Epigraphs Note on Terminology Acknowledgments Introduction

5. From 1925 to 1958 Kehoe was the medical director of the Ethyl Corporation,
the partnership between Standard and General Motors that distributed the
DuPont-manufactured antiknock gasoline additive known as tetra ethyl lead
(TEL). In 1966 he told Congress that he “had been looking for 30 years for evidence
of bad effects from leaded gasoline in the general population and had
found none.” Kitman, “The Secret History of Lead.” Kehoe’s work would take
him to Germany immediately after World War II, from which he sent home
photographs of the Nazi death camps. See also diary, RAK Collection.
The German industrial conglomerate I. G. Farben had operated the
Auschwitz camp with Hitler’s SS. Before the war Farben had partnered in
Germany and the United States with Standard Oil. Shortly before European
hostilities broke out, Ethyl Corporation transferred the technology for making
TEL to its German partner, greatly aiding the Nazi war effort. According
to Farben official August von Knieriem at the Nuremberg war crimes
trial, “Without tetraethyl lead the present method of warfare would have
been impossible. The fact that since the beginning of the war we could produce
tetraethyl lead is entirely due to the circumstance that shortly before,
the Americans presented us with the production plans, complete with their
know how.” J. Borkin, The Crime and Punishment of I. G. Farben (New York:
The Free Press, 1978), p. 78.
6. On April 17, 1952, Kehoe wrote to Seward Miller—medical director of the
Division of Industrial Hygiene, Public Health Service—on behalf of nine
corporations then sponsoring his fluoride research, to request that the
PHS perform some fluoride safety studies on animals. The industry groups,
Kehoe noted, “are concerned mainly with the results of exposure to fluorides
in various occupations.” These industries included “The Pennsylvania
Salt Manufacturing Company, Aluminum Company of America, Reynolds
Metals Company, Universal Oil Products Company, American Petroleum
Institute, Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation, Tennessee Valley
Authority, The Harshaw Chemical Company, [and] Minnesota Mining and
Manufacturing Corporation.” RAK Collection.
7. A great number of claims were settled out of court. The following is a partial
listing of legal actions against U.S. corporations following the war, and
during the early cold war, in which fluoride was suspected as a poison.
These data are culled from press accounts and this author’s research. See
also E. J. Largent, “Fluorosis—The Health Aspects of Fluorine Compounds,”
for the difficulty of comprehensively tracking the frequency and number
of fluoride lawsuits. Also, M. J. Prival and F. Fisher, “Fluorides in the Air,”
Environment, vol. 15, no. 3 (April 1973), pp. 25–32. “The number of out of
court settlements of claims of fluoride damage to vegetation is impossible
to determine, although it certainly exceeds the number of court-ordered
payments.”
• 1946. The “Peach Crop Cases” by New Jersey farmers in Gloucester
and Salem County, claiming $430,000 against DuPont and the U.S.
government.