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New York – Government health authorities knew over 50 years ago that black Americans suffered greater harm from fluoridation, yet failed to warn the black community about their disproportionate risk, according to documents obtained by the Fluoride Action Network (FAN).

In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, experimentally added fluoride chemicals into the water supply anticipating that children’s tooth decay would decline without causing fluoride’s unwanted toxic effects – dental fluorosis (white spotted, yellow, brown and/or pitted teeth).

Prior to Grand Rapids, government fluorosis studies focused exclusively on white children. But little publicized results from Grand Rapids showed that black children were more susceptible to fluorosis than whites.

A January 10, 1962 internal memorandum, from a U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) official, F.J. Maier, revealed that “negroes in Grand Rapids had twice as much fluorosis than others.”

Based on this, Maier asked, “In a community with a larger number of negroes (say in Dekalb County, Georgia)

would this tend to change our optimum fluoride levels?“

No change was made. Worse, government officials have taken no steps to educate the black community about their heightened fluoridation risk.

A FAN team led by attorney Michael Connett uncovered the 1962 memorandum and a trove of other soon-to-be released documents that shed light on how political pressures have stymied open discussion from government and industrial authorities on the hazards of fluoride.