Collecting area: Antifluoridation

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

The founder and director of Citizens for Safe Drinking Water, Jeffrey Lee Green (1946-2014) was a national organizer in the anti-fluoridation movement. A management consultant specializing in the health professionals, Green was adept at using the legal and legislative process to raise awareness of the potential toxicological dangers of fluorides. In 1996, Green helped his colleague David Kennedy facilitate a ballot measure to stop fluoridation in California, and they were instrumental in initiating a congressional investigation into fluoride between 1998 and 2000. Green later contributed to the 2006 National Research Council report on fluoride. Green died suddenly on Nov. 5, 2014.

The collection documents Jeff Green’s work with Citizens for Safe Drinking Water, providing strategic advice for grassroots legal and political challenges to fluoridation. Of particular note are legal files relating to two important cases in California: one challenging the city of Escondido’s decision to use hydrofluosilicic acid and the second leveling a constitutional objection to fluoridation without public consent.

Founded by Paul Connett, a Professor of Chemistry at St. Lawrence University, the International Fluoride Information Network was dedicated to broadening public awareness about the issues involved in fluoridating public water supplies and organizing opposition.

The IFIN Bulletin first appeared in 1999 and over the next five years, 917 issues were published. The Bulletin was succeeded by the Fluoride Action Network Bulletin in 2004. This collection includes a complete series of the Bulletins, printed out.

A Registered Nurse and surgical assistant at Marquette University Medical and Dental Schools, Isabel Jansen was a long-time opponent of fluoridation of drinking water. In 1949, her hometown of Antigo, Wisconsin, became one of the first in the state to put fluorides in its water supply. Jansen emerged as a prominent voice in opposition, arguing that fluorides had a cumulative toxic effect when ingested over a long period, and using public health data, she concluded that fluoridation was strongly correlated with an increase in mortality from heart disease and with a variety of other deleterious health effects. In 1960, she succeeded in ending fluoridation, however after a follow up survey showed a dramatic rise in tooth decay, Antigo residents voted five years later to reintroduce fluoride. Jansen has continued a vigorous resistance, publishing a series of articles on the public health impact and Fluoridation : A Modern Procrustean Practice (1990) and .

The Jansen Papers include a range of correspondence, newsclippings, articles, and notes regarding Isabel Jansen’s long struggle against the fluoridation of drinking water.

The son and grandson of dentists, David Kennedy earned degrees from the University of Kansas (BS 1967) and University of Missouri at Kansas City Dental School (DDS 1971) before establishing a practice in preventive dentistry in San Diego, Calif. During a successful career in which he served as President of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, Kennedy emerged as a prominent critic of fluoridation and the use of mercury amalgams, and was a consistent scientific voice of opposition to civic fluoridation of the water supply. He retired in 2000 to devote his efforts fully to improving the dental profession and to improve public understanding of oral health.

Along with the papers of his long-time associate Jeff Green, the Kennedy papers are a major resource for study of the anti-fluoridation movement in California and grassroot efforts there to repeal water fluoridation. The collection contains a thorough record of legal efforts to prevent water fluoridation, files relating to his activism, and audio recordings from professional meetings and other forums.

Malcolm G. Kennedy became active in the antifluoridation struggle in 1954 when the possibility of fluoridating the water supply in his native Portland, Maine, was first proposed. Kennedy was a well-known figure in antifluoridation circles for over three decades and was the first president of the Greater Portland Citizens Against Public Fluoridation.

Centered on activities in Portland, the Kennedy Papers document antifluoridation activism during the height of the controversy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A relatively rich body of correspondence with regional and national colleagues in the movement is accompanied by supporting materials and some newspaper clippings relating to efforts to fluoridate water supplies in Maine.

A Professor of Preventive Dentistry at the University of Toronto from 1983 until his retirement in 2012 and a former President of the Canadian Association of Dental Research, Hardy Limeback was among the most prominent supporters in Canada of fluoridation of the water supply. However in 1999, Limeback reversed course, apologizing publicly for his role in promoting fluoridation and arguing both that the therapeutic benefits of fluoridation had been greatly inflated and that the toxicity of fluorides had been ignored, leading to impacts ranging from dental fluorosis to lowered IQ and embrittlement of bones.

The Limemback collection contains a series of studies of the impact on health caused by fluoridation of public water supplies and a box of videotapes featuring Limeback and others discussing fluoridation.

John Marier, ca.1952

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

The environmental chemist John R. Marier (1925-1992) joined the staff of the Applied Biology Division of the National Research Council of Canada (NRCC) as a “laboratory helper” in Aug. 1943 and though entirely without university training, worked his way up to laboratory technician and, by 1967, into the ranks of professional staff. His early work on food and dairy chemistry grew into sustained research into the quantitative chemical analysis of biological tissues. Beginning in the mid-1960s, he wrote frequently on the environmental and physiological impact of fluoride, culminating in his 1971 report, Environmental Fluoride, and is noted as an important figure in raising concern over its role as “a persistent bioaccumulator.” Marier retired from the NRCC in 1985, but remained active in the field for several years, expanding into research on magnesium and its function in muscle contraction. Marier died of a massive cardiac and pulmonary failure on Mar. 4, 1992.

The Marier Papers are a particularly rich record of correspondence and notes on the impact of fluoridation from a Canadian specialist in environmental chemistry.

Opposition to fluoridation of public water supplies in Massachusetts swelled in the 1950s, culminating in passage of a law in 1958 mandating that towns that wished to fluoridate would first put the proposal to public referendum. The primary force advocating for this law was the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association, an organization founded and directed by Norman and Mary-Louise (Shadman) Meyer of Wellesley and which remained the leading anti-fluoridation group in the Boston area for twenty years. Having met and married while students at Harvard (1943) and Wellesley, respectively, the Meyers were tireless supporters of civic activities ranging from educational and environmental causes to public television (through the Citizens for Public Television in Boston), and disability (Norman served as director of the Protestant Guild for the Blind in Watertown), and they were stalwart members of the Wellesley town meeting. Norman Meyer died in Tortola in 1986, with Mary-Louise following in 1999.

The Meyer collection is a rich assemblage of letters and other materials documenting the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association and the struggle against fluoridation in Wellesley, Newton, and other communities in eastern Massachusetts. Central figures in the movement, the Meyers maintained a wide correspondence with other activists throughout the region and published and disseminated information on the dangers of flourides in the water supply.

Originally a proponent of fluoridating the water supply, the dentist Robert J.H. Mick became an ardent opponent following animal studies he conducted in the late 1940s. Although he alleged that he was threatened with court martial for his views while serving in the Army in Germany between 1953 and 1956, Mick has remained a high profile professional critic of fluoridation, famously offering a $100,000 prize to any one who could prove that fluoridation of water was healthy. The prize remained unclaimed. Mick ran as a Republican for congress in New Jersey in 1970, largely as an antifluoridation crusader.

The Mick Papers contain a small quantity of correspondence, talks, and affidavits relating to a deacdes-long career in the antifluoridation movement, as well as publications and other materials relating to fluoridation of water supplies.

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

Founded in 1977, the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation is a non-partisan policy making and political action organization devoted to informing the public about the deleterious physiological effects of fluorides. With a membership comprised of professionals and non-professionals, physicians, scientists, and environmentalists, the Coalition works to raise awareness among elected officials at all levels of government about the need for environmental protection and works with an international network of similar organizations with the ultimate goal of ending the fluoridation of public water supplies.

The NYSCOF collection documents two decades of an organized, grassroots effort to influence public policy relating to water fluoridation in New York state and elsewhere. In addition to 7.5 linear feet of subject files relating to fluoridation, the collection includes materials issued by and about NYSCOF, several audio and videotapes, and documentation of their work with elected officials.