Interested in (Pocket Listings)?
Who is interested in (Pocket Listings)?
Is everyone familiar with what Pocket Listings are? I know most Agents know what they are but I have run into several that don't know what they are.
A Pocket Listing is basically a property that a owner has that is interested in selling, but doesn't want to list it with a Agency.
Most Agents say "what good is a property to me if the seller will not let me list it"
Well the owner is looking for a buyer, if you can find a buyer for this seller then you can get both parties to sign what's called a Non-Circ Agreement. Binding both parties to an agreement that if the transaction goes through, you get compensated.
Also if you have a buyer for a seller and they are both serious you can do a 30 day Listing agreement and extend the time if necessary.
Below are just a few of Pocket Listings I had several moths ago, some have been sold but I wanted to give you and idea of the property that I sell.
I have many, many people calling me with properties that they want to sell and they are unlisted.
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2007-09-17
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777S INC Consulting Firm PO Box 26443 Las Vegas, NV 89126
If you have any questions, feel free to contact: Robert Swetz 702.443.7156
www.LakeOwner.com
www.VegasBuildingsForSale.com
Email: invest@lakeowner.com
AciveRain.Swetz@gmail.com
"UNLISTED VACANT LAND" PROPERTIES LIST (POCKET LISTINGS)
1) NW 5 ac. with another 5 ac. available for sale next to this property. Located on 2 major cross streets. Zoned R-1 at this time. A commercial variance may be achieved. Comps suggest $2.5M per 5 ac. parcel. (SOLD)
2) SW 5 ac. zoned R-2. Corner piece on 2 major cross streets. A commercial variance my be achieved. Comps suggest $2M per 5 ac. parcel. (SOLD)
3) SE 2.5 ac. zoned R-l . Just east of Las Vegas Blvd. So. Corner property on 2 major cross streets. Possibility of rezoning. Comps suggest $1M.
4) SW 2.5ac. zoned C-l. Property faces major street. Comps suggest $2.9M.
5) Central location near hospital. Just under 1/4 ac. Zoned for Medical bldg. Comps suggest $1.8M.
6) SW 4.09 ac. Zoned Commercial. Faces Major street. Comps suggest $5M.
7) SW 4.18 ac. Zoned Multi. Possible commercial. Faces major street. Comps suggest $5M. (PENDING)
8) SW 4.19 ac. zoned C-2/industrial near 215 Beltway. Seller will do sale, land lease or JV. Same seller has 2.5 ac. in SW zoned C-l . (SOLD)
9) Central 5 ac. zoned C-general. Property faces major street. Seller asking $11M.
10) South Valley 2.5ac. zoned Industrial. Comps suggest $2.5M
11) NW 2.13 ac. zoned C-l. Property located on major street. (SOLD)
12) NW 1.21 ac. zoned RE on Centennial Parkway..Possible rezone to Commercial. (PENDING)
HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY ROBERT SWETZ
www.LasVegasBuildingsForSale.com
LOCALISM: www.localism.com/agents/swetz777
Active Rain Network: www.activerain.com/swetz777www.bestpicz.ning.com
LAS VEGAS, NEVADADirect: 702.443.7156
www.New-Commercial-Properties.com
www.LakeOwner.com
www.SearchMyPics.com (coming soon)
www.CustomAsianJewelry.com (coming soon)
Monday, September 29, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
LAS VEGAS BUILDING PROJECTS ON THE (STRIP) LAS VEGAS BLVD.
Suites at Wynn Las Vegas - photo taken by: Robert Swetz 8-20-2008
Encore Suites at Wynn Las VegasIn March 2005, less than two months before the opening of Wynn Las Vegas, The Steve announced plans for the $1.74 billion 2,034-suite Encore. The smallest suites will be 700 square feet (larger than the new rivals, Palazzo and Caesars Augustus Tower). The 230-square-foot bathrooms will be larger than some old Las Vegas hotel rooms. The casino will be 70,000 square feet. Five restaurants, 11 retail shops and 60,000 Sq. Ft. of additional meeting and conference facilities are also in the plans.The Encore at Wynn Las Vegas will be a separate property, however both properties will be connected via the public areas and run as one.
This project will make Wynn Las Vegas the fifth largest hotel in the world with 4,740 rooms and suites. Palazzo at the Venetian will be completed before Encore taking the Venetian to the #1 spot with over 7000 rooms.
Encore Suites at Wynn Las Vegas is scheduled to open in December of 2008. The site is North of the existing property and directly across the strip from the New Frontier.
FONTAINEBLEAU HOTEL - LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Photo taken 8-20-2008 by: Robert Swetz
Fontainebleau
The 3,812-room, 725-foot, 63-story Fontainebleau Las Vegas hotel/condo-hotel/casino is a $2.9-billion development being built on the Strip (just north of the Riviera) on the 24.5 acres where the El Rancho and Algiers casinos once stood.
The Vegas project will have a condo-hotel element, based on an alliance between Fontainebleau and Turnberry. Construction is under way with a planned opening in fall of 2009The project will be modern and chic in design (reflecting the spirit of their famed Miami Beach hotel) and include:
- A 100,000-sq.-ft. casino - Lapis, a 60,000-sq.-ft. spa - A 3,200-seat performing arts theater - 1,018 condo-hotel units - 300,000 sq.-ft. of retail space - 390,000 sq.-ft .of indoor and outdoor conference space - State of the art nightclubs- 24 restaurants and loungesSignature dining experiences will include: - The Michelin-star rated cuisine of executive-chef Alfred Portale at Gotham Steak - A regional Italian menu by James Beard Award recipient Chef Scott Conant - A renowned Chinese restaurant featuring Michelin-star rated Cantonese cuisine - Indulgences, a 5,000-square-foot chocolate factory
HIGH STREET AT ECHELON: LAS VEGAS - NEVADA
photo taken 8-20-2008 by: Robert Swetz
Gracing the 87 acres where The Stardust, Westward Ho and Budget Suites used to sit, The $4.8-billion Echelon will be the centerpiece of the new north strip.
The project will have close to 5,000 rooms which will be divided into five (partially separate) towers. The main 2,500-room Echelon Hotel, the 650-room The Enclave (Suites at Echelon), and the 350-room Shangri-La Las Vegas will share one high-rise while the 860-room Mondrian Las Vegas and the 550-room Delano Las Vegas will share the other. Several acres of Boyd's 87 acres will remain empty for possible future residence towers. Each hotel will have it's own spa.All four hotels will share:- 140,000-sq. ft casino (the fourth largest in Las Vegas)- 300,000-sq. ft. shopping venue- 750,000-sq. ft. convention center (the fourth largest in Vegas)- 30 restaurants and bars - 4,000-seat stadium-style theater (for resident production shows)- 1,500-seat theater (for touring acts) - The project will be completed in the third quarter of 2010
photo taken 8-20-2008 by: Robert Swetz Back view of HIGH STREET AT ECHELON LAS VEGAS
If there are any questions on these photographs or anyone from Las Vegas is interested in having photographs taken of new projects in Las Vegas, please feel free to contact me at your convenience.
HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY
ROBERT SWETZ
LOCALISM: www.localism.com/agents/swetz777
Active Rain Network: www.activerain.com/swetz777
LAS VEGAS, NEVADADirect: 702.443.7156
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Must see photograph of old Temples built between 850-1120
This photograph is only showing 6 different temples out of 7,000 that were built in Bagan Myanmar (Burma). Early (circa 850-1120), Middle (circa 1100 -1170) and Late (circa 1170-1300).
On vacation in Bagan I spent 5 days and 4 nights shooting approximately 500 different photographs. From sunsets, sunrises, pics of temples (inside and out), statues, etc, I still didn't have enough time to capture all of Bagan.
To me, Bagan is one of the most amazing places on Earth and I will be visiting there quite often in the future. We would get up early mornings and wait until sunrise and look across the country side from the top of huge temples taking in the beauty. While looking across the horizon of Bagan because there are so many thousands of temples, they looked like ant hills.
I will be following this post at a later time in the future with some more breathtaking photographs of sunrises & sunsets, and many more temples.
Bagan Myanmar (Burma) 4-16-2008 photo taken by: Robert Swetz
Thank you for your time and have a wonderful day!
Robert Swetz
Sometimes the simple things in life can be rewarding (BE POSSITVE TODAY)
Sometimes happiness comes in very strange ways.
These Burmese women had never seen an American in their life's and wanted to have a photograph taken with one, of course that was me. Please forgive me because I gained a some weight on my trip to South East Asia.
The reason that I am posting this story and photo is because it's sometimes the simple things in life that can make others happy. Burmese people are very, very simple and for these women and children to pose in the photograph with me made their day and they were so excited. By looking at the pic it may not look like it, but they have never had a photograph taken of them. These are simple village people with no cars, televisions and no widows or floors in their homes.
I know that times in America are very hard with the gas prices, food prices, family's loosing their homes, etc. But let's try and do the best we can today and everyday try to stop fighting, I got in a debate with another AR member last night fighting about President Bush and I don't want to fight and argue like this.
I just want to be happy and when the chips are down, bend over and pick them up. Try to stand tall and give the best we are capable of giving. We the people of the United States of America have so much to live for, let's try to live up to these standards and stop looking at all the negative things in life.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Property Investments in LAS VEGAS-NEVADA (Think Now)!
Property Investments in LAS VEGAS-NEVADA (Think Now)!
PROPERTY INVESTMENTS IN LAS VEGAS-NEVADA (THINK NOW)!
Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing cities in the world with approximately 3,000 visitors per day.
Yes Las Vegas was rated at the top for forclosers, but that's because of the crooked Loan officers, mortgage companies, banks, etc. What would anyone expect in Las Vegas, everyone is looking to win the jack pot, become a star, or make the fast money.
Approximately 60-65 percent of Politicians are Attorneys and they have huge Real Estate investments all over the United States. Once a new President is Elected (God help us), you are going to really see some activity in the Real Estate market. And one of those places of activity will be in Las Vegas.
If your are familiar with Las Vegas (the meadows), you can drive East & West of the city and after about 30 minutes driving on either side of the city you are stopped by mountains. Homes have been built as far East to West as they can go. North to South continues to grow towards Reno to the North, and California to the South. But then again the building is limited because of the mountains and the city of Las Vegas being in a valley.
The focus of the building is in High-rise Luxury Condos.
If you have visited Las Vegas lately or have seen photographs, one can see that Las Vegas is building up, up, up! Belonging to the Las Vegas High-rise Association, predictions for High-rise Luxury Condos in in the hundreds in the next 20 years. Investors are planning to build approximately 10 buildings per year for the next 20 years. This is about 200 High-rise Luxury buildings, and let's just cut that in half which would around 100.
I myself would not invest into one of the new condos going up, but into older homes located on either sides of the (STRIP). As the building continues the dirt that these older homes becomes very,very valuable. When Steve Wynn built his new Casino there were several homes on one block that he wanted out of the way, he wanted to own all of the property on that block. When he first broke ground, Steve offered these home owners $1,000,000 and after 1-2 years at completion of his Casino payed $3,000,000 for each home. These homes were build back in the mid seventies and really only worth $500,000 each.
I am planning to purchase some more investment homes in LasVegas around November-December of 2008, because I believe this will be the best time to buy. The prices will rise in Spring, they always do, so (THINK NOW) if you want to own a part of the fastest growing place in the world!
We will have a new President this fall, (God help us) and many home owners will want to sell their homes before the new year. For tax reasons and home owners that have had their homes on the market forever.
If your interested in owning a piece of Las Vegas Nevada before it's to late feel free to search my MLS at:
http://www.vegasbuildingsforsale.com/mls.htm
I look forward to helping you with your investments.
ROBERT SWETZ
Direct: 702.443.7156
www.VegasBuildingsForSale.com
www.New-Commercial-Properties.com
www.LakeOwner.com
www.VegasHighriseVistas.com
PROPERTY INVESTMENTS IN LAS VEGAS-NEVADA (THINK NOW)!
Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing cities in the world with approximately 3,000 visitors per day.
Yes Las Vegas was rated at the top for forclosers, but that's because of the crooked Loan officers, mortgage companies, banks, etc. What would anyone expect in Las Vegas, everyone is looking to win the jack pot, become a star, or make the fast money.
Approximately 60-65 percent of Politicians are Attorneys and they have huge Real Estate investments all over the United States. Once a new President is Elected (God help us), you are going to really see some activity in the Real Estate market. And one of those places of activity will be in Las Vegas.
If your are familiar with Las Vegas (the meadows), you can drive East & West of the city and after about 30 minutes driving on either side of the city you are stopped by mountains. Homes have been built as far East to West as they can go. North to South continues to grow towards Reno to the North, and California to the South. But then again the building is limited because of the mountains and the city of Las Vegas being in a valley.
The focus of the building is in High-rise Luxury Condos.
If you have visited Las Vegas lately or have seen photographs, one can see that Las Vegas is building up, up, up! Belonging to the Las Vegas High-rise Association, predictions for High-rise Luxury Condos in in the hundreds in the next 20 years. Investors are planning to build approximately 10 buildings per year for the next 20 years. This is about 200 High-rise Luxury buildings, and let's just cut that in half which would around 100.
I myself would not invest into one of the new condos going up, but into older homes located on either sides of the (STRIP). As the building continues the dirt that these older homes becomes very,very valuable. When Steve Wynn built his new Casino there were several homes on one block that he wanted out of the way, he wanted to own all of the property on that block. When he first broke ground, Steve offered these home owners $1,000,000 and after 1-2 years at completion of his Casino payed $3,000,000 for each home. These homes were build back in the mid seventies and really only worth $500,000 each.
I am planning to purchase some more investment homes in LasVegas around November-December of 2008, because I believe this will be the best time to buy. The prices will rise in Spring, they always do, so (THINK NOW) if you want to own a part of the fastest growing place in the world!
We will have a new President this fall, (God help us) and many home owners will want to sell their homes before the new year. For tax reasons and home owners that have had their homes on the market forever.
If your interested in owning a piece of Las Vegas Nevada before it's to late feel free to search my MLS at:
http://www.vegasbuildingsforsale.com/mls.htm
I look forward to helping you with your investments.
ROBERT SWETZ
Direct: 702.443.7156
www.VegasBuildingsForSale.com
www.New-Commercial-Properties.com
www.LakeOwner.com
www.VegasHighriseVistas.com
Friday, June 27, 2008
SHOCKING NEWS ABOUT FLUORIDE
Shocking News About Fluoride
The following article exposes the biggest on-going medical experiment ever carried out by the United States Government on an unsuspecting population.
Fluoride, Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb by Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson © July 1997
Some fifty years after the United States began adding fluoride to public water supplies to reduce cavities in children’s teeth, declassified government documents are shedding new light on the roots of that still controversial public health measure, revealing a surprising connection between fluoride and the dawning of the nuclear age.
Today, two thirds of U.S. public drinking water is fluoridated. Many municipalities still resist the practice, disbelieving the government’s assurances of safety .
Since the days of World War II, when this nation prevailed by building the world’s first
atomic bomb, U.S. public health leaders have maintained that low doses of fluoride are safe for people, and good for children’s teeth.
That safety verdict should now be re-examined in the light of hundreds of once-secret
World War II documents obtained by Griffiths and Bryson—including declassified papers of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. military group that built the atomic bomb.
Fluoride was the key chemical in atomic bomb production, according to the documents.
Massive quantities of fluoride—millions of tons—were essential for the manufacture of
bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. One of the most toxic chemicals known, fluoride rapidly emerged as the leading chemical health hazard of the U.S. atomic bomb program—both for workers and for nearby communities, the documents reveal.
Other revelations include:
Much of the original proof that fluoride is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists, who had been secretly ordered to provide "evidence useful in litigation" against defense contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program were not over radiation, but over fluoride damage, the documents show.
Human studies were required. Bomb program researchers played a leading role in the design and implementation of the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoridating public drinking water—conducted in Newburgh, New York from 1945 to 1956. Then, in a classified operation code-named "Program F," they secretly gathered and analysed blood and tissue samples from Newburgh citizens, with the cooperation of State Health Department personnel.
The original secret version—obtained by these reporters—of a 1948 study published by Program F scientists in the Journal of the American Dental Association shows that evidence of adverse health effects from fluoride was censored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) -- considered the most powerful of Cold War agencies—for reasons of national security.
The bomb program’s fluoride safety studies were conducted at the University of
Rochester, site of one of the most notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War, in which unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium.
The fluoride studies were conducted with the same ethical mind-set, in which "national security" was paramount.
The U.S. government’s conflict of interest—and its motive to prove fluoride "safe"—has not until now been made clear to the general public in the furious debate over water fluoridation since the 1950’s, nor to civilian researchers and health professionals, or journalists.
The declassified documents resonate with a growing body of scientific evidence, and a chorus of questions, about the health effects of fluoride in the environment.
Human exposure to fluoride has mushroomed since World War II, due not only to fluoridated water and toothpaste, but to environmental pollution by major industries from aluminum to pesticides: Fluoride is a critical industrial chemical.
The impact can be seen, literally, in the smiles of our children. Large numbers of U.S. young people—up to 80 percent in some cities—now have dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive fluoride exposure, according to the U.S. National Research Council. (The signs are whitish flecks or spots, particularly on the front teeth, or dark spots or stripes in more severe cases.)
Less-known to the public is that fluoride also accumulates in bones—"The teeth are windows to what’s happening in the bones," explains Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry at
St. Lawrence (N.Y.) University. In recent years, pediatric bone specialists have expressed alarm about an increase in stress fractures among U.S. young people. Connett and other scientists are concerned that fluoride—linked to bone damage by studies since the 1930’s -- may be a contributing factor. The declassified documents add urgency: Much of the original proof that low-dose fluoride is safe for children’s bones came from U.S. bomb program scientists, according to this investigation.
Now, researchers who have reviewed these declassified documents fear that Cold War
national security considerations may have prevented objective scientific evaluation of vital public health questions concerning fluoride.
Information was buried," concludes Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, former head of toxicology at
Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, and now a critic of fluoridation. Animal studies Mullenix and co-workers conducted at Forsyth in the early 1990’s indicated that fluoride was a powerful central nervous system (CNS) toxin, and might adversely affect human brain functioning,
even at low doses. (New epidemiological evidence from China adds support, showing a correlation between low-dose fluoride exposure and diminished I.Q. in children.) Mullenix’s results were published in 1995, in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal.
During her investigation, Mullenix was astonished to discover there had been virtually no previous U.S. studies of fluoride’s effects on the human brain. Then, her application for a grant to continue her CNS research was turned down by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), where an NIH panel, she says, flatly told her that "fluoride does not have central nervous system effects."
Declassified documents of the U.S. atomic-bomb program indicate otherwise. An April 29, 1944 Manhattan Project memo reports: "Clinical evidence suggests that uranium hexafluoride may have a rather marked central nervous system effect.... It seems most likely that the F [code for fluoride] component rather than the T [code for uranium] is the causative factor."
The memo—stamped "secret"—is addressed to the head of the Manhattan Project’s Medical Section, Col. Stafford Warren. Colonel Warren is asked to approve a program of animal research on CNS effects: "Since work with these compounds is essential, it will be necessary to know in advance what mental effects may occur after exposure... This is important not only to protect a given individual, but also to prevent a confused workman from injuring others by improperly performing his duties."
On the same day, Colonel Warren approved the CNS research program. This was in 1944, at the height of the Second World War and the nation’s race to build the world’s first atomic bomb. For research on fluoride’s CNS effects to be approved at such a momentous time, the supporting evidence set forth in the proposal forwarded along with the memo must have been persuasive.
The proposal, however, is missing from the files of the U.S. National Archives. "If you find the memos, but the document they refer to is missing, it’s probably still classified," said Charles Reeves, chief librarian at the Atlanta branch of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, where the memos were found. Similarly, no results of the Manhattan Project’s fluoride CNS research could be found in the files.
After reviewing the memos, Mullenix declared herself "flabbergasted." She went on, "How could I be told by NIH that fluoride has no central nervous system effects when these documents were sitting there all the time?" She reasons that the Manhattan Project did do fluoride CNS studies—"that kind of warning, that fluoride workers might be a danger to the bomb program by improperly performing their duties—I can’t imagine that would be ignored—but that the results were buried because they might create a difficult legal and public relations problem for the government."
The author of the 1944 CNS research proposal was Dr. Harold C. Hodge, at the time chief of fluoride toxicology studies for the University of Rochester division of the Manhattan Project. Nearly fifty years later at the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, Dr. Mullenix was introduced to a gently ambling elderly man brought in to serve as a consultant on her CNS research Harold C. Hodge. By then Hodge had achieved status emeritus as a world authority on fluoride safety.
"But even though he was supposed to be helping me," says Mullenix, "he never once mentioned the CNS work he had done for the Manhattan Project."
The "black hole" in fluoride CNS research since the days of the Manhattan Project is unacceptable to Mullenix, who refuses to abandon the issue. "There is so much fluoride exposure now, and we simply do not know what it is doing," she says. "You can’t just walk away from this."
Dr. Antonio Noronha, an NIH scientific review advisor familiar with Dr. Mullenix’s grant request, says her proposal was rejected by a scientific peer-review group. He terms her claim of institutional bias against fluoride CNS research "farfetched." He adds, "We strive very hard at NIH to make sure politics does not enter the picture."
Fluoride and National Security
A massive Manhattan Project pollution incident in New Jersey sparks secret wartime U.S. research on fluoride safety.
The documentary trail begins at the height of World War II, in 1944, when a severe pollution incident occurred downwind of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company chemical factory in Deepwater, New Jersey. The factory was then producing millions of pounds of fluoride for the Manhattan Project, the ultra-secret U.S. military program racing to produce the world’s first atomic bomb.
The farms downwind in Gloucester and Salem counties were famous for their high quality produce—their peaches went directly to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Their tomatoes were bought up by Campbell’s Soup. But in the summer of 1943, the farmers began to report that their crops were blighted, and that "something is burning up the peach crops around here."
Poultry died after an all-night thunderstorm, they reported. Farm workers who ate the produce they had picked sometimes vomited all night and into the next day. "I remember our horses looked sick and were too stiff to work," these reporters were told by Mildred Giordano, who was a teenager at the time. Some cows were so crippled that they could not stand up, and grazed by crawling on their bellies.
The account was confirmed in taped interviews, shortly before he died, with Philip Sadtler of Sadtler Laboratories of Philadelphia, one of the nation’s oldest chemical consulting firms.
Sadtler had personally conducted the initial investigation of the damage.
Although the farmers did not know it, according to once-secret documents obtained by
these reporters, the attention of the Manhattan Project and the federal government was riveted on the New Jersey incident. After the war’s end, in a secret Manhattan Project memo dated March 1, 1946, the Project’s chief of fluoride toxicology studies, Harold C.
Hodge, worriedly wrote to his boss, Colonel Stafford L. Warren, Chief of the Medical Division, about "problems associated with the question of fluoride contamination of the atmosphere in a certain section of New Jersey. There seem to be four distinct (though related) problems," continued Hodge;
"1. A question of injury of the peach crop in 1944.
"2. A report of extraordinary fluoride content of vegetables grown in this area.
"3. A report of abnormally high fluoride content in the blood of human individuals residing in this area.
"4. A report raising the question of serious poisoning of horses and cattle in this area." The New Jersey farmers waited until the war was over, then sued du Pont and the Manhattan Project for fluoride damage—reportedly the first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program.
Although seemingly trivial, the lawsuits shook the government, the secret documents reveal.
Under the personal direction of Manhattan Project chief Major General Leslie R. Groves, secret meetings were convened in Washington, with compulsory attendance by scores of scientists and officials from the U.S. War Department, the Manhattan Project, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture and Justice Departments, the U.S Army’s Chemical Warfare Service and Edgewood Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, and du Pont lawyers.
Declassified memos of the meetings reveal a secret mobilization of the full forces of the government to defeat the New Jersey farmers:
These agencies "are making scientific investigations to obtain evidence which may be used to protect the interest of the Government at the trial of the suits brought by owners of peach orchards in ... New Jersey," stated Manhattan Project Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B. Rhodes, in a memo c.c.’d to General Groves. "27 August 1945
"Subject: Investigation of Crop Damage at Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey "To: The Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Pentagon Building, Washington D.C. "At the request of the Secretary of War the Department of Agriculture has agreed to cooperate in investigating complaints of crop damage attributed... to fumes from a plant operated in connection with the Manhattan Project."
Signed, L.R. Groves, Major General, U.S. Army
"The Department of Justice is cooperating in the defense of these suits," wrote General Groves in a February 28, 1946 memo to the Chairman of the U. S. Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy.
Why the national-security emergency over a few lawsuits by New Jersey farmers? In 1946 the United States had begun full-scale production of atomic bombs. No other nation had yet tested a nuclear weapon, and the A-bomb was seen as crucial for U.S leadership of the postwar world. The New Jersey fluoride lawsuits were a serious roadblock to that strategy.
"The specter of endless lawsuits haunted the military," writes Lansing Lamont in his acclaimed book about the first atomic bomb test, "Day of Trinity,"
In the case of fluoride, "If the farmers won, it would open the door to further suits, which might impede the bomb program’s ability to use fluoride," said Jacqueline Kittrell, a Tennessee public interest lawyer specializing in nuclear cases, who examined the declassified fluoride documents. (Kittrell has represented plaintiffs in several human radiation experiment cases.) She added, "The reports of human injury were especially threatening, because of the potential for enormous settlements—not to mention the PR problem."
Indeed, du Pont was particularly concerned about the "possible psychologic reaction" to the New Jersey pollution incident, according to a secret 1946 Manhattan Project memo. Facing a threat from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to embargo the region’s produce because of "high fluoride content," du Pont dispatched its lawyers to the FDA offices in Washington, where an agitated meeting ensued. According to a memo sent next day to General Groves, Du Pont’s lawyer argued "that in view of the pending suits... any action by the Food and Drug Administration... would have a serious effect on the du Pont Company and would create a bad public relations situation." After the meeting adjourned, Manhattan project Captain John Davies approached the FDA’s Food Division chief and "impressed upon Dr. White the substantial interest which the Government had in claims which might arise as a result of action which might be taken by the Food and Drug Administration."
There was no embargo. Instead, new tests for fluoride in the New Jersey area would be conducted—not by the Department of Agriculture—but by the Chemical Warfare Service -- because "work done by the U. S. Army’s Chemical Warfare Service would carry the greatest weight as evidence if... lawsuits are started by the complainants." The memo was signed by General Groves.
Meanwhile, the public relations problem remained unresolved—local citizens were in a panic about fluoride.
The farmer’s spokesman, Willard B. Kille, was personally invited to dine with General Groves -- then known as "the man who built the atomic bomb"—at his office at the War Department on March 26, 1946. Although he had been diagnosed with fluoride poisoning by his doctor, Kille departed the luncheon convinced of the government’s good faith. The next day he wrote to the general, wishing the other farmers could have been present, he said, so "they too could come away with the feeling that their interests in this particular matter were being safeguarded by men of the very highest type whose integrity they could not question."
In a subsequent secret Manhattan Project memo, a broader solution to the public relations problem was suggested by chief fluoride toxicologist Harold C. Hodge. He wrote to the Medical Section chief, Colonel Warren: "Would there be any use in making attempts to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents of Salem and Gloucester counties through lectures on F toxicology and perhaps the usefulness of F in tooth health?"
Such lectures were indeed given, not only to New Jersey citizens but to the rest of the nation throughout the Cold War.
The New Jersey farmers’ lawsuits were ultimately stymied by the government’s refusal to reveal the key piece of information that would have settled the case—how much fluoride du Pont had vented into the atmosphere during the war. "Disclosure... would be injurious to the military security of the United States," wrote Manhattan Project Major C.A. Taney, Jr. The farmers were pacified with token financial settlements, according to interviews with descendants still living in the area.
"All we knew is that du Pont released some chemical that burned up all the peach trees around here," recalls Angelo Giordano, whose father James was one of the original plaintiffs.
"The trees were no good after that, so we had to give up on the peaches." Their horses and cows, too, acted stiff and walked stiff, recalls his sister Mildred. "Could any of that have been the fluoride?" she asked. (The symptoms she detailed to the authors are cardinal signs of fluoride toxicity, according to veterinary toxicologists.)
The Giordano family, too, has been plagued by bone and joint problems, Mildred adds.
Recalling the settlement received by the Giordanos, Angelo told these reporters "my father said he got about $200."
The farmers were stonewalled in their search for information, and their complaints have long since been forgotten. But they unknowingly left their imprint on history—their claims of injury to their health reverberated through the corridors of power in Washington, and triggered intensive secret bomb-program research on the health effects of fluoride. A secret 1945 memo from Manhattan Project Lt. Colonel Rhodes to General Groves stated:
"Because of complaints that animals and humans have been injured by hydrogen fluoride fumes in [the New Jersey] area, although there are no pending suits involving such claims, the University of Rochester is conducting experiments to determine the toxic effect of fluoride."
Much of the proof of fluoride’s safety in low doses rests on the postwar work performed by the University of Rochester, in anticipation of lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury.
Fluoride and the Cold War
Delegating fluoride safety studies to the University of Rochester was not surprising. During World War II the federal government had become involved, for the first time, in large scale funding of scientific research at government-owned labs and private colleges. Those early spending priorities were shaped by the nation’s often-secret military needs.
The prestigious upstate New York college, in particular, had housed a key wartime division of the Manhattan Project, studying the health effects of the new "special materials," such as uranium, plutonium, beryllium and fluoride, being used to make the atomic bomb. That work continued after the war, with millions of dollars flowing from the Manhattan Project and its successor organization, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). (Indeed, the bomb left an indelible imprint on all of U.S. science in the late 1940’s and 50’s. Up to 90% of federal funds for university research came from either the Defense Department or the AEC in this period, according to Noam Chomsky’s 1996 book "The Cold War and the University.")
The University of Rochester medical school became a revolving door for senior bomb program scientists. Postwar faculty included Stafford Warren, the top medical officer of the Manhattan Project, and Harold Hodge, chief of fluoride research for the bomb program.
But this marriage of military secrecy and medical science bore deformed offspring. The University of Rochester’s classified fluoride studies—code-named Program F—were conducted at its Atomic Energy Project (AEP), a top-secret facility funded by the AEC and housed in Strong Memorial Hospital. It was there that one of the most notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War took place, in which unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium. Revelation of this experiment in a Pulitzer prize-winning account by Eileen Wellsome led to a 1995 U.S. Presidential investigation, and a multimillion-dollar cash settlement for victims.
Program F was not about children’s teeth. It grew directly out of litigation against the bomb program and its main purpose was to furnish scientific ammunition which the government and its nuclear contractors could use to defeat lawsuits for human injury.
Program F’s director was none other than Harold C. Hodge, who had led the Manhattan Project investigation of alleged human injury in the New Jersey fluoride-pollution incident.
Program F’s purpose is spelled out in a classified 1948 report. It reads: "To supply evidence useful in the litigation arising from an alleged loss of a fruit crop several years ago, a number of problems have been opened. Since excessive blood fluoride levels were reported in human residents of the same area, our principal effort has been devoted to describing the relationship of blood fluorides to toxic effects."
The litigation referred to, of course, and the claims of human injury were against the bomb program and its contractors. Thus, the purpose of Program F was to obtain evidence useful in litigation against the bomb program. The research was being conducted by the defendants.
The potential conflict of interest is clear. If lower dose ranges were found hazardous by Program F, it might have opened the bomb program and its contractors to lawsuits for injury to human health, as well as public outcry.
Comments lawyer Kittrell: "This and other documents indicate that the University of Rochester’s fluoride research grew out of the New Jersey lawsuits and was performed in anticipation of lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury. Studies undertaken for litigation purposes by the defendants would not be considered scientifically acceptable today," adds Kittrell, "because of their inherent bias to prove the chemical safe."
Unfortunately, much of the proof of fluoride’s safety rests on the work performed by Program F Scientists at the University of Rochester. During the postwar period that university emerged as the leading academic center for establishing the safety of fluoride, as well as its effectiveness in reducing tooth decay, according to Dental School spokesperson William H. Bowen, M.D. The key figure in this research, Bowen said, was Harold C. Hodge—who also became a leading national proponent of fluoridating public drinking water.
Program F’s interest in water fluoridation was not just "to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents," as Hodge had earlier written. The bomb program needed human studies, as they had needed human studies for plutonium, and adding fluoride to public water supplies provided one opportunity.
The A Bomb Program and Water Fluoridation
Bomb-program scientists played a prominent if unpublicized role in the nation’s first-planned water fluoridation experiment, in Newburgh, New York. The Newburgh Demonstration Project is considered the most extensive study of the health effects of fluoridation, supplying much of the evidence that low doses are safe for children’s bones, and good for their teeth.
Planning began in 1943 with the appointment of a special New York State Health Department committee to study the advisability of adding fluoride to Newburgh’s drinking water. The chairman of the committee was Dr. Hodge, then chief of fluoride toxicity studies for the Manhattan Project.
Subsequent members included Henry L. Barnett, a captain in the Project’s Medical section, and John W. Fertig, in 1944 with the office of Scientific Research and Development, the Pentagon group which sired the Manhattan Project. Their military affiliations were kept secret: Hodge was described as a pharmacologist, Barnett as a pediatrician. Placed in charge of the Newburgh project was David B. Ast, chief dental officer of the State Health Department. Ast had participated in a key secret wartime conference on fluoride held by the Manhattan Project, and later worked with Dr. Hodge on the Project’s investigation of human injury in the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret memos.
The committee recommended that Newburgh be fluoridated. It also selected the types of medical studies to be done, and "provided expert guidance" for the duration of the experiment. The key question to be answered was: "Are there any cumulative effects— beneficial or otherwise, on tissues and organs other than the teeth—of long-continued ingestion of such small concentrations...?" According to the declassified documents, this was also key information sought by the bomb program, which would require long-continued exposure of workers and communities to fluoride throughout the Cold War.
In May 1945, Newburgh’s water was fluoridated, and over the next ten years its residents were studied by the State Health Department. In tandem, Program F conducted its own secret studies, focusing on the amounts of fluoride Newburgh citizens retained in their blood and tissues—key information sought by the bomb program: "Possible toxic effects of fluoride were in the forefront of consideration," the advisory committee stated. Health Department personnel cooperated, shipping blood and placenta samples to the Program F team at the University of Rochester. The samples were collected by Dr. David B. Overton, the Department’s chief of pediatric studies at Newburgh.
The final report of the Newburgh Demonstration Project, published in 1956 in the Journal of the American Dental Association, concluded that "small concentrations" of fluoride were safe for U.S. citizens. The biological proof—"based on work performed ... at the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project"—was delivered by Dr. Hodge.
Today, news that scientists from the atomic bomb program secretly shaped and guided the Newburgh fluoridation experiment, and studied the citizen’s blood and tissue samples, is greeted with incredulity.
"I’m shocked—beyond words," said present-day Newburgh Mayor Audrey Carey, commenting on these reporters’ findings. "It reminds me of the Tuskeegee experiment that was done on syphilis patients down in Alabama."
As a child in the early 1950’s, Mayor Carey was taken to the old firehouse on Broadway in Newburgh, which housed the Public Health clinic. There, doctors from the Newburgh fluoridation project studied her teeth, and a peculiar fusion of two finger bones on her left hand she had been born with. Today, adds Carey, her granddaughter has white dental-fluorosis marks on her front teeth.
Mayor Carey wants answers from the government about the secret history of fluoride, and the Newburgh fluoridation experiment. "I absolutely want to pursue it," she said. "It is appalling to do any kind of experimentation and study without people’s knowledge and permission."
Contacted by these reporters, the director of the Newburgh experiment, David B. Ast, says he was unaware Manhattan Project scientists were involved. "If I had known, I would have been certainly investigating why, and what the connection was," he said. Did he know that blood and placenta samples from Newburgh were being sent to bomb program researchers at the University of Rochester? "I was not aware of it," Ast replied. Did he recall participating in the Manhattan Project’s secret wartime conference on fluoride in January 1944, or going to New Jersey with Dr. Hodge to investigate human injury in the du Pont cases as secret memos state? He said he had no recollection of these events.
A spokesperson for the University of Rochester Medical Center, Bob Loeb, confirmed that blood and tissue samples from Newburgh had been tested by the University’s Dr. Hodge.
On the ethics of secretly studying U.S. citizens to obtain information useful in litigation against the A-bomb program, he said, "that’s a question we cannot answer." He referred inquiries to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), successor to the Atomic Energy Commission.
A spokesperson for the DOE in Washington, Jayne Brody, confirmed that a review of DOE files indicated that a "significant reason" for fluoride experiments conducted at the University of Rochester after the war was "impending litigation between the du Pont company and residents of New Jersey areas." However, she added, "DOE has found no documents to indicate that fluoride research was done to protect the Manhattan Project or its contractors from lawsuits."
On Manhattan Project involvement in Newburgh, the spokesperson stated, "Nothing that we have suggests that the DOE or predecessor agencies—especially the Manhattan Project— authorized fluoride experiments to be performed on children in the 1940’s."
When told that the reporters had several documents that directly tied the Manhattan Project’s successor agency at the University of Rochester, the AEP, to the Newburgh experiment, the DOE spokesperson conceded her study was confined to "the available universe" of documents. Two days later spokesperson Jayne Brody faxed a statement for clarification: "My search only involved the documents that we collected as part of our human radiation experiments project—fluoride was not part of our research effort."
"Most significantly," the statement continued, "relevant documents may be in a classified collection at the DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory known as the Records Holding Task Group. "This collection consists entirely of classified documents removed from other files for the purpose of classified document accountability many years ago," and was "a rich source of documents for the human radiation experiments project," she said.
The crucial question arising from this investigation is: Were adverse health findings from Newburgh and other bomb-program fluoride studies suppressed?
All AEC funded studies had to be declassified before publication in civilian medical and dental journals. Where are the original classified versions? The transcript of one of the major secret scientific conferences of World War II - on "fluoride metabolism"—is missing from the files of the U.S. National Archives. Participants in the conference included key figures who promoted the safety of fluoride and water fluoridation to the public after the war—Harold Hodge of the Manhattan Project, David B. Ast of the Newburgh Project, and U.S. Public Health Service dentist H.Trendley Dean, popularly known as the "father of fluoridation." "If it is missing from the files, it is probably still classified," National Archives librarians said.
A 1944 World War II Manhattan Project classified report on water fluoridation is missing from the files of the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project, the U.S. National Archives, and the Nuclear Repository at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The next four numerically consecutive documents are also missing, while the remainder of the "MP-1500 series" is present. "Either those documents are still classified, or they’ve been "disappeared" by the government," says Clifford Honicker, Executive Director of the American Environmental Health Studies Project in Knoxville, Tennessee, which provided key evidence in the public exposure and prosecution of U.S. human radiation experiments.
Seven pages have been cut out of a 1947 Rochester bomb-project notebook entitled "Du Pont litigation." "Most unusual," commented chief medical school archivist Chris Hoolihan.
Similarly, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by these authors over a year ago with the DOE for hundreds of classified fluoride reports have failed to dislodge any.
"We’re behind," explained Amy Rothrock, chief FOIA officer at Oak Ridge National Laboratories.
Was information suppressed? These reporters made what appears to be the first discovery of the original classified version of a fluoride safety study by bomb program scientists. A censored version of this study was later published in the August 1948 Journal of the American Dental Association. Comparison of the secret with the published version indicates that the U.S. AEC did censor damaging information on fluoride, to the point of tragicomedy.
This was a study of the dental and physical health of workers in a factory producing fluoride for the A-bomb program, conducted by a team of dentists from the Manhattan Project.
The secret version reports that most of the men had no teeth left. The published version reports only that the men had fewer cavities.
The secret version says the men had to wear rubber boots because the fluoride fumes disintegrated the nails in their shoes. The published version does not mention this.
The secret version says the fluoride may have acted similarly on the men’s teeth, contributing to their toothlessness. The published version omits this statement.
The published version concludes that "the men were unusually healthy, judged from both a medical and dental point of view."
Asked for comment on the early links of the Manhattan Project to water fluoridation, Dr. Harold Slavkin, Director of the National Institute for Dental Research, the U.S. agency which today funds fluoride research, said, "I wasn’t aware of any input from the Atomic Energy Commission," Nevertheless, he insisted, fluoride’s efficacy and safety in the prevention of dental cavities over the last fifty years is well-proved. "The motivation of a scientist is often different from the outcome," he reflected. "I do not hold a prejudice about where the knowledge comes from."
After comparing the secret and published versions of the censored study, toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix commented, "This makes me ashamed to be a scientist." Of other Cold War-era fluoride safety studies, she asks, "Were they all done like this?"
Archival research by Clifford Honicker
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Joel Griffiths lives in New York City. Author of a book on radiation hazards, he has contributed numerous articles to medical and popular publications. Chris Bryson, who holds a masters degree in Journalism, is an independent reporter with ten years’ professional experience. He has worked with BBC Radio and Public Television in New York, plus numerous publications, including the Christian Science Monitor and the Mansfield Guardian.
Additional notes: Harold C. Hodge and the U.S. Army
Dr. Hodge is deceased. However, in 1979 his chapter in a book titled "Continuing Evaluation of the Use of Fluorides" set the record straight. With regard to the "safe" dosage of fluoride for children, Hodge wrote: "The most important and widely disregarded fact about dental fluorosis is this: no safe established daily intake exists, i.e., the maximal amount in mg fluoride which consumed daily does NOT produce cosmetically damaging extensive white areas or brown stain in some individuals has not been fixed."
In the same publication, Dr. Hodge also corrected his figures for crippling skeletal fluorosis.
In his calculations made during the early 1950s it appears, although not spelled out, that Hodge had neglected to convert pounds to kilograms. As a result, most reviews which contain the "crippling daily dose of fluoride," including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1991 document, Review of Fluoride: Benefits and Risks, as well as the current Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) and the new Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) -- another document from the Institute of Medicine—use 20-80 mg/day figures. (Although these documents refer to Hodge, they completely ignore Hodge’s 1979 correction of the older erroneous figures.)
Sandra Schlicker, study director for the DRI, has acknowledged her understanding of Hodge’s error, as well as the correction in 1979; yet, offers no explanation for using the older erroneous figures. In addition, this latest report dismisses the correction made by another NAS/NRC panel in 1993, falsely claiming the corrected figures for "Crippling" were meant to apply only to the earlier non-crippling stages of the disease.
The bottom line is this: At currently reported intake levels, excess fluoride from multiple sources has surpassed the quantity known to cause serious adverse health effects within about forty years. (i.e., 5 mg/day will cause crippling deformities of the spine and major joints) Within about twenty years, with a daily intake of 5 mg, the symptoms to be expected include chronic joint pain as well as brittle bones.
Knowing full well that five milligrams of fluoride daily would be expected to produce phase 3 crippling skeletal fluorosis in the average individual after about 40 years, the committee has determined that 10 milligrams of fluoride daily is "tolerable." The question, "Tolerable to whom?" remains unanswered.
More about the Army
Although facilities had been constructed to provide fluoride in the drinking water system at Ft. Detrick, key components corroded to the point that the system was shut down.
Reinstating fluoridation became subject to regulations involving an environmental assessment.
On 11 December 1996 Commander, Colonel Henry O. Tuell, III, wrote to U.S. Army Medical Command, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. In this memo Colonel Tuell states: "...recent research and findings regarding efficacy of fluoridation and the adverse health effects, could be serious."
In other words, drinking fluoridated water may be unsafe.
As yet, the Army post at Fort Detrick, (Frederick, Maryland) remains unfluoridated. --------------------------------
What Is Fluoride?
WHAT IS FLUORIDE?Fluoride is any combination of elements containing the fluoride ion. In its elemental form, fluorine is a pale yellow, highly toxic and corrosive gas. In nature, fluorine is found combined with minerals as fluorides. It is the most chemically active nonmetallic element of all the elements and also has the most reactive electro-negative ion. Because of this extreme reactivity, fluorine is never found in nature as an uncombined element.Fluorine is a member of group VIIa of the periodic table. It readily displaces other halogens—such as chlorine, bromine and iodine—from their mineral salts. With hydrogen it forms hydrogen fluoride gas which, in a water solution, becomes hydrofluoric acid.
There was no US commercial production of fluorine before World War II. A requirement for fluorine in the processing of uranium ores, needed for the atomic bomb, prompted its manufacture.(6)
Fluorine compounds or fluorides are listed by the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) as among the top 20 of 275 substances that pose the most significant threat to human health.(7) In Australia, the National Pollutant Inventory (NPI) recently considered 400 substances for inclusion on the NPI reporting list. A risk ranking was given based on health and environmental hazard identification and human and environmental exposure to the substance. Some substances were grouped together at the same rank to give a total of 208 ranks. Fluoride compounds were ranked 27th out of the 208 ranks.(8)
Fluorides, hydrogen fluoride and fluorine have been found in at least 130, 19, and 28 sites, respectively, of 1,334 National Priorities List sites identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).9 Consequently, under the provisions of the Superfund Act (CRECLA, 1986), a compilation of information about fluorides, hydrogen fluoride and fluorine and their effects on health was required. This publication appeared in 1993.(9)
Fluorides are cumulative toxins. The fact that fluorides accumulate in the body is the reason that US law requires the Surgeon General to set a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for fluoride content in public water supplies as determined by the EPA. This requirement is specifically aimed at avoiding a condition known as Crippling Skeletal Fluorosis (CSF), a disease thought to progress through three stages. The MCL, designed to prevent only the third and crippling stage of this disease, is set at 4ppm or 4mg per liter. It is assumed that people will retain half of this amount (2mg), and therefore 4mg per liter is deemed ``safe." Yet a daily dose of 2-8mg is known to cause the third crippling stage of CSF.(10,11)
In 1998 EPA scientists, whose job and legal duty it is to set the Maximum Contaminant Level, declared that this 4ppm level was set fraudulently by outside forces in a decision that omitted 90 percent of the data showing the mutagenic properties of fluoride.(12)
The Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products, 5th Edition (1984) gives lead a toxicity rating of 3 to 4 (3 = moderately toxic, 4 = very toxic) and the EPA has set 0.015 ppm as the MCL for lead in drinking water—with a goal of 0.0ppm. The toxicity rating for fluoride is 4, yet the MCL for fluoride is currently set at 4.0ppm, over 250 times the permissable level for lead
The following article exposes the biggest on-going medical experiment ever carried out by the United States Government on an unsuspecting population.
Fluoride, Teeth, and the Atomic Bomb by Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson © July 1997
Some fifty years after the United States began adding fluoride to public water supplies to reduce cavities in children’s teeth, declassified government documents are shedding new light on the roots of that still controversial public health measure, revealing a surprising connection between fluoride and the dawning of the nuclear age.
Today, two thirds of U.S. public drinking water is fluoridated. Many municipalities still resist the practice, disbelieving the government’s assurances of safety .
Since the days of World War II, when this nation prevailed by building the world’s first
atomic bomb, U.S. public health leaders have maintained that low doses of fluoride are safe for people, and good for children’s teeth.
That safety verdict should now be re-examined in the light of hundreds of once-secret
World War II documents obtained by Griffiths and Bryson—including declassified papers of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. military group that built the atomic bomb.
Fluoride was the key chemical in atomic bomb production, according to the documents.
Massive quantities of fluoride—millions of tons—were essential for the manufacture of
bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. One of the most toxic chemicals known, fluoride rapidly emerged as the leading chemical health hazard of the U.S. atomic bomb program—both for workers and for nearby communities, the documents reveal.
Other revelations include:
Much of the original proof that fluoride is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists, who had been secretly ordered to provide "evidence useful in litigation" against defense contractors for fluoride injury to citizens. The first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program were not over radiation, but over fluoride damage, the documents show.
Human studies were required. Bomb program researchers played a leading role in the design and implementation of the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoridating public drinking water—conducted in Newburgh, New York from 1945 to 1956. Then, in a classified operation code-named "Program F," they secretly gathered and analysed blood and tissue samples from Newburgh citizens, with the cooperation of State Health Department personnel.
The original secret version—obtained by these reporters—of a 1948 study published by Program F scientists in the Journal of the American Dental Association shows that evidence of adverse health effects from fluoride was censored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) -- considered the most powerful of Cold War agencies—for reasons of national security.
The bomb program’s fluoride safety studies were conducted at the University of
Rochester, site of one of the most notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War, in which unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium.
The fluoride studies were conducted with the same ethical mind-set, in which "national security" was paramount.
The U.S. government’s conflict of interest—and its motive to prove fluoride "safe"—has not until now been made clear to the general public in the furious debate over water fluoridation since the 1950’s, nor to civilian researchers and health professionals, or journalists.
The declassified documents resonate with a growing body of scientific evidence, and a chorus of questions, about the health effects of fluoride in the environment.
Human exposure to fluoride has mushroomed since World War II, due not only to fluoridated water and toothpaste, but to environmental pollution by major industries from aluminum to pesticides: Fluoride is a critical industrial chemical.
The impact can be seen, literally, in the smiles of our children. Large numbers of U.S. young people—up to 80 percent in some cities—now have dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive fluoride exposure, according to the U.S. National Research Council. (The signs are whitish flecks or spots, particularly on the front teeth, or dark spots or stripes in more severe cases.)
Less-known to the public is that fluoride also accumulates in bones—"The teeth are windows to what’s happening in the bones," explains Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry at
St. Lawrence (N.Y.) University. In recent years, pediatric bone specialists have expressed alarm about an increase in stress fractures among U.S. young people. Connett and other scientists are concerned that fluoride—linked to bone damage by studies since the 1930’s -- may be a contributing factor. The declassified documents add urgency: Much of the original proof that low-dose fluoride is safe for children’s bones came from U.S. bomb program scientists, according to this investigation.
Now, researchers who have reviewed these declassified documents fear that Cold War
national security considerations may have prevented objective scientific evaluation of vital public health questions concerning fluoride.
Information was buried," concludes Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, former head of toxicology at
Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, and now a critic of fluoridation. Animal studies Mullenix and co-workers conducted at Forsyth in the early 1990’s indicated that fluoride was a powerful central nervous system (CNS) toxin, and might adversely affect human brain functioning,
even at low doses. (New epidemiological evidence from China adds support, showing a correlation between low-dose fluoride exposure and diminished I.Q. in children.) Mullenix’s results were published in 1995, in a reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal.
During her investigation, Mullenix was astonished to discover there had been virtually no previous U.S. studies of fluoride’s effects on the human brain. Then, her application for a grant to continue her CNS research was turned down by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), where an NIH panel, she says, flatly told her that "fluoride does not have central nervous system effects."
Declassified documents of the U.S. atomic-bomb program indicate otherwise. An April 29, 1944 Manhattan Project memo reports: "Clinical evidence suggests that uranium hexafluoride may have a rather marked central nervous system effect.... It seems most likely that the F [code for fluoride] component rather than the T [code for uranium] is the causative factor."
The memo—stamped "secret"—is addressed to the head of the Manhattan Project’s Medical Section, Col. Stafford Warren. Colonel Warren is asked to approve a program of animal research on CNS effects: "Since work with these compounds is essential, it will be necessary to know in advance what mental effects may occur after exposure... This is important not only to protect a given individual, but also to prevent a confused workman from injuring others by improperly performing his duties."
On the same day, Colonel Warren approved the CNS research program. This was in 1944, at the height of the Second World War and the nation’s race to build the world’s first atomic bomb. For research on fluoride’s CNS effects to be approved at such a momentous time, the supporting evidence set forth in the proposal forwarded along with the memo must have been persuasive.
The proposal, however, is missing from the files of the U.S. National Archives. "If you find the memos, but the document they refer to is missing, it’s probably still classified," said Charles Reeves, chief librarian at the Atlanta branch of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, where the memos were found. Similarly, no results of the Manhattan Project’s fluoride CNS research could be found in the files.
After reviewing the memos, Mullenix declared herself "flabbergasted." She went on, "How could I be told by NIH that fluoride has no central nervous system effects when these documents were sitting there all the time?" She reasons that the Manhattan Project did do fluoride CNS studies—"that kind of warning, that fluoride workers might be a danger to the bomb program by improperly performing their duties—I can’t imagine that would be ignored—but that the results were buried because they might create a difficult legal and public relations problem for the government."
The author of the 1944 CNS research proposal was Dr. Harold C. Hodge, at the time chief of fluoride toxicology studies for the University of Rochester division of the Manhattan Project. Nearly fifty years later at the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, Dr. Mullenix was introduced to a gently ambling elderly man brought in to serve as a consultant on her CNS research Harold C. Hodge. By then Hodge had achieved status emeritus as a world authority on fluoride safety.
"But even though he was supposed to be helping me," says Mullenix, "he never once mentioned the CNS work he had done for the Manhattan Project."
The "black hole" in fluoride CNS research since the days of the Manhattan Project is unacceptable to Mullenix, who refuses to abandon the issue. "There is so much fluoride exposure now, and we simply do not know what it is doing," she says. "You can’t just walk away from this."
Dr. Antonio Noronha, an NIH scientific review advisor familiar with Dr. Mullenix’s grant request, says her proposal was rejected by a scientific peer-review group. He terms her claim of institutional bias against fluoride CNS research "farfetched." He adds, "We strive very hard at NIH to make sure politics does not enter the picture."
Fluoride and National Security
A massive Manhattan Project pollution incident in New Jersey sparks secret wartime U.S. research on fluoride safety.
The documentary trail begins at the height of World War II, in 1944, when a severe pollution incident occurred downwind of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company chemical factory in Deepwater, New Jersey. The factory was then producing millions of pounds of fluoride for the Manhattan Project, the ultra-secret U.S. military program racing to produce the world’s first atomic bomb.
The farms downwind in Gloucester and Salem counties were famous for their high quality produce—their peaches went directly to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Their tomatoes were bought up by Campbell’s Soup. But in the summer of 1943, the farmers began to report that their crops were blighted, and that "something is burning up the peach crops around here."
Poultry died after an all-night thunderstorm, they reported. Farm workers who ate the produce they had picked sometimes vomited all night and into the next day. "I remember our horses looked sick and were too stiff to work," these reporters were told by Mildred Giordano, who was a teenager at the time. Some cows were so crippled that they could not stand up, and grazed by crawling on their bellies.
The account was confirmed in taped interviews, shortly before he died, with Philip Sadtler of Sadtler Laboratories of Philadelphia, one of the nation’s oldest chemical consulting firms.
Sadtler had personally conducted the initial investigation of the damage.
Although the farmers did not know it, according to once-secret documents obtained by
these reporters, the attention of the Manhattan Project and the federal government was riveted on the New Jersey incident. After the war’s end, in a secret Manhattan Project memo dated March 1, 1946, the Project’s chief of fluoride toxicology studies, Harold C.
Hodge, worriedly wrote to his boss, Colonel Stafford L. Warren, Chief of the Medical Division, about "problems associated with the question of fluoride contamination of the atmosphere in a certain section of New Jersey. There seem to be four distinct (though related) problems," continued Hodge;
"1. A question of injury of the peach crop in 1944.
"2. A report of extraordinary fluoride content of vegetables grown in this area.
"3. A report of abnormally high fluoride content in the blood of human individuals residing in this area.
"4. A report raising the question of serious poisoning of horses and cattle in this area." The New Jersey farmers waited until the war was over, then sued du Pont and the Manhattan Project for fluoride damage—reportedly the first lawsuits against the U.S. A-bomb program.
Although seemingly trivial, the lawsuits shook the government, the secret documents reveal.
Under the personal direction of Manhattan Project chief Major General Leslie R. Groves, secret meetings were convened in Washington, with compulsory attendance by scores of scientists and officials from the U.S. War Department, the Manhattan Project, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture and Justice Departments, the U.S Army’s Chemical Warfare Service and Edgewood Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, and du Pont lawyers.
Declassified memos of the meetings reveal a secret mobilization of the full forces of the government to defeat the New Jersey farmers:
These agencies "are making scientific investigations to obtain evidence which may be used to protect the interest of the Government at the trial of the suits brought by owners of peach orchards in ... New Jersey," stated Manhattan Project Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B. Rhodes, in a memo c.c.’d to General Groves. "27 August 1945
"Subject: Investigation of Crop Damage at Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey "To: The Commanding General, Army Service Forces, Pentagon Building, Washington D.C. "At the request of the Secretary of War the Department of Agriculture has agreed to cooperate in investigating complaints of crop damage attributed... to fumes from a plant operated in connection with the Manhattan Project."
Signed, L.R. Groves, Major General, U.S. Army
"The Department of Justice is cooperating in the defense of these suits," wrote General Groves in a February 28, 1946 memo to the Chairman of the U. S. Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy.
Why the national-security emergency over a few lawsuits by New Jersey farmers? In 1946 the United States had begun full-scale production of atomic bombs. No other nation had yet tested a nuclear weapon, and the A-bomb was seen as crucial for U.S leadership of the postwar world. The New Jersey fluoride lawsuits were a serious roadblock to that strategy.
"The specter of endless lawsuits haunted the military," writes Lansing Lamont in his acclaimed book about the first atomic bomb test, "Day of Trinity,"
In the case of fluoride, "If the farmers won, it would open the door to further suits, which might impede the bomb program’s ability to use fluoride," said Jacqueline Kittrell, a Tennessee public interest lawyer specializing in nuclear cases, who examined the declassified fluoride documents. (Kittrell has represented plaintiffs in several human radiation experiment cases.) She added, "The reports of human injury were especially threatening, because of the potential for enormous settlements—not to mention the PR problem."
Indeed, du Pont was particularly concerned about the "possible psychologic reaction" to the New Jersey pollution incident, according to a secret 1946 Manhattan Project memo. Facing a threat from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to embargo the region’s produce because of "high fluoride content," du Pont dispatched its lawyers to the FDA offices in Washington, where an agitated meeting ensued. According to a memo sent next day to General Groves, Du Pont’s lawyer argued "that in view of the pending suits... any action by the Food and Drug Administration... would have a serious effect on the du Pont Company and would create a bad public relations situation." After the meeting adjourned, Manhattan project Captain John Davies approached the FDA’s Food Division chief and "impressed upon Dr. White the substantial interest which the Government had in claims which might arise as a result of action which might be taken by the Food and Drug Administration."
There was no embargo. Instead, new tests for fluoride in the New Jersey area would be conducted—not by the Department of Agriculture—but by the Chemical Warfare Service -- because "work done by the U. S. Army’s Chemical Warfare Service would carry the greatest weight as evidence if... lawsuits are started by the complainants." The memo was signed by General Groves.
Meanwhile, the public relations problem remained unresolved—local citizens were in a panic about fluoride.
The farmer’s spokesman, Willard B. Kille, was personally invited to dine with General Groves -- then known as "the man who built the atomic bomb"—at his office at the War Department on March 26, 1946. Although he had been diagnosed with fluoride poisoning by his doctor, Kille departed the luncheon convinced of the government’s good faith. The next day he wrote to the general, wishing the other farmers could have been present, he said, so "they too could come away with the feeling that their interests in this particular matter were being safeguarded by men of the very highest type whose integrity they could not question."
In a subsequent secret Manhattan Project memo, a broader solution to the public relations problem was suggested by chief fluoride toxicologist Harold C. Hodge. He wrote to the Medical Section chief, Colonel Warren: "Would there be any use in making attempts to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents of Salem and Gloucester counties through lectures on F toxicology and perhaps the usefulness of F in tooth health?"
Such lectures were indeed given, not only to New Jersey citizens but to the rest of the nation throughout the Cold War.
The New Jersey farmers’ lawsuits were ultimately stymied by the government’s refusal to reveal the key piece of information that would have settled the case—how much fluoride du Pont had vented into the atmosphere during the war. "Disclosure... would be injurious to the military security of the United States," wrote Manhattan Project Major C.A. Taney, Jr. The farmers were pacified with token financial settlements, according to interviews with descendants still living in the area.
"All we knew is that du Pont released some chemical that burned up all the peach trees around here," recalls Angelo Giordano, whose father James was one of the original plaintiffs.
"The trees were no good after that, so we had to give up on the peaches." Their horses and cows, too, acted stiff and walked stiff, recalls his sister Mildred. "Could any of that have been the fluoride?" she asked. (The symptoms she detailed to the authors are cardinal signs of fluoride toxicity, according to veterinary toxicologists.)
The Giordano family, too, has been plagued by bone and joint problems, Mildred adds.
Recalling the settlement received by the Giordanos, Angelo told these reporters "my father said he got about $200."
The farmers were stonewalled in their search for information, and their complaints have long since been forgotten. But they unknowingly left their imprint on history—their claims of injury to their health reverberated through the corridors of power in Washington, and triggered intensive secret bomb-program research on the health effects of fluoride. A secret 1945 memo from Manhattan Project Lt. Colonel Rhodes to General Groves stated:
"Because of complaints that animals and humans have been injured by hydrogen fluoride fumes in [the New Jersey] area, although there are no pending suits involving such claims, the University of Rochester is conducting experiments to determine the toxic effect of fluoride."
Much of the proof of fluoride’s safety in low doses rests on the postwar work performed by the University of Rochester, in anticipation of lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury.
Fluoride and the Cold War
Delegating fluoride safety studies to the University of Rochester was not surprising. During World War II the federal government had become involved, for the first time, in large scale funding of scientific research at government-owned labs and private colleges. Those early spending priorities were shaped by the nation’s often-secret military needs.
The prestigious upstate New York college, in particular, had housed a key wartime division of the Manhattan Project, studying the health effects of the new "special materials," such as uranium, plutonium, beryllium and fluoride, being used to make the atomic bomb. That work continued after the war, with millions of dollars flowing from the Manhattan Project and its successor organization, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). (Indeed, the bomb left an indelible imprint on all of U.S. science in the late 1940’s and 50’s. Up to 90% of federal funds for university research came from either the Defense Department or the AEC in this period, according to Noam Chomsky’s 1996 book "The Cold War and the University.")
The University of Rochester medical school became a revolving door for senior bomb program scientists. Postwar faculty included Stafford Warren, the top medical officer of the Manhattan Project, and Harold Hodge, chief of fluoride research for the bomb program.
But this marriage of military secrecy and medical science bore deformed offspring. The University of Rochester’s classified fluoride studies—code-named Program F—were conducted at its Atomic Energy Project (AEP), a top-secret facility funded by the AEC and housed in Strong Memorial Hospital. It was there that one of the most notorious human radiation experiments of the Cold War took place, in which unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with toxic doses of radioactive plutonium. Revelation of this experiment in a Pulitzer prize-winning account by Eileen Wellsome led to a 1995 U.S. Presidential investigation, and a multimillion-dollar cash settlement for victims.
Program F was not about children’s teeth. It grew directly out of litigation against the bomb program and its main purpose was to furnish scientific ammunition which the government and its nuclear contractors could use to defeat lawsuits for human injury.
Program F’s director was none other than Harold C. Hodge, who had led the Manhattan Project investigation of alleged human injury in the New Jersey fluoride-pollution incident.
Program F’s purpose is spelled out in a classified 1948 report. It reads: "To supply evidence useful in the litigation arising from an alleged loss of a fruit crop several years ago, a number of problems have been opened. Since excessive blood fluoride levels were reported in human residents of the same area, our principal effort has been devoted to describing the relationship of blood fluorides to toxic effects."
The litigation referred to, of course, and the claims of human injury were against the bomb program and its contractors. Thus, the purpose of Program F was to obtain evidence useful in litigation against the bomb program. The research was being conducted by the defendants.
The potential conflict of interest is clear. If lower dose ranges were found hazardous by Program F, it might have opened the bomb program and its contractors to lawsuits for injury to human health, as well as public outcry.
Comments lawyer Kittrell: "This and other documents indicate that the University of Rochester’s fluoride research grew out of the New Jersey lawsuits and was performed in anticipation of lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury. Studies undertaken for litigation purposes by the defendants would not be considered scientifically acceptable today," adds Kittrell, "because of their inherent bias to prove the chemical safe."
Unfortunately, much of the proof of fluoride’s safety rests on the work performed by Program F Scientists at the University of Rochester. During the postwar period that university emerged as the leading academic center for establishing the safety of fluoride, as well as its effectiveness in reducing tooth decay, according to Dental School spokesperson William H. Bowen, M.D. The key figure in this research, Bowen said, was Harold C. Hodge—who also became a leading national proponent of fluoridating public drinking water.
Program F’s interest in water fluoridation was not just "to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents," as Hodge had earlier written. The bomb program needed human studies, as they had needed human studies for plutonium, and adding fluoride to public water supplies provided one opportunity.
The A Bomb Program and Water Fluoridation
Bomb-program scientists played a prominent if unpublicized role in the nation’s first-planned water fluoridation experiment, in Newburgh, New York. The Newburgh Demonstration Project is considered the most extensive study of the health effects of fluoridation, supplying much of the evidence that low doses are safe for children’s bones, and good for their teeth.
Planning began in 1943 with the appointment of a special New York State Health Department committee to study the advisability of adding fluoride to Newburgh’s drinking water. The chairman of the committee was Dr. Hodge, then chief of fluoride toxicity studies for the Manhattan Project.
Subsequent members included Henry L. Barnett, a captain in the Project’s Medical section, and John W. Fertig, in 1944 with the office of Scientific Research and Development, the Pentagon group which sired the Manhattan Project. Their military affiliations were kept secret: Hodge was described as a pharmacologist, Barnett as a pediatrician. Placed in charge of the Newburgh project was David B. Ast, chief dental officer of the State Health Department. Ast had participated in a key secret wartime conference on fluoride held by the Manhattan Project, and later worked with Dr. Hodge on the Project’s investigation of human injury in the New Jersey incident, according to once-secret memos.
The committee recommended that Newburgh be fluoridated. It also selected the types of medical studies to be done, and "provided expert guidance" for the duration of the experiment. The key question to be answered was: "Are there any cumulative effects— beneficial or otherwise, on tissues and organs other than the teeth—of long-continued ingestion of such small concentrations...?" According to the declassified documents, this was also key information sought by the bomb program, which would require long-continued exposure of workers and communities to fluoride throughout the Cold War.
In May 1945, Newburgh’s water was fluoridated, and over the next ten years its residents were studied by the State Health Department. In tandem, Program F conducted its own secret studies, focusing on the amounts of fluoride Newburgh citizens retained in their blood and tissues—key information sought by the bomb program: "Possible toxic effects of fluoride were in the forefront of consideration," the advisory committee stated. Health Department personnel cooperated, shipping blood and placenta samples to the Program F team at the University of Rochester. The samples were collected by Dr. David B. Overton, the Department’s chief of pediatric studies at Newburgh.
The final report of the Newburgh Demonstration Project, published in 1956 in the Journal of the American Dental Association, concluded that "small concentrations" of fluoride were safe for U.S. citizens. The biological proof—"based on work performed ... at the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project"—was delivered by Dr. Hodge.
Today, news that scientists from the atomic bomb program secretly shaped and guided the Newburgh fluoridation experiment, and studied the citizen’s blood and tissue samples, is greeted with incredulity.
"I’m shocked—beyond words," said present-day Newburgh Mayor Audrey Carey, commenting on these reporters’ findings. "It reminds me of the Tuskeegee experiment that was done on syphilis patients down in Alabama."
As a child in the early 1950’s, Mayor Carey was taken to the old firehouse on Broadway in Newburgh, which housed the Public Health clinic. There, doctors from the Newburgh fluoridation project studied her teeth, and a peculiar fusion of two finger bones on her left hand she had been born with. Today, adds Carey, her granddaughter has white dental-fluorosis marks on her front teeth.
Mayor Carey wants answers from the government about the secret history of fluoride, and the Newburgh fluoridation experiment. "I absolutely want to pursue it," she said. "It is appalling to do any kind of experimentation and study without people’s knowledge and permission."
Contacted by these reporters, the director of the Newburgh experiment, David B. Ast, says he was unaware Manhattan Project scientists were involved. "If I had known, I would have been certainly investigating why, and what the connection was," he said. Did he know that blood and placenta samples from Newburgh were being sent to bomb program researchers at the University of Rochester? "I was not aware of it," Ast replied. Did he recall participating in the Manhattan Project’s secret wartime conference on fluoride in January 1944, or going to New Jersey with Dr. Hodge to investigate human injury in the du Pont cases as secret memos state? He said he had no recollection of these events.
A spokesperson for the University of Rochester Medical Center, Bob Loeb, confirmed that blood and tissue samples from Newburgh had been tested by the University’s Dr. Hodge.
On the ethics of secretly studying U.S. citizens to obtain information useful in litigation against the A-bomb program, he said, "that’s a question we cannot answer." He referred inquiries to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), successor to the Atomic Energy Commission.
A spokesperson for the DOE in Washington, Jayne Brody, confirmed that a review of DOE files indicated that a "significant reason" for fluoride experiments conducted at the University of Rochester after the war was "impending litigation between the du Pont company and residents of New Jersey areas." However, she added, "DOE has found no documents to indicate that fluoride research was done to protect the Manhattan Project or its contractors from lawsuits."
On Manhattan Project involvement in Newburgh, the spokesperson stated, "Nothing that we have suggests that the DOE or predecessor agencies—especially the Manhattan Project— authorized fluoride experiments to be performed on children in the 1940’s."
When told that the reporters had several documents that directly tied the Manhattan Project’s successor agency at the University of Rochester, the AEP, to the Newburgh experiment, the DOE spokesperson conceded her study was confined to "the available universe" of documents. Two days later spokesperson Jayne Brody faxed a statement for clarification: "My search only involved the documents that we collected as part of our human radiation experiments project—fluoride was not part of our research effort."
"Most significantly," the statement continued, "relevant documents may be in a classified collection at the DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory known as the Records Holding Task Group. "This collection consists entirely of classified documents removed from other files for the purpose of classified document accountability many years ago," and was "a rich source of documents for the human radiation experiments project," she said.
The crucial question arising from this investigation is: Were adverse health findings from Newburgh and other bomb-program fluoride studies suppressed?
All AEC funded studies had to be declassified before publication in civilian medical and dental journals. Where are the original classified versions? The transcript of one of the major secret scientific conferences of World War II - on "fluoride metabolism"—is missing from the files of the U.S. National Archives. Participants in the conference included key figures who promoted the safety of fluoride and water fluoridation to the public after the war—Harold Hodge of the Manhattan Project, David B. Ast of the Newburgh Project, and U.S. Public Health Service dentist H.Trendley Dean, popularly known as the "father of fluoridation." "If it is missing from the files, it is probably still classified," National Archives librarians said.
A 1944 World War II Manhattan Project classified report on water fluoridation is missing from the files of the University of Rochester Atomic Energy Project, the U.S. National Archives, and the Nuclear Repository at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The next four numerically consecutive documents are also missing, while the remainder of the "MP-1500 series" is present. "Either those documents are still classified, or they’ve been "disappeared" by the government," says Clifford Honicker, Executive Director of the American Environmental Health Studies Project in Knoxville, Tennessee, which provided key evidence in the public exposure and prosecution of U.S. human radiation experiments.
Seven pages have been cut out of a 1947 Rochester bomb-project notebook entitled "Du Pont litigation." "Most unusual," commented chief medical school archivist Chris Hoolihan.
Similarly, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by these authors over a year ago with the DOE for hundreds of classified fluoride reports have failed to dislodge any.
"We’re behind," explained Amy Rothrock, chief FOIA officer at Oak Ridge National Laboratories.
Was information suppressed? These reporters made what appears to be the first discovery of the original classified version of a fluoride safety study by bomb program scientists. A censored version of this study was later published in the August 1948 Journal of the American Dental Association. Comparison of the secret with the published version indicates that the U.S. AEC did censor damaging information on fluoride, to the point of tragicomedy.
This was a study of the dental and physical health of workers in a factory producing fluoride for the A-bomb program, conducted by a team of dentists from the Manhattan Project.
The secret version reports that most of the men had no teeth left. The published version reports only that the men had fewer cavities.
The secret version says the men had to wear rubber boots because the fluoride fumes disintegrated the nails in their shoes. The published version does not mention this.
The secret version says the fluoride may have acted similarly on the men’s teeth, contributing to their toothlessness. The published version omits this statement.
The published version concludes that "the men were unusually healthy, judged from both a medical and dental point of view."
Asked for comment on the early links of the Manhattan Project to water fluoridation, Dr. Harold Slavkin, Director of the National Institute for Dental Research, the U.S. agency which today funds fluoride research, said, "I wasn’t aware of any input from the Atomic Energy Commission," Nevertheless, he insisted, fluoride’s efficacy and safety in the prevention of dental cavities over the last fifty years is well-proved. "The motivation of a scientist is often different from the outcome," he reflected. "I do not hold a prejudice about where the knowledge comes from."
After comparing the secret and published versions of the censored study, toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix commented, "This makes me ashamed to be a scientist." Of other Cold War-era fluoride safety studies, she asks, "Were they all done like this?"
Archival research by Clifford Honicker
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Joel Griffiths lives in New York City. Author of a book on radiation hazards, he has contributed numerous articles to medical and popular publications. Chris Bryson, who holds a masters degree in Journalism, is an independent reporter with ten years’ professional experience. He has worked with BBC Radio and Public Television in New York, plus numerous publications, including the Christian Science Monitor and the Mansfield Guardian.
Additional notes: Harold C. Hodge and the U.S. Army
Dr. Hodge is deceased. However, in 1979 his chapter in a book titled "Continuing Evaluation of the Use of Fluorides" set the record straight. With regard to the "safe" dosage of fluoride for children, Hodge wrote: "The most important and widely disregarded fact about dental fluorosis is this: no safe established daily intake exists, i.e., the maximal amount in mg fluoride which consumed daily does NOT produce cosmetically damaging extensive white areas or brown stain in some individuals has not been fixed."
In the same publication, Dr. Hodge also corrected his figures for crippling skeletal fluorosis.
In his calculations made during the early 1950s it appears, although not spelled out, that Hodge had neglected to convert pounds to kilograms. As a result, most reviews which contain the "crippling daily dose of fluoride," including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1991 document, Review of Fluoride: Benefits and Risks, as well as the current Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) and the new Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) -- another document from the Institute of Medicine—use 20-80 mg/day figures. (Although these documents refer to Hodge, they completely ignore Hodge’s 1979 correction of the older erroneous figures.)
Sandra Schlicker, study director for the DRI, has acknowledged her understanding of Hodge’s error, as well as the correction in 1979; yet, offers no explanation for using the older erroneous figures. In addition, this latest report dismisses the correction made by another NAS/NRC panel in 1993, falsely claiming the corrected figures for "Crippling" were meant to apply only to the earlier non-crippling stages of the disease.
The bottom line is this: At currently reported intake levels, excess fluoride from multiple sources has surpassed the quantity known to cause serious adverse health effects within about forty years. (i.e., 5 mg/day will cause crippling deformities of the spine and major joints) Within about twenty years, with a daily intake of 5 mg, the symptoms to be expected include chronic joint pain as well as brittle bones.
Knowing full well that five milligrams of fluoride daily would be expected to produce phase 3 crippling skeletal fluorosis in the average individual after about 40 years, the committee has determined that 10 milligrams of fluoride daily is "tolerable." The question, "Tolerable to whom?" remains unanswered.
More about the Army
Although facilities had been constructed to provide fluoride in the drinking water system at Ft. Detrick, key components corroded to the point that the system was shut down.
Reinstating fluoridation became subject to regulations involving an environmental assessment.
On 11 December 1996 Commander, Colonel Henry O. Tuell, III, wrote to U.S. Army Medical Command, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. In this memo Colonel Tuell states: "...recent research and findings regarding efficacy of fluoridation and the adverse health effects, could be serious."
In other words, drinking fluoridated water may be unsafe.
As yet, the Army post at Fort Detrick, (Frederick, Maryland) remains unfluoridated. --------------------------------
What Is Fluoride?
WHAT IS FLUORIDE?Fluoride is any combination of elements containing the fluoride ion. In its elemental form, fluorine is a pale yellow, highly toxic and corrosive gas. In nature, fluorine is found combined with minerals as fluorides. It is the most chemically active nonmetallic element of all the elements and also has the most reactive electro-negative ion. Because of this extreme reactivity, fluorine is never found in nature as an uncombined element.Fluorine is a member of group VIIa of the periodic table. It readily displaces other halogens—such as chlorine, bromine and iodine—from their mineral salts. With hydrogen it forms hydrogen fluoride gas which, in a water solution, becomes hydrofluoric acid.
There was no US commercial production of fluorine before World War II. A requirement for fluorine in the processing of uranium ores, needed for the atomic bomb, prompted its manufacture.(6)
Fluorine compounds or fluorides are listed by the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) as among the top 20 of 275 substances that pose the most significant threat to human health.(7) In Australia, the National Pollutant Inventory (NPI) recently considered 400 substances for inclusion on the NPI reporting list. A risk ranking was given based on health and environmental hazard identification and human and environmental exposure to the substance. Some substances were grouped together at the same rank to give a total of 208 ranks. Fluoride compounds were ranked 27th out of the 208 ranks.(8)
Fluorides, hydrogen fluoride and fluorine have been found in at least 130, 19, and 28 sites, respectively, of 1,334 National Priorities List sites identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).9 Consequently, under the provisions of the Superfund Act (CRECLA, 1986), a compilation of information about fluorides, hydrogen fluoride and fluorine and their effects on health was required. This publication appeared in 1993.(9)
Fluorides are cumulative toxins. The fact that fluorides accumulate in the body is the reason that US law requires the Surgeon General to set a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for fluoride content in public water supplies as determined by the EPA. This requirement is specifically aimed at avoiding a condition known as Crippling Skeletal Fluorosis (CSF), a disease thought to progress through three stages. The MCL, designed to prevent only the third and crippling stage of this disease, is set at 4ppm or 4mg per liter. It is assumed that people will retain half of this amount (2mg), and therefore 4mg per liter is deemed ``safe." Yet a daily dose of 2-8mg is known to cause the third crippling stage of CSF.(10,11)
In 1998 EPA scientists, whose job and legal duty it is to set the Maximum Contaminant Level, declared that this 4ppm level was set fraudulently by outside forces in a decision that omitted 90 percent of the data showing the mutagenic properties of fluoride.(12)
The Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products, 5th Edition (1984) gives lead a toxicity rating of 3 to 4 (3 = moderately toxic, 4 = very toxic) and the EPA has set 0.015 ppm as the MCL for lead in drinking water—with a goal of 0.0ppm. The toxicity rating for fluoride is 4, yet the MCL for fluoride is currently set at 4.0ppm, over 250 times the permissable level for lead
Saturday, June 21, 2008
A WAY TO BRING GAS PRICES DOWN (PLEASE REPLY)
THIS IS NOT THE 'DON'T BUY' GAS FOR ONE DAY, BUT IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE CAN MAYBE GET GAS BACK DOWN TO $1.30 PER GALLON.
This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. If you are tired of the gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this summer, take time to read this please.
Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea.This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy gas on a certain day' campaign that was going around last April or May!It's worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!!I hear we are going to hit close to $ 4.00 a gallon by this summer and it might go higher!!
Want gasoline prices to come down?We need to take some intelligent, united action.The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to 'hurt' ourselves by refusing to buy gas .It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can Really work.
Please read on and join with us!
By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $2.00 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.89 for regular unleaded in my town, Seattle.Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $2.50 - $2.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace..not sellers.
The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas.
But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one),EXXON and MOBIL.If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit But to have an impact, we = need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do!
Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers .
If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all!(If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician.
But I am . so trust me on this one.How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you!Acting together we can make a difference.If this= makes sense to you, please pass this message on.
I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $2.00 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.
Lets Try Something Different.
If you're tired of paying $85 to fill you're gas tank and you think it's worth a try, Keep this going .
This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. If you are tired of the gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this summer, take time to read this please.
Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea.This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy gas on a certain day' campaign that was going around last April or May!It's worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!!I hear we are going to hit close to $ 4.00 a gallon by this summer and it might go higher!!
Want gasoline prices to come down?We need to take some intelligent, united action.The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to 'hurt' ourselves by refusing to buy gas .It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can Really work.
Please read on and join with us!
By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $2.00 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.89 for regular unleaded in my town, Seattle.Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $2.50 - $2.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace..not sellers.
The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas.
But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one),EXXON and MOBIL.If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit But to have an impact, we = need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do!
Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers .
If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all!(If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician.
But I am . so trust me on this one.How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you!Acting together we can make a difference.If this= makes sense to you, please pass this message on.
I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $2.00 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.
Lets Try Something Different.
If you're tired of paying $85 to fill you're gas tank and you think it's worth a try, Keep this going .
Monday, June 16, 2008
Commercial Building/ Las Vegas, Nevada
As you can see by these pics that the Commercial Real Estate continues to strive. Everywhere along the (STRIP) whether you live here or are visiting, you will see sites like these in the photos. There are cranes everywhere and half built buildings being built so fast, one has to wonder where all the workers come from?
The residential market is slow, but there are many foreclosed and short sales.
Also homes in the price range of $450,000 are being bought 30 to 40 percent below appraised value. Most of the residential sales are from huge investors and some individuals/ couples.
What ever you may be hearing on the news about the downed Real Estate market through out the country and in Las Vegas, take a look at these pics and or come and visit. You will see when you come to visit if you were here last year, or recently. These buildings are going up very, very fast and I really don't know what could slow it down!
Story and photos by: Robert Swetz 6-16-2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
" What is so great about web sites? "
" What is so great about Web Sites "
This will be my last post for the week because I am like posted out.
I would like to talk about web sites and why they are beneficial.
At this time I have four web sites and I am working on a new one. I have three Real Estate web sites and one match-making site. Two of my web sites were built by web designers that were not very good and or inexperienced. These sites will have to be reworked, http://www.new-commercial-properties.com/ and http://www.newasianmates.com/
The last site that I had built was done by a lady from Park City Utah and she is very knowledgeable and did a very good job, http://www.vegasbuildingsforsale.com/.
I also have a site on vacant properties around Lakes, Rivers, Mountains, Etc, http://www.lakeowner.com/. And one for High-rise Luxury Condos, http://www.vegashighrisevistas.com/
What makes web sites so great? Web sites can be viewed from all over the world, and when you post blogs they attach to all of your sites. Creating their own search engines. I use to spend so much money on mail outs, etc. and have found the web to be the Future of communication.
The latest site I am having built will be on photography. Reason being, I have 30 years experience in photography and hundreds of thousands of photos. My site will have a shopping cart where customers can purchase my photos, etc. The site will be called Photography by Robert G Swetz Jr. Building this site will get people to know me better and connect me through my others sites which will bring business.
I am also working on the purchase of a small commercial building where I can display my Art, photography and other Artist's work.
story and photo by: Robert Swetz
Saturday, June 7, 2008
" WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT WEB SITES "
This will be my last post for the week because I am like posted out.I would like to talk about web sites and why they are beneficial.
At this time I have four web sites and I am working on a new one. I have three Real Estate web sites and one match-making site. Two of my web sites were built by web designers that were not very good and or inexperienced. These sites will have to be reworked, http://www.new-commercial-properties.com/ and http://www.newasianmates.com/
The last site that I had built was done by a lady from Park City Utah and she is very knowledgeable and did a very good job, http://www.vegasbuildingsforsale.com/.
I also have a site on vacant properties around Lakes, Rivers, Mountains, Etc, http://www.lakeowner.com/.
What makes web sites so great? Web sites can be viewed from all over the world, and when you post blogs they attach to all of your sites. Creating their own search engines. I use to spend so much money on mail outs, etc. and have found the web to be the Future of communication.
The latest site I am having built will be on photography. Reason being, I have 30 years experience in photography and hundreds of thousands of photos. My site will have a shopping cart where customers can purchase my photos, etc. The site will be called Photography by Robert G Swetz Jr. Building this site will get people to know me better and connect me through my others sites which will bring business.
I am also working on the purchase of a small commercial building where I can display my Art, photography and other Artist's work.
Photo by: Robert Swetz
Monday, June 2, 2008
Dreams Do Come True
" Dreams do come true " (this one's for you Nu Nu)
This is a true story of a dream come true, and I have dedicated this story to my lovely wife Nu Nu.
The story started back in fall of 2001 back in the state of Minnesota. Nine years ago I had gone through a terrible divorce with a child involved. The divorce was so bad I said to myself like others do, I would never ever get married again.
I lived in a small house two hours north of Minneapolis/ St. Paul in a town called Crosby, population 2000. I had lived up in Crosby for 6 years and worked with my brother off and on. My sister kept bothering telling me, you need to get a girlfriend and I said to her after the last marriage I am very bitter towards women.
At this time I had a dream journal and was studying the pattern of my dreams. I had a very vivid dream about a little Asian girl around 2-3 years of age that was lost and could not find her parents. I held the little girls hand and walked her around trying to find her parents, I said to the little girl don't worry we will find them.
It was about four months later and I ran an ad in the personals newspaper down in the cities. I received a call from a young Asian lady named Nu Nu one month later and she told me she was from Myanmar (Burma) and was working down in the cities. After we had dated for several weeks Nu Nu mentioned to me that she had a daughter back in Myanmar named Yumi and she was 2 ½ years old. I thought to myself this is really weird I had a dream about her daughter being lost not being able to find her parents.
I knew at this time that I was going to be with Nu Nu for a long time, and to not let her go. Nu Nu was brought to me somehow from as far a Myanmar for some reason and I married her three months after we had met.
Nu Nu and I have been married for 6 years and I am crazy about her, and as for her daughter Yumi, I helped bring her mother and father together to be with her.
Here is a picture of us together taken 4-14-2008 in Myanmar.
Story and photo by: Robert Swetz
Down on Corporate America
CORPORATE AMERICA IS KILLING OUR COUNTRY (OPINIONS PLEASE)
I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Holiday, and yes it wasn't long enough.
As everyone knows our economy is not doing very well at this time and two reasons would be because of Oil, and Corporate America. As we continue to fight over in the Middle East our country has a Super Power in the shadows, (CHINA). If you look at all the products being purchased in this country from house-hold goods, clothes, shoes, tools, toys and so much more, 90% comes from CHINA.
CORPORATE AMERICA continues to move factories and businesses over seas because the labor is cheaper. Less companies and factories in America means less jobs, less jobs means more unemployment, more unemployment means a down economy. Not only that, the factories and businesses in CHINA, MEXICO, INDIA, ETC, employ children and workers that work 10-12 hours per day just to eat for the day. It's all about the almighty dollar.
Don't get me wrong,I own several businesses and buy wholesale merchandise from China, the reason? No one else makes the products we sell. Nothing is made in America anymore and if the package has printed on it made in America, once you open it underneath some where else it says made in CHINA.
What can we do to fix this problem? Why can't America products compete with foreign prices? Should America start building Companies and Factories and cut back on importing products from other Counties? What is our solution? Should America start drilling for oil in our own country and employ workers? Should America stop buying all this oil from the Middle East?
The people of America need to get together and find a solution to our problem and address congress.
(Please send me a comment back with your opinions)
ROBERT SWETZ
I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Holiday, and yes it wasn't long enough.
As everyone knows our economy is not doing very well at this time and two reasons would be because of Oil, and Corporate America. As we continue to fight over in the Middle East our country has a Super Power in the shadows, (CHINA). If you look at all the products being purchased in this country from house-hold goods, clothes, shoes, tools, toys and so much more, 90% comes from CHINA.
CORPORATE AMERICA continues to move factories and businesses over seas because the labor is cheaper. Less companies and factories in America means less jobs, less jobs means more unemployment, more unemployment means a down economy. Not only that, the factories and businesses in CHINA, MEXICO, INDIA, ETC, employ children and workers that work 10-12 hours per day just to eat for the day. It's all about the almighty dollar.
Don't get me wrong,I own several businesses and buy wholesale merchandise from China, the reason? No one else makes the products we sell. Nothing is made in America anymore and if the package has printed on it made in America, once you open it underneath some where else it says made in CHINA.
What can we do to fix this problem? Why can't America products compete with foreign prices? Should America start building Companies and Factories and cut back on importing products from other Counties? What is our solution? Should America start drilling for oil in our own country and employ workers? Should America stop buying all this oil from the Middle East?
The people of America need to get together and find a solution to our problem and address congress.
(Please send me a comment back with your opinions)
ROBERT SWETZ
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
OWN LAND IN THE FASTEST GROWING CITY IN THE COUNTRY
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Commercial Land in Las Vegas continues to hold it's value, prices have dropped some but nothing like the Residential sales and value. The (Dirt) in Las Vegas zoned Commercial is very expensive, but I have seen the value double, triple, etc. since I have lived here seven years now.
I am in the process of purchasing some Commercial land in Las Vegas and sitting on it for 5 years and making some good investment money to retire with.
I have some Land Property Owners in Las Vegas around the Airport, Henderson and Downtown, that are willing to sell. These are unlisted properties (Pocket) listings, so you won't see these properties on Property Line and or Loopnet, or any where else on the Internet.
If you have any clients that may be interested in investing in Las Vegas, please feel free to contact me at your convenience. Since I have lived in Las Vegas I have seen Commercial Land prices make Millionaire's out of Investor's.
Thank You,
ROBERT SWETZ
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT IN LAS VEGAS
" It is starting to heat up in Las Vegas in more ways than one "
There is a variety of entertainers coming to Las Vegas, from rock, pop, country and easy listening.
Such entertainers as The Police, Kenny Chesney, Eagles, Neil Diamond, Jimmy Buffet, Jonas Brothers, Bruce Springsteen, Rush, Madonna and more.
If your worried about Las Vegas being to hot, the events are air conditioned.
For more information please click on the box: GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!
There is a variety of entertainers coming to Las Vegas, from rock, pop, country and easy listening.
Such entertainers as The Police, Kenny Chesney, Eagles, Neil Diamond, Jimmy Buffet, Jonas Brothers, Bruce Springsteen, Rush, Madonna and more.
If your worried about Las Vegas being to hot, the events are air conditioned.
For more information please click on the box: GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!
CITY CENTER TWO
Everyone knows about the MGM CITY CENTER being built in Las Vegas. You can't miss seeing the large buildings going up accross from Planet Hollywood between Las Vegas Blvd and I-15.
But did you know that there is another new project going up over by The Sahara Hotel called
CITY CENTER TWO.
This new project is suppose to be twice the size of the first CITY CENTER.
I will follow this blog with more information on CITY CENTER TWO.
But did you know that there is another new project going up over by The Sahara Hotel called
CITY CENTER TWO.
This new project is suppose to be twice the size of the first CITY CENTER.
I will follow this blog with more information on CITY CENTER TWO.
Monday, May 19, 2008
VACATION IN MYANMAR (BURMA)
Well, I made back from my vacation in Myanmar. And I would have to say, it was a reality check.
Sometimes we forget how lucky we are to have what we have in the United States of America. Poverty is just terrible in Myanmar, all over the country. And after the storm hit in April, it's even worse. People still don't have water or electricity and it has been almost two weeks since the storm. The government does not care if the people die because there is a over population. Different countries send supplies and the government holds them and takes what they wanted first. It is just terrible there, but I keep going back because my wife's family is from there.
The west coast beach was destroyed by waves and bodies were laying all over the fields, rotting from the heat. The capital city of Myanmar (Yangon) which is over 100 miles away was destroyed by the winds. All the trees had been blown over and downed all the power lines. I don't think they will be able to fix the power until maybe next year. And no water, many people use river and lake water by boiling it to kill the germs. There are bodies rotting in the rivers and lakes.
(Enough of the horror stories)
I was in Yangon for (water festival)New Years, which goes on the second week of April. It was so much fun, I will be going next year for sure.
When the storm hit I was in the middle of the Country, Bagan and Mandalay. There are temples over 1100 years old and just amazing to look at. Bagan has approx. 7,000 temples. Being a photographer, I shot over 1,000 still photos and around 4 hours of video.
Also my wife Nu Nu was reunited with her daughter that she has not seen in 5-6 years.
If for any reason you think that things are not going good or you don't like were you live. Take a trip to Myanmar, after 2-3 weeks over there you will be begging to come back and appreciate what you have here in America.
Here are just a few shots that I took on my trip. If you would like to see more, just send me a email and I can email you more.
Thank you for reading and "GOD BLESS AMERICA"
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Movies in Las Vegas
Hello Everyone,
I am going to be working on several different Film Projects this year.
I will be involved in Producing, Directing, Acting, Etc.
There are some very important Entertainers that will be working with me.
Some of my writing will be used for some scrips and songs being published.
I will keep you up to date on any changes or activities.
Robert Swetz
I am going to be working on several different Film Projects this year.
I will be involved in Producing, Directing, Acting, Etc.
There are some very important Entertainers that will be working with me.
Some of my writing will be used for some scrips and songs being published.
I will keep you up to date on any changes or activities.
Robert Swetz
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Real Estate Markets in Las Vegas, Nevada - News Media
As everyone knows the Real Estate market is down right now. One of the reasons is because it is election year and everyone is waiting to see who becomes our new President. The other reason is because all these Banks & Mortgage companies put home buyers into interest only/ option arms. Most of the homes purchased like this are upside down, in foreclosure, or being sold as short sales.
It is a good time to buy but be careful, many of the short sales and foreclosed homes are over priced and the values are continuing to go down. Also most of these homes are (AS IS/ WHERE IS), what is this where is crap? Is this some type of cute joke? Are they saying that the home for sale might be located in the wrong place? I am looking at purchasing another home for investment and if I did it would be for sale by owner, through an agent, not a foreclosed/ Short sale. I don't want AS IS/ WHERE IS, there could be some serious problems with the home.
Another problem is the (NEWS MEDIA). I don't have regular television at home or a land telephone line. I haven't watched the NEWS in almost 10 years and I know more about what is going on in this world than people that watch it 2-3 times per day. The NEWS is depressing, twisted with lies and information that people just want to hear. In one of my college classes many years ago, the first day of class my teacher stated 40-50 percent of the NEWS is lies. So which part of the NEWS are you suppose to believe? Stop watching the NEWS all the time and you will hear about it from everyone else, take a break. If the NEWS said the sky was falling, would you believe them? If everyone was jumping off the bridge, would you jump? Come on people, start thinking with your own brains.
Anyway, back to Real Estate in Las Vegas. Even though the market is slow in housing, Commercial Properties continue to hold in value, Vacant land also. Only one project of many such as (CITY CENTER) is going to employ 40-60 thousand people. Where are these people going to live? All the new building projects coming up in Las Vegas, someone has to build them, where are they going to live? There are construction workers coming to work in Las Vegas from all over the country and the world. These people have to live some where. Las Vegas might be rated number one for foreclosures, but that's because of the crooked Banks & Mortgage companies.
Las Vegas will continue to grow like never before, and this Real Estate slump where in is nothing compared to what's happening around the Country.
Please feel free to contact me by phone or email and I will tell you a different story than the (NEWS MEDIA).
It is a good time to buy but be careful, many of the short sales and foreclosed homes are over priced and the values are continuing to go down. Also most of these homes are (AS IS/ WHERE IS), what is this where is crap? Is this some type of cute joke? Are they saying that the home for sale might be located in the wrong place? I am looking at purchasing another home for investment and if I did it would be for sale by owner, through an agent, not a foreclosed/ Short sale. I don't want AS IS/ WHERE IS, there could be some serious problems with the home.
Another problem is the (NEWS MEDIA). I don't have regular television at home or a land telephone line. I haven't watched the NEWS in almost 10 years and I know more about what is going on in this world than people that watch it 2-3 times per day. The NEWS is depressing, twisted with lies and information that people just want to hear. In one of my college classes many years ago, the first day of class my teacher stated 40-50 percent of the NEWS is lies. So which part of the NEWS are you suppose to believe? Stop watching the NEWS all the time and you will hear about it from everyone else, take a break. If the NEWS said the sky was falling, would you believe them? If everyone was jumping off the bridge, would you jump? Come on people, start thinking with your own brains.
Anyway, back to Real Estate in Las Vegas. Even though the market is slow in housing, Commercial Properties continue to hold in value, Vacant land also. Only one project of many such as (CITY CENTER) is going to employ 40-60 thousand people. Where are these people going to live? All the new building projects coming up in Las Vegas, someone has to build them, where are they going to live? There are construction workers coming to work in Las Vegas from all over the country and the world. These people have to live some where. Las Vegas might be rated number one for foreclosures, but that's because of the crooked Banks & Mortgage companies.
Las Vegas will continue to grow like never before, and this Real Estate slump where in is nothing compared to what's happening around the Country.
Please feel free to contact me by phone or email and I will tell you a different story than the (NEWS MEDIA).
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