2021 (with a tip of the hat to Bob Dylan), “The Wheel’s Still In Spin.” See the link below for more details on how evidence for developmental neurotoxicity – the basis of the TSCA lawsuit – published in multiple papers in peer reviewed, high quality journals, has been met by pro-fluoridation entities.  June 2020.

In 1986, Drs. Carton and Hirzy were contacted by BBC investigative reporter, Christopher Bryson, who had gotten our names from Ralph Nader upon his inquiry of Nader about fluoride for an article BBC had asked Bryson to write. Bryson interviewed both Carton and Hirzy and published a book titled “The Fluoride Deception” in 2004. From left: Phyllis Mullenix, Bob Carton, Mike Connett, Bill Hirzy, Deb Jacobson, Chris Bryson at publication celebration. Phyllis Mullenix, a renown neurotoxicologist, had been hired by the Forsyth Dental Research Laboratory, Harvard University, to study the neurotoxicity of fluoride in rats. She found that upon dosing, adult rats became “couch potatoes,” and pregnant females gave birth to pups that were hyperactive, and remained so through life. She published her unanticipated research results, against the wishes of the Forsyth Directorate, after making a presentation on them. Her story is prominent in Bryson’s book. Mike Connett went on to law school, and is now practicing law in California, including serving as lead attorney on the TSCA Section 21 lawsuit, “Food and Water Watch, et al. v. U. S. Environmental Agency.” Deb Jacobsen is Editor in Chief of Second Look, an environmental organization.

By 1990 the union’s assessment of fluoride toxicity and requests from the public for this information led to publication of a White Paper on the subject. FLWHTPAP

Neurotoxicity In 1997, the union was asked to write a support letter, outlining our past involvement with the fluoride issue, for Dr. Phyllis Mullenix who was suing her former employer for firing her because she published a paper on the neurotoxicity of sodium fluoride in rats. This we did.

In 1998 a research group that included an EPA toxicologist found that rats drinking water containing 1 per per million (ppm) of fluoride as sodium fluoride or aluminum fluoride suffered significant brain damage, i.e. changes in brain blood vessels and loss of brain cells. (Citation in FLWTP) They also showed kidney damage and what may have been damage to their immune systems.

Drs. Murphy and Hirzy, two union officers whose duty station was  the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, sent a memo to EPA’s Children’s Health Protection work group on neurotoxicity hazards that could be experienced by children from fluoride, based on studies during the 1990’s, never receiving the courtesy of an acknowledgment of the memo.

Union Votes to Oppose Fluoridation  The Mullenix letter came to the attention of some California citizens. They then asked the union to endorse the Californians For Safe Drinking Water ballot initiative aiming to keep fluoride out of that State’s water supplies. Before calling for a vote of its members on this request, the union arranged a seminar by Prof. Paul Connett of St. Lawrence University and Dr. Bob Carton, our former Local President, covering toxicity data published in the mid and late 1990’s. Based on the seminar and the preponderance of other adverse information on fluoride of which we had become aware since 1985, we voted at a general meeting in 1997 unanimously to endorse the California initiative. See NFFE/NTEU Newsletters page Vol. 13 No. 4 1997 for details.

Senate Testimony In June, 2000 Dr. Hirzy was invited to give testimony on the union’s views about fluoride toxicity  fluoride toxicity to a Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Video of that testimony and other videos on fluoride can be viewed by going to http://fluoridealert.org/fan-tv/hirzy/. The written testimony is at this link: 629 FINAL . That testimony asked for a Congressional review of the U.S. Public Health Service’s national program of water fluoridation, but none has occurred – since 1978. The testimony video, and others at that site, also cover fluoride’s carcinogenicity up to 2000. More on cancer below.

Fluoride and Children’s IQ Dr. Hirzy and co-authors published a quantitative risk analysis on fluoride’s developmental neurotoxicity in December 2016 based on best available data and using two standard EPA risk analysis techniques. DNT Risk Assmnt 2016 . Over a year prior to that publication, Drs. Hirzy and Paul Connett twice briefed officials of the Office of Water at EPA HQ on the analysis of the developmental neurotoxicity data that would lead to the December 2016 publication. EPA officials responded by saying the Agency might consider these data during the next 6-Year Review of regulations.

The 2016 DNT risk assessment predicted that a comparison of a child receiving fluoride at 0.5 mg/day would have approximately a 4-5 IQ point advantage over a child receiving fluoride at 2.0 mg/day. Two subsequent  prospective epidemiology studies were published https://epaunionhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Mexico-Study.pdf shortly thereafter https://epaunionhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Green et-al.-Canada-study.pdfUrine   fluoride levels of pregnant women in Mexico and Canada were measured along with intelligence of their subsequent children. In summary, these studies results found about a 3 – 4 IQ decrement for each additional 1mg/Liter urine level. Urine levels approximate daily fluoride intake in humans. It appears that the effect of  in utero fluoride exposures to the child’s developing brain correlate reasonably well with the effect predicted in the 2016 risk assessment for an exposure difference of 1.5mg/day. (or, as is sometimes whispered by industrial or interests – “Close enough for government work.)

It must be noted here that Office of Water Toxicologist Dr. Bill Marcus, whose firing by EPA management over his refusal to look the other way about fluoride’s carcinogenicity – which was overturned in a lawsuit – and is discussed below, in the late 1990’s after his reinstatement also raised the neurotoxicity issue with his management.

Here is a summary of key events in the fluoride issue 1988-2003.

TSCA Section 21 Action  The Fluoride Action Network (FAN), for which Dr. Hirzy now serves as volunteer Science and Regulatory Affairs Advisor, filed a petition, along with others, with EPA under provisions of the Toxic Substances Control Act, as amended in 2016, asking for a ban on addition of fluoridation chemicals to drinking water. EPA denied the petition in February 2017, and FAN and the other petitioners filed a lawsuit (Food and Water Watch et al. v. U. S. Environmental Protection Agency) to compel EPA to act. Since that filing there have been a number of developments including a trial that included expert witness testimony from both sides. It is ironic that among EPA’s expert witnesses was a representative of Exponent, Inc.  The irony lies in the fact that since 1960 Exponent has been a source of defense witnesses for industry – to question whether smoking causes cancer, whether Agent Orange exposure leads to prostate cancer, and whether per- and polyfluorinateed substances are linked to kidney cancer. They also cast doubt on studies that underpin federal regulation of lead and mercury.  Exponent has never conducted any research on the toxicity of fluoride. Plaintiff expert witnesses, on the other hand, viz., Dr. Howard Hu, MD, MPH, Chair of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California School of Medicine; Dr. Phillipe Grandjean, MD, DMSc, Chair of Environmental Medicine, University of Southern Denmark; Dr. Bruce Lanphear, MD, MPH, Professor of Health Science, Simon Fraser University; and Dr. Kathleen Thiessen, PhD, Director and senior scientist, Oak Ridge Center for Risk Analysis – all – have published peer reviewed studies on neurotoxicity of fluoride. A window into where the lawsuit stands is the plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment filed in November 2019 is currently (March 2017) deciding on next steps, which may include a lawsuit. As of January 2022 a status hearing earlier this month indicates a likely second trial date being set in April for later this year. More on the petition and its progress can be found at http://www.fluoridealert.org.

EPA Fires Toxicologist for Speaking Out About Cancer In May, 1992, EPA fired the Office of Drinking Water’s chief toxicologist, who also was our local union’s Treasurer at the time, for refusing to remain silent on the fluoride cancer risk issue. This occurred following publication in 1991 of a National Toxicology Program bioassay of sodium fluoride that showed male rats got bone cancer after dosing with fluoride at levels only about one hundred-fold greater than the public receives.https://epaunionhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Marcus-on-Cancer-and-Neurotox.pdf The judge who heard the lawsuit brought against EPA over the firing made the finding that EPA fired the toxicologist over his fluoride work, and not for the phony reason put forward by EPA management at his dismissal. He won his lawsuit and was put back on the payroll at EPA in 1994, with back pay and a $50,000 damage award, but only after the Agency was forced to do so by the Secretary of Labor and public embarrassment. Of the two EPA management officials responsible for the firing of Dr. Marcus, one retired and one was transferred to another Office with no reduction in status. Dr. Marcus goes through two years of Hell, living largely on the kindness of friends, and the perpetrators walk…..Let’s hear it for accountability. After Dr. Marcus was reinstated, he continued to put information before his management about another adverse effect of fluoride, viz. developmental neurotoxicity. The link above also contains his communications with Office of Water management on that effect.

Inside the Fishbowl Newsletter Coverage See Vol. 1, No.4 of Inside the Fishbowl on the Newsletters Page for the first news communicated to EPA professionals by the union on this subject. Inside the Fishbowl continued to report on union activities on this subject over the years.

Cancer Data Post 2000 In 2005 a letter was sent from presidents of 11 EPA labor unions to Administrator Johnson requesting him to set an MCLG of zero for fluoride based on new cancer data. The new data were in a publication in Cancer Causes and Control of a case-control epidemiology study of youth under 20 years of age diagnosed with osteosarcoma. The study’s aim was to study the relationship, if any, between routine, daily fluoride exposure and incidence of the cancer. The link above gives access to details of the study methods and results. Three exposure classifications were assigned, with the odds ratio for cancer incidence based on the lowest exposure group being assigned a value of 1.0. The italicized text is copied from the abstract of the publication:

In essence, boys between 6 and 8 years of age, during their pre-adolescent growth spurt when cell turnover and propagation accelerate, were about 4-5 times more likely to have acquired osteosarcoma than boys in the lowest exposure group.

As the Cancer Causes and Control publication notes in the Discussion section, two other ecological epidemiology studies (comparing osteosarcoma cases in fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas) also showed fluoride exposure to be linked to the disease in young males.

This is the letter from 11 of EPA’s labor unions to Administrator Johnson,SLJ MCLG 0, with cc’s to certain Members of Congress. A followup letter was sent one year later Follow ups re MCLG 0 memos, and  a letter to Speaker of the House Hastert requested a legislative moratorium on water fluoridation while further research was carried out Moratorium Letter Hastert. Neither Congress nor EPA appears to be interested in revisiting the national water fluoridation issue.

Here is full documentation of the sleaze that was involved in the mid 2000’s to protect EPA’s and wider interests’ devotion to fluoridation – in spite of evidence of carcinogenicity revealed in the work of Elise Bassin – that EPA’s labor unions challenged, as discussed in the previous paragraph: https://epaunionhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Bassin-Douglass-scandal.pdf

You will note in the above material that an independent environmental watchdog organization, the Environmental Working Group, contacted the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences about a possible serious violation of of ethical standards by Chester Douglass in reporting the results of his doctoral student, Elise Bassin’s, study of the connection between fluoride exposures and osteosarcoma. EWG presented NIEHS a detailed analysis of the difference between what Douglass reported and what Bassin actually found in her work, referenced above. EWG then wrote to Harvard asking for an investigation. Harvard, which had recently received a $1,000,000 gift from Douglass, told EWG and the world that Douglass didn’t do anything wrong. “Veritas,” Truth, is the Harvard University Motto. Yeah.

ADA Attacks EPA Unions The American Dental Association wrote to Assistant Administrator for Water Grumbles to complain of EPA’s labor unions’ communications to the Administrator and Congress cited above, to which union president Welch and vice-president Hirzy wrote a response to AA Grumbles. ADA Grumbles Our Reply

In another example of ADA’s grossly unethical and incompetent dealings with truth as it applies to water fluoridation, they had been claiming that EPA  endorses that practice. When a citizen asked his Congressman to look into that claim, the EPA Assistant Administrator for Water, Robert Perciasepe wrote back thusly: