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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.

Fluoride Action Network bumper sticker

In 1996, Paul Connett was persuaded by his wife Ellen to investigate the controversial practice of water fluoridation. In 2000, he was one of the founders of the Fluoride Action Network which he directed for 15 years (2000-2015). In 2003, Paul gave an invited presentation to a panel appointed by the US National Research Council, which published a landmark review of fluoride’s toxicity in 2006.

In 2010, with two other authors, James Beck, MD, PhD and Spedding Micklem, DPhil (Oxon), Connett published The Case Against Fluoride (Chelsea Green 2010).

Paul Connett is recognized as one of the most important anti-fluoride activist of the early 21st century. The collection consists of material generated during his work with the Fluoride Action Network, which includes the contributions of his wife Ellen and their son Michael. Michael is now a lawyer who has brought a case against the EPA over fluoride.

The collection contains newsletters, correspondence, scientific papers, legal documents, clippings, publications, photographs, audio and video recordings, and a collection of 3/4″ videotaped oral histories with leaders of the anti-fluoridation movement. Also contains material from Paul and Ellen’s involvement with Work on Waste, USA, the environmental group opposed to municipal solid waste incineration (see MS 767, Work on Waste USA, Inc. Records).

A life-long resident of Illinois, Myrtle Sapora was born on February 14, 1916, the daughter of William and Jeanie Kenney. After marrying Allen I. Sapora, a member of the teaching staff in leisure studies at the University of Illinois, in 1948, and settling in Champaign-Urbana, Myrtle became an ardent activist in the antifluoridation movement, working a both the state and national levels. She was a member of the Illinois Pure Water Committee for many years and died on August 3, 1995 at the of 79.

The depth of Sapora’s commitment to the antifluoridation movement is reflected in this rich collection, which includes research materials, newsletters and ephemera from antifluoridation groups, informational handouts, news clippings, and a few audiotapes of meetings. Concentrated in the later 1970s through early 1990s, Sapora’s correspondence is particularly revealing, with interesting exchanges with politicians, letters to the editor, and other lobbying targets, as well as a number of important figures in the movement, including Albert Burgsthaler, Ellie Rudolph, and John Yiamouyanis.

The physician Philip E. Zanfagna was a prominent early opponent of fluoridation of the public water supply. Born in Lawrence, Mass., in January 1909, Zanfagna earned his MD at Boston University and spent the bulk of his professional career as a specialist in allergic diseases at Lawrence General Hospital. Placed in command of a military hospital in Tennessee during the Second World War, he became immersed in pharmaceuticals research, through which he became aware of the health effects of fluoride. Over the next three decades, he emerged as a prominent opponent of fluoridation of the public water supply and of the suppression of debate over the topic within the scientific community. He published widely on the topic during the 1960s and 1970s and was recognized as an important antifluoridation activist, becoming a founder and first president of the International Society for Fluoride Research and a leading figure in the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association. Zanfagna died in June 1982 at the age of 73.

A small but interesting collection, the Zanfagna papers contain a small quantity of correspondence relating to antifluoridation activism and research, 1969-1972; a set of audiotapes of the Frankfurt Conference of the International Society for Fluoridation Research, October 1967; and a handful of research reports of fluoride toxicity. The collection also includes a paperback copy of Zanfagna’s best known book (co-authored with Gladys Caldwell), Fluoridation and Truth Decay (1974).

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.

The radiologist Frederick Exner settled in the Pacific Northwest after receiving his MD from the University of Minnesota in 1927. Concerned about proposals to fluoridate water in Seattle, he and his collaborator George Waldbott became national figures in opposing fluoridation by the early 1950s and for decades, were considered among the most effective scientific voices in the movement. A prolific writer and lecturer, Exner is particularly remembered for his influential book, The American Fluoridation Experiment (1957), co-written with Waldbott.

The Exner collection contains a number of mimeographed and printed articles by Exner on the environmental dangers and toxic effects of fluoride, dating from the early years of the antifluoridation movement.

Since the 1960s, the chiropractor Stephen Dean has been one of the leading activists in Massachusetts opposing fluoridation of the water supply. Based in Springfield, he has been an effective organizer in antifluoridation campaigns in communities around the state, arguing against fluoridation both as a medical hazard and a violation of individual choice. In 2005, he led the successful effort to strike down a state mandate to fluoridate all civic water supplies.

This small collection contains a handful of articles and clippings collected by the activist Stephen A. Dean regarding fluoride and the fluoridation of water supplies, and a note offering his expert perspective to journalists writing about the controversy.

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

A native of Washington, D.C., and graduate of the University of Wisconsin (1970) and Loyola University of Chicago Law School (1973), Norman Blumenthal moved to La Jolla, Calif., in 1976 to accept a position as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel for an oil and gas exploration company. After twelve years in the corporate sector, Blumenthal entered private practice, shifting focus to the protection of employees, consumers, and securities buyers from unfair business practices and pursuing both class action and individual cases. Among other notable cases, Blumenthal led a class action suit against the city of Escondido, Calif. (Coshow v. City of Escondido, 132 Cal. App. 4th 687), arguing that their decision to fluoridate the city water supply in 2001 amounted to “mass medicating the entire community” without consent using chemicals that were known to be carcinogenic. In 2005, the court upheld the City’s fluoridation plan.

The Blumenthal collection represents the extensive legal and research files employed by the plaintiffs in Coshow v. Escondido and the appeals that ensued, including correspondence, litigants’ files, depositions, exhibits, “expert documents,” research materials and drafts, “extras.”

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.

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.