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Health Scams and Population Control
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08/19/05, NTEU CHAPTER 280
Website:
http://www.nteu280.org
Email:
Murphy.JamesJ@epa.gov
PRESS RELEASE FOR AUGUST 19,
2005
EPA Unions Call for Nationwide Moratorium on
Fluoridation,
Congressional Hearing on Adverse Effects,
Youth Cancer Cover Up
Eleven EPA employee unions
representing over 7000 environmental and public health
professionals of the Civil Service have called for a
moratorium on drinking water fluoridation programs across the
country, and have asked EPA management to recognize fluoride
as posing a serious risk of causing cancer in people. The
unions acted following revelations of an apparent cover-up of
evidence from Harvard School of Dental Medicine linking
fluoridation with elevated risk of a fatal bone cancer in
young boys.
The unions sent letters to key
Congressional committees asking Congress to legislate a
moratorium pending a review of all the science on the risks
and benefits of fluoridation. The letters cited the weight of
evidence supporting a classification of fluoride as a likely
human carcinogen, which includes other epidemiology results
similar to those in the Harvard study, animal studies, and
biological reasons why fluoride can reasonably be expected to
cause the bone cancer – osteosarcoma – seen in young boys and
test animals. The unions also pointed out recent work by
Richard Maas of the Environmental Quality Institute,
University of North Carolina that links increases in lead
levels in drinking water systems to use of silicofluoride
fluoridating agents with chloramines
disinfectant.
The letter to EPA Administrator
Stephen Johnson asked him to issue a public warning in the
form of an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking setting the
health-based drinking water standard for fluoride at zero, as
it is for all known or probable human carcinogens, pending a
recommendation from a National Academy of Sciences’ National
Research Council committee. That committee’s work is not
expected to be done before 2006.
The unions also
asked Congress and EPA’s enforcement office, or the Department
of Justice, to look into reasons why the Harvard study
director, Chester Douglass, failed to report the seven-fold
increased risk seen in the work he oversaw, and instead wrote
to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences,
the federal agency that funded the Harvard study, saying there
was no link between fluoridation and osteosarcoma. Douglass
sent the same negative report to the National Research Council
committee studying possible changes in EPA’s drinking water
standards for fluoride.
The unions who signed the
letters represent EPA employees from across the nation,
including laboratory scientists in Ohio, Oklahoma and
Michigan, regulatory support scientists and other workers at
EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and science and
regulatory workers in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta,
and San Francisco. They are affiliated with the National
Treasury Employees Union, the American Federation of
Government Employees, Engineers and Scientists of
California/International Federation of Professional and
Technical Engineers, and the National Association of
Government Employee/Service Employees International
Union.
The unions’ letter is online at
http://nteu280.org/Issues/Fluoride/fluoridesummary.htm
FOR
INFORMATION CONTACT:
Dr. William Hirzy,
Vice-President
NTEU Chapter 280
Phone(cell)
202-285-0498
__________________________________________________________
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