In this confronting book, Christopher Bryson's quest is simple, but far from easy: to discover how tiny quantities of a key ingredient of toxic industrial poisons and Cold War wastes is today added to most toothpastes and drinking water in some parts of the U.S., Britain and Australia.
Despite the fact that quantities of fluoride — the ionic form of flourine — added to drinking water are relatively miniscule, and that their addition correlates with a vast improvement in dental health in the 1950s and '60s, the supplement remains an area of contention. Yet, most experts believe that — regardless of the extremely reactive chemical nature of fluorine — its consumption is safe and even beneficial in trace doses.
Bryson's story begins with the discovery of a long-suppressed and largely forgotten memo, telling how fluoride was found to be a "causative factor" in damage to the central nervous system in experiments on humans. The author of the memo later emerges as a champion of water fluoridation and a defender of lax industrial safety standards in the use of fluorine and its compounds.
Other names emerge, and patterns form. Bryson discovers vast, irreconcilable differences between what certain scientists know about the effects of fluorides and what they are prepared to say in public. Bryson's trail takes him to steel and aluminium foundries, and sets him raking over the entrails of the Manhattan Project, the beginnings of America's love affair with nuclear weapons.
What he finds is astonishing. He explains, for example, how uranium hexafluoride plays a key role in uranium enrichment, and discovers that workers in the Manhattan Project spent their days ankle-deep in the stuff without even the most rudimentary protective equipment — with devastating consequences.
The pages of The Fluoride Deception are littered with individuals and communities whose lives have been ruined for economic or political interests. It's worth noting, however, that the dangers associated with fluoride found in industrial quantities are a world away from the traces added as a water supplement.
British-born Bryson is an American resident and his book overwhelmingly reflects that. Extending its scope to include Europe's history of fluoride use, for example, would no doubt have made it impossibly long. That's a shame, but ample material (more than 100 pages of notes) is provided for those who might wish to investigate further.
The treatment of fluoride's mechanism in attacking human enzymes is frustratingly brief, but this is an important book nonetheless, providing a fascinating perspective on one side of the fluoride controversy.
