#77 September/October 2005
The Washington Free Press Washington's Independent Journal of News, Ideas & Culture
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TOP STORIES

Dentist Gone Native: The prophetic nutritional research of Dr. Weston Price, DDS
by Dr. Stephen Byrnes

TOWARD A TOXIC-FREE FUTURE from Washington Toxics Coalition
Diazinon ban sends homeowners looking for other insecticides;Washington Lakes Get a Break from Pesticides
articles by Philip Dickey and Erika Schreder

What About the Rank and File? Labor leaders are still ignoring Labor's biggest asset: volunteer members
opinion by Brian King, part 1

MEDIA

MEDIA BEAT by Norman Solomon
Bush's Option to Escalate the War in Iraq: Mainstream media and Democratic leaders are complicit

The Value of a Non-Commercial Newspaper: Do you see it, too?
from the editor

Contributing writer David Bacon again wins national 'Censored' honors; Articles in the Washington Free Press which have won Project Censored 'top 25' rankings
by Doug Collins

FREE THOUGHTS

READER MAIL
Seeking WWI history; Democratic Pary Co-opted; American Christianity: the Jihad Within

WORKPLACE
Breast Perspective: A breastfeeding mom bares feelings about bare breasts
by Tera Schreiber

IMMIGRATION

Virtual Americans: Guilty parents, innocent children
by Domenico Maceri

Undocumented migrants face bigger obstacles, but still come: Arizona Borderlands Report
by Marie & Phil Heft

HEALTH

EPA Unions Call for Nationwide Moratorium on Fluoridation
from US Environmental Protection Agency's National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), Chapter 280

Is Your Water Fluoridated?
by Doug Collins

CULTURE

The Canoe Race
anonymous progressive joke

Stock Market Seppuku; Carrizo Plain; White Male Adult, 2001
Three Poems by Robert Pavlik

Unfortunately/Fortunately
humor by Styx Mundstock

The Wanderings and Thoughts of Kip Kellogg, #2
by Vincent Spada

POLITICS

Who's Behind the State Initiatives?
by John Merriam

Reforming Supreme Court Appointments: It's helpful to look at appointment processes in other countries
by Steven Hill

ENVIRONMENT

TRASH TALK by Dave and Lillian Brummet
Water Conservation in the Kitchen; Lawn Mowing
also
"Trash Talk" Authors Win BC Recycling Award

CONTEST
Send us a conservation tip and enter to win a copy of the book "Trash Talk"

NW FORESTS

Trees win in court, but still lose ground
Judge Upholds Protections for Old-Growth Forests;Logging Plan Halted in Old-Growth Reserve
from Cascadia Rising! and Conservation Northwest

State of Cascadia: Dire Straits in Paradise
by Alicia Balassa Clark

How I Spent My Bank of America Officially Sponsored Summer Vacation
by John Doe, Jr., and Glenn Reed

CONTACTS/ACTIVISM

NORTHWEST NEIGHBORS
contact list of subscribers who like to talk with you

DO SOMETHING! CALENDAR
Northwest activist events

WAR & PEACE

Phony terror charges threaten free speech in international anti-war movement
by Guerry Hoddersen, Freedom Socialist Party

Are Americans Immune from Empathy?
opinion by Don Torrence

MISCELLANEOUS

BOB'S RANDOM LEGAL WISDOM by Bob Anderton
Rental Car Insurance: Rip-Off or Necessity?

BOOK NOTICES
"Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money" by Joel S. Hirschhorn; "Rational Simplicity" by Tim Covell
from the publishers

New Orleans and the Rubber Ducky Dilemma
by Doug Collins

EPA Unions Call for Nationwide Moratorium on Fluoridation

from US Environmental Protection Agency's National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), Chapter 280

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 incomplete report to the National Research Council committee studying possible changes in EPA's drinking water standards for fluoride.

The unions which 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, DC 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 here.

This article is available online here.

For more info, contact Dr. William Hirzy, Vice-President, NTEU Chapter 280, tel 202-285-0498.

credit: George Jartos

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