Epigraphs Note on Terminology Acknowledgments Introduction

Møller and Sk. V.Gudjonsson, which prompted Roholm’s massive study and
determination of fluorine intoxication. P. F. Møller and Sk. V. Gudjonsson,
“A Study of 78 Workers Exposed to Inhalation of Cryolite Dust,” J. Ind. Hyg.,
vol. 15 (1933), p. 27.
47. One of those studies had been done by Alcoa’s H. V. Churchill, who found
dental mottling and high levels of fluoride in the well water of Bauxite, Arkansas.
Churchill’s study was reported in 1931, the same year H. Velu in North
Africa and the Smiths in Arizona made the same discovery. (Very curious
are the apparently unsuccessful efforts by “Pittsburgh interests” to fund the
Smith study in Arizona. That fragmented history is related in McNeil, The
Fight for Fluoridation, p. 31.) H. Velu, “Le Darmous (oudermes),” Arch Inst.
Pasteur d’Algerie, vol. 10, no. 41 (1932).
48. “As requested in your letter of June 8th, we have questioned three of our
local dentists as to the prevalence of cases of mottled enamel in Massena.
All of the dentists stated that they have treated such cases here.” Exchange
of letters between V. C. Doerschuk, Massena Works, and H. V. Churchill,
Aluminum Research Laboratories, June 1931, in Alcoa letters, McNeil Collection,
Wisconsin Historical Society.
49. See exchange of letters between H. V. Churchill and C. F. Drake of the City
of Pittsburgh Bureau of Water, June 1931. Drake had noted the “Pittsburgh
spasmodic fluorine content which appears to have no explanation.” He
informed Churchill that “an industrial plant not far from New Kensington
had been discharging fluorine in the Allegheny River. The officials of that
plant discontinued such discharge when requested.” Several glass and steel
plants were in the vicinity of New Kensington. H. V. Churchill responded,
tellingly, “the presence of fluorine in water is apparently not necessarily proof
of industrial contamination since it occurs in small amounts in so many
water supplies.” (In Alcoa letters, McNeil collection, Wisconsin Historical
Society.) In 1950, Alcoa was fined for dumping fluoride waste at Vancouver,
Washington, into the Columbia River, Seattle Times, December 16, 1952.
(Cited in Waldbott et al., Fluoridation: The Great Dilemma (Lawrence, KS:
Coronado Press, 1978), p. 296.)
50. The following decade, an English scientist, Margaret Murray, would call
similar dental mottling found near an aluminum smelter in the United
Kingdom “neighborhood fluorosis.” M. Murray and D. Wilson, “Fluorine
Hazards,” Lancet, December 7, 1946, p. 822. Referring to studies near an
aluminum factory in Scotland, they wrote, “In the same part of Invernessshire
we found that the local water supply had a very low fluorine content
(0.2 ppm), but we observed “moderate” dental fluorosis in the milk teeth of
young children whose homes lay within the district contaminated by vapours
from the factory chimneys. Such a condition in the temporary dentition is
usually associated with a high maternal intake of fluorine. Children using
the same water, whose homes lay outside the affected area, did not show
the mottled enamel.”