Epigraphs Note on Terminology Acknowledgments Introduction

to Japanese Report.” Barnett had also seen the Trinity explosion, and been
among the first to detect the fallout cloud. Lansing Lamont, Day of Trinity
(New York: Atheneum, 1965), p. 244. An H. “C” Barnett is listed in charge
of “special studies” at the University of Rochester, “Organization Chart of
the Manhattan Department, University of Rochester,” in Harold Hodge and
Carl Voegtlin, eds., Pharmacology and Toxicology of Uranium Compounds,
with a Section on the Pharmacology and Toxicology of Fluorine and Hydrogen
Fluoride (New York: McGraw Hill, 1949), p. 1061. Still another member
of the Newburgh Technical Advisory Committee, a Columbia University
biostatistician, John Fertig, may have been connected to the bomb program.
Fertig did war work for the Office of Scientific Research and Development
(OSRD), the same federal bureaucracy that had sired the atomic bomb.
American Men of Science, 9th and 10th editions.
14. For Howland’s fluoride work: F. A. Smith, D. E. Gardner, and H. C. Hodge,
“Investigations on the Metabolism of Fluoride,” J. Dent. Research (October
1950), p. 596: “We are indebted to Dr. J. Howland for taking the Rochester
blood samples.” (The study is a comparison of the fluoride levels in blood and
urine in Newburgh and Rochester.) Also, Howland wrote “Studies on Human
Exposure to Uranium Compounds,” which investigated the Philadelphia Navy
Yard blast, blaming “the fluoride ion” for injuries. Hodge and Voegtlin, eds.,
Pharmacology and Toxicology of Uranium Compounds, p. 1005: Howland had
helped to assemble the atomic bombs on the Pacific island of Tinian, then
surveyed the aftermath with his Rochester colleague, Capt. Barnett.
15. Eileen Welsome, The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments
in the Cold War (New York: Random House, 1999). Capt. J. W. Howland was
selected as Assistant Head of the Division of Biological and Health Physics
Research of the Medical Section. “The Manhattan District Official History,”
Book 1, General, vol. 7, Medical Program, p. 5.17.
16. Similarly, Ast could not recall a documented 1946 trip to New Jersey with
Harold Hodge after the war, to study the poisoned children near the DuPont
uranium hexafluoride plant. Author interview, 1997.
17. “Fluoride Metabolism: Its significance in Water Fluoridation” J. Am. Dent.
Assoc., vol. 52 (March 1956), p. 307.
18. As medical director, Capt. Friedell had been well aware of the Manhattan
Project’s concern about fluorides. On January 20, 1943, for example, after
visiting the War Research Laboratories at Columbia University, where
a small-scale fluoride gaseous diffusion plant had already been built, he
reported that “The primary potential sources of difficulty may be present in
the handling of uranium compounds . . . and the coincident use of fluorides
which are an integral part of the process.” “Initiation of Medical Program
for Project at Columbia University,” January 20, 1943, Friedell to District
Engineer. Friedell had also investigated fluoride poisoning in workers at
the Harshaw Chemical Company in Cleveland.
19. “Information that fluorides are not hazardous” would have been especially
helpful to the bomb program’s Legal Division, suggested Friedell.