1998, pp 1-12
| FLUORIDE 31(1) 1998, pp 1-12 |
International Society for Fluoride Research | Table of Contents |
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CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION
George L Waldbott
The year 1998 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of George L Waldbott, MD, founder of the International Society for Fluoride Research and the journal Fluoride. Born in Speyer, Germany, on January 14, 1898, Dr Waldbott earned his medical degree at the University of Heidelberg in 1921. He then emigrated to the United States and interned in 1923-1924 at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. In the following decades as a physician in clinical practice he specialized in the treatment and study of allergic and respiratory diseases. Beginning in the 1950s he increasingly turned his attention to adverse health effects of environmental pollutants, especially fluoride. This work he continued until his death on July 17, 1982.
In this issue of Fluoride we begin our commemoration of the centennial of Dr Waldbott's birth with tributes by seven individuals who were closely associated with him. These testimonials are followed by a previously unpublished article by Dr Waldbott on one of his favorite topics - the preskeletal phase of chronic fluoride intoxication. Finally, for the benefit of our readers, we conclude the commemoration with a list of Dr Waldbott's fluoride publications, which actually comprise only about half of his total medical research output.
John Colquhoun
GEORGE L WALDBOTT - A PRE-EMINENT LEADER IN FLUORIDE RESEARCH
"The seeds of great discoveries are constantly floating around us, but they only take root in minds well prepared to receive them." American physicist Joseph Henry (1797-1878)
Throughout his long and distinguished medical career, Dr Waldbott embodied the spirit of Joseph Henry's maxim by the remarkable acumen he displayed for identifying exposure to particular toxic agents in relation to various illnesses. Taking a cue from the pioneering research of the Danish physician and health officer Kaj Roholm (1902-1948) on the symptoms of incipient stages of skeletal fluorosis,1 he was able, beginning in the 1950s, to link these same adverse effects in some of his patients to fluoride in their drinking water and other sources of intake. By simply eliminating their excessive ingestion of fluoride, these patients gradually recovered and became well.
During this early period of his fluoride research, Dr Waldbott undertook a comprehensive survey of the biomedical literature of fluoride through which he made contact with leading fluoride investigators worldwide. He also found, much to his chagrin, that despite publishing his reports in highly respected peer-reviewed - but mostly European - medical journals, the clinical details of his investigations were blocked from appearing in leading US medical journals. In an effort to surmount this impediment, he organized the first international symposium on the toxicology of fluorine compounds, which was held in Bern, Switzerland, October 15-17, 1962, after being cancelled by the George Eastman Dental School host in Rome where it was originally scheduled.2
Encouraged by the success of this symposium, which was attended by over 30 researchers from 11 countries,3 Dr Waldbott arranged for a similar conference in Detroit in 1966 sponsored by the newly formed American Society for Fluoride Research, which then became the International Society for Fluoride Research. Again there was strong opposition, this time from the American Dental Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.4 Not to be deterred, Dr Waldbott went ahead with the International Society for Fluoride Research, which held its first meeting the following year in Frankfurt, Germany. In the ensuing years 20 additional ISFR conferences have been held in over 10 countries throughout the world, the last four since 1990 taking place in the USA, Japan, China, and Hungary.5 The XXIInd Conference is scheduled for August 24-27, 1998, in Bellingham, Washington, USA.
My acquaintance with Dr Waldbott began in 1964 when he kindly responded to my requests for reprints of his fluoride research publications. The following year I met him for the first time while I was in Detroit attending a national meeting of the American Chemical Society. There I was also introduced to his gracious wife Edith, and their warmth and hospitality made a lasting impression. During this visit I read and helped correct the galleys of Dr Waldbott's new monograph A Struggle With Titans,6 which gave me a clearer and deeper insight into the enormity of the problems he was facing in attempting to make the truth about fluoride toxicity better known and understood.
Following this visit I began to assist Dr and Mrs Waldbott in editing and revising papers submitted to the ISFR journal, which started to appear in July 1968 under the title Fluoride Quarterly Reports (changed in 1970 to simply Fluoride). Later, H Lewis McKinney, one of my university colleagues, and I collaborated with Dr Waldbott in writing Fluoridation: The Great Dilemma, published in 1978.7 We were both greatly impressed by Dr Waldbott's extraordinary knowledge of the biomedical literature of fluoride as reflected by the wide range of editorial topics he wrote about in Fluoride. Moreover, even during the last years of his life, he remained actively engaged in his clinical practice, almost to the time of his death in July 1982.8
In assessing the legacy of Dr Waldbott's prodigious work on fluoride, we are saddened by the fact that it has been disparaged or ignored by powerful vested interests, official and unofficial, who regard it as a major threat to the security of their positions. Many of them have waged a relentless campaign of defamation and slander, falsely calling the ISFR an unscientific organization and incorrectly alleging that papers published in Fluoride are not peer reviewed. Evidently acting on their advice, the US National Library of Medicine has excluded Fluoride from Index Medicus,9 the leading biomedical referencing source for libraries and researchers. Yet Fluoride has long been and still is the only international scientific journal devoted to uncensored publication of legitimate research concerning all aspects of biological effects of fluoride. The result has been not only to marginalize much of that research but also to impede the free flow and exchange of information about such investigations that are crucial not only to the success of science but also to the vital needs and interests of everyone in society.
Meanwhile, the exciting vistas in fluoride research that Dr Waldbott penetrated are open for all to explore. And then time, in its own inexorable way, will finally and surely allow many additional "seeds of great discoveries" about fluoride, like those he made, to "take root in minds well prepared to receive them."
Albert W Burgstahler, Department of Chemistry
The University of Kansas,
Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
REFERENCES AND NOTES
MEMORIES OF GEORGE L WALDBOTT
AN EXTRAORDINARY PHYSICIAN
In 1976, I had the opportunity and privilege of sharing a hotel room for three days with Dr Waldbott in Long Beach, California. We had been called to testify as expert witnesses in a court case involving industrial fluoride exposure and the subsequent illnesses of a man who had been employed at a major petroleum refinery in southern California. The worker was in his early fifties and had been disabled for over three years with a variety of serious medical problems. In brief, he had suffered brain damage (primarily affecting his previous excellent mathematical ability, memory, and sense of balance), degeneration of the cartilage in his knees, back and neck pains, severe emphysema, prostatism, and frequent (16-18 time a day) bowel movements.
His medical records revealed that he had received a detailed and expensive medical examination at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. There his mental deterioration, arthritis, and back and neck pains were attributed to "age", although at the time he was less than 50 years old. His prostatism was also attributed to age, and his emphysema was claimed to be due to his having smoked cigarettes for a short time many years before. His unusually frequent bowel movements were termed "short transit time syndrome" of unknown origin. His blood and urine fluoride levels were found to be normal - a year and a half after he had left his job! The opinion of the UC medical expert was that the symptoms were not the result of work-related exposure to fluoride.
The medical records also included several X-rays of his knee that had been operated on for the degenerated cartilage. One X-ray, however, showed a metal staple as might have been used for a fracture of his proximal tibia. But the patient assured us that he never had a knee fracture and no staple had been used in his surgery. That X-ray picture was of someone else's knee!
Our subject had been employed at a major gasoline-producing refinery where hydrogen fluoride was used to combine "light" and ‚"heavy" hydrocarbon and alkene fractions to form high-octane gasoline. Periodically, the equipment was purged of the fluoride-contaminated tar-like material that accumulated in it. The purging was done by a pressurized steam hose in a depressed pit, and the cloud of steam emerging from the equipment contained toxic levels of hydrogen fluoride/hydrofluoric acid. The man had been doing this work on a regular basis for a number of years and had worn a rubber suit and hood for protection against the steam and products spewed into the air. Not provided, however, were a mask and an auxiliary air supply for breathing. Often, while performing this cleaning operation, he would suffer painful breathing and become faint. A rope around his waist was used to pull him out of the pit when he became excessively woozy or fainted.
Later he found out that men performing this work usually lasted only two to three years before becoming ill and being replaced. Never having been warned of the toxic nature of his work, he had, with dogged persistence, lasted over four years before his illnesses forced him into early retirement. Thc question was: should the employer be liable for the man's medical problems? Both Dr Waldbott and I had examined the man and had studied his medical records. Our opinion was that, yes, the employer should be liable.
This was my first meeting with Dr Waldbott, whom I found to be a courtly, older gentleman with a slight accent hinting of his European birth and education. Underlying his calm and gentle manner was an intelligence strong as steel, precise and logical, but pleasant and not overbearing. His medical knowledge was extraordinary, and in our discussions of medical topics he examined alternative hypotheses equably and explained his conclusions in terms of biochemistry and mechanism of action. I could not recall meeting any doctor with a more brilliant mind, yet one whose thinking was so free of excessive ego or rancor. Inherent to him was the conviction that problems or differences in points of view could be resolved by clear dispassionate logic and evidence. He was not upset that some supposed authorities held fluoride positions that differed from his. Instead, he saw such a situation as an opportunity for presenting evidence as clearly and fairly as possible until a commonality of understanding was reached.
Every day we would gather at the court house awaiting our turn to testify, but each day our testimony was put off for some unknown reasons. Finally, on the third day, we were told that the case had been settled by the petroleum company admitting its liability. The lawyer explained that the man's disability payments would be paid by the company instead of by workmen's compensation insurance - a Pyrrhic victory, one might say, but a victory nonetheless. Later we were to find that the lawyer had sued the wrong party; the suit should have been brought against the supplier of the hydrogen fluoride who had failed to specify the toxic nature of the product. I suspect such a suit would have been successful, and the award for damages could have been considerable.
But for me, the reward I found greatest was the opportunity to spend three days with perhaps the best physician in the USA - three days of exposure to an extraordinary man whose precepts for practicing medicine have been a beacon of sound reasoning throughout the years of my own career that followed.
Shortly after I returned home, Dr Waldbott wrote to me suggesting that we write an article describing this occupational hazard to the industry and thereby perhaps prevent future occurrences of such fluoride poisoning among petroleum workers. Though Dr Waldbott provided the major research effort and was the principal author of the article, he insisted that it include me as a co-author. The report was eventually published in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Toxicology, volume 13, number 3, 1978, under the title "Toxicity from Repeated Low-Grade Exposure to Hydrogen Fluoride - Case Report."
I also became aware that Dr Waldbott had founded the International Society for Fluoride Research with the goal of providing an open forum for all fluoride researchers, regardless of viewpoint. This goal continues to hold, despite the fact that some so-called authorities (who seem to remain blind to research they find opposing their fixed mind set) only rarely attend ISFR conferences. The legacy of Dr Waldbott's dedication to fairness and openness in scientific research will prevail, however. Truth in science is not determined by politics or propaganda. Eventually it emerges in spite of such impediments through the patient efforts of those who share Dr Waldbott's precepts and ideals.
John R Lee, MD
9620 Bodega Highway
Sebastopol, CA 95472, USA
THE FLUORIDE RESEARCH LEGACY OF GEORGE L WALDBOTT
In an editorial, published in only the third issue of Fluoride, January 1969, Dr Waldbott drew attention to the pioneering fluoride research of Dr Kaj Roholm of Denmark. In particular, he cited Roholm's astute recognition of the dominant role fluoride played in Belgium's notorious Meuse Valley air pollution disaster of December 3-5, 1930. Commenting on Roholm's investigation, he wrote:
"Roholm is still recognized as the world's foremost expert on fluoride. For some unknown reason, however, his account of the Meuse Valley disaster fell into oblivion shortly after it appeared [in 1937]. Had the medical profession and scientists interested in air pollution given it the attention which it deserved, the worst U.S. air pollution disaster in Donora, Pa, 18 years later, might have been averted."
Dr Waldbott's closing paragraph pointedly began: "Although more than 3 decades have elapsed since Roholm's article appeared, most of the data which he presented are as new to physicians today as they were in 1937."
As a respiratory and allergy disease specialist, Dr Waldbott spent much of his professional life endeavoring to acquaint the medical profession with how pollutants like fluoride affect human health. He personally initiated and, out of his own funds, founded Fluoride for publication of scientific investigations on biological effects of fluoride. He personally contacted scientists throughout the world and encouraged them to publish their fluoride research in Fluoride. He invited them to join the International Society for Fluoride Research and to participate in its international conferences. He also used his own funds to sponsor and enable scientists to attend these meetings. His engaging interest, keen intelligence, extensive knowledge, and contagious enthusiasm about fluoride research were compelling, and although the conferences often had limited attendance, they were always scientifically stimulating and challenging.
Drawing on the broad background he had acquired in all areas of fluoride, Dr Waldbott's questions and comments at the conferences were trenchant and thought-provoking. He had strong convictions but was always sensitive to those around him. He was fearless, however, in his efforts to inform members of the medical profession and other disciplines about the health effects of environmental pollutants.
It is not often that an individual of such extraordinary intellect and dedicated achievement comes into our lives. His memory and work will long remain an inspiration and a beacon for future endeavors in fluoride research.
Gene W Miller
Department of Biology
Utah State University
Logan, UT 84322-5305, USA
GEORGE L WALDBOTT: A TRULY GREAT PHYSICIAN OF OUR CENTURY
When the Municipal Council in Haarlem decided in October 1968 to fluoridate our water supplies, I was thoroughly alarmed. From a physiological standpoint, adding a well-known enzyme poison to our drinking water seemed like folly to me, but I had no scientific evidence to offer against the measure, only logic. I therefore began to look for reliable literature on the subject. At first I discovered a statement by a German association of scientists who condemned the measure as dangerous and unscientific, but their arguments seemed to me to be mainly theoretical, just like mine. A lucky chance then brought me into contact with the pioneering fluoride work of Dr George L Waldbott.
It was with mounting admiration for this independent-minded physician of unimpeachable integrity that I read his stirring book A Struggle With Titans. It more than confirmed all my concerns about the danger of using fluoride in medicine. Waldbott's work immediately was of great practical value to me. Although a strong resistance among the population had prevented Haarlem from being fluoridated, the adjoining municipality of Heemstede had not been able to evade the measure. The people in Heemstede were opposed to it, but the city derived its water from Amsterdam, which had started to fluoridate in February 1972.
This situation placed me in a unique position, since half of my patients lived in nonfluoridated Haarlem and the other half in fluoridated Heemstede. It was then that my admiration for Dr Waldbott approached overwhelming awe. One after another, I saw all the so-called side-effects he had described appear in my Heemstede patients. I say "so-called" side effects because, as I realized later, these were, in fact, the main effects of fluoridation.
I saw an explosion of patients with stomatitis, gastric distress, troublesome skin irritation, blurred vision, migraine-like headaches, and loss of mental acuity. Colicky babies crying loudly all through the night were driving their parents frantic. Later on, patients began to complain of joint stiffness, muscular weakness, and excessive fatigue. The list is far from complete, but the cure was simple: nonfluoridated water for all drinking and cooking for ten days brought complete relief!
I taught my colleague practitioners in the fluoridated regions what to look for, and soon they made the same observations. We were all extremely grateful to Dr Waldbott for having shown us the way. In 1973 our research group sent me to Oxford to attend the Conference of the International Society for Fluoride Research. There I met Professor Sinclair, our gallant host, Professor Burgstahler from Kansas, Professor Jolly from Punjab, and Dr Zanfagna from Massachusetts. Binding all these scientists together was Dr Waldbott, whom I also met for the first time.
A few years later, in February 1976, I organized the VIIth ISFR Conference in Zandvoort near Haarlem with Dr Waldbott as chairman. There Dean Burk presented his research in collaboration with John Yiamouyiannis on the link between fluoridation and increased cancer mortality. Evidently the findings presented at this conference helped keep fluoridation at bay in the Netherlands, whose water supplies to this day remain unfluoridated.
With the passage of time after 1982, I more or less expected that the ISFR would die together with Dr Waldbott, but the opposite has happened. His spiritual child has grown by leaps and bounds and has continued to attract scientists from all over the world.
George Waldbott is an ongoing positive influence in my life. He taught me a new way of medical thinking; the modern version of the steady drip hollowing out the stone. Even a very small dose of a poison can, through repetition, cause detrimental effects of an extremely grave nature.
As a consultant in food and chemical intolerances, I continue to discover many children with untoward effects from fluoride ingested through toothpaste, tablets, or dental sealants. Each time one of these little ones is cured I mentally take off my cap to my great teacher. Thanks to George Waldbott, I have been able to heal hundreds of my own patients and, as I made his insights popular, even thousands of others in my country. Moreover, during the time fluoridation existed in Holland many people were able to diagnose their own illness from it and make themselves well.
George Waldbott has been an enormous blessing in my life and in the lives of many of my patients. I will live in his debt and honor his memory as long as I live.
Hans C Moolenburgh, MD
Oranjeplein 11
2012 LN Haarlem
The Netherlands
MY FATHER'S DEDICATION TO FLUORIDE RESEARCH
I wish to express my warm and deep appreciation for the special honor being paid to my father, Dr George L Waldbott, in this issue of Fluoride commemorating the 100th anniversary of his birth. He is already held in high esteem, but now even more so, because this journal, which he founded 30 years ago, continues to grow with an enviable standard of scientific excellence and reach a broader spectrum of the international scientific community.
Apart from the journal, however, I also recall how tireless and devoted my father was in pursuing research while still providing high-quality medical care for his many, very grateful patients in his allergy practice. To them and all who knew him, he was always most understanding, gracious, and warm-hearted.
In the arena of fluoride research, my father's keen sense of scientific integrity was deeply offended when, all too often, he encountered apparent cover-ups or direct distortions of critical findings in the medical literature and in his correspondence with editors of leading journals. He simply could not rest after reading such statements until he had exposed and corrected their scientific inaccuracies.
As many readers are aware, the essentially closed and one-sided forum on fluoride research in America in the 1960s prompted my father to invite scientists from different parts of the world to participate in scientific conferences in what became the International Society for Fluoride Research. His primary purpose was to provide an opportunity for scientists engaged in fluoride research to present and discuss their findings in a strictly scientific setting. The Fluoride journal was the natural outgrowth of the ISFR and the important need to disseminate the research presented at these meetings.
My congratulations to all who continue this effort at a time when the fluoride controversy is still very much with us. Vested interests who insist fluoride as a deterrent to dental caries is safe and beneficial for all are seldom prepared to acknowledge valid research to the contrary.
Elizabeth Ramsay
HaChasida 23/1, Gilo
Jerusalem 93850 Israel
GEORGE L WALDBOTT - AN EXCEPTIONAL CLINICIAN
In late 1974, when I was about to begin a sabbatical year at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, I decided to start my journey from New Delhi a few days early in order to attend a conference of the International Society for Fluoride Research scheduled in November at Williamsburg, Virginia. Since India has serious health problems caused by high levels of fluoride in drinking water, I thought this meeting would be a good opportunity to share results of our research on these matters.
In 1972 my laboratory at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences began investigating the effect of fluoride on skeletal muscle tissue in patients afflicted with skeletal fluorosis. These patients were then under the care of Professor S S Jolly of the government Medical College Hospital in Patiala, Punjab. We embarked on this research because, if the normally high calcium content of skeletal muscle tissue is depleted by elevated fluoride, the muscle cannot contract properly. Our studies revealed that fluoride-induced skeletal muscle damage is primarily myogenic and not due to neuronal involvement. When I wrote to Dr Waldbott about my interest in presenting this work at the 1974 ISFR conference, he was most receptive to the idea.
Arriving at the motel in Williamsburg on the eve of the conference, I found a welcoming note with directions to the hall where Dr and Mrs Waldbott were hosting a reception dinner for the participants. At the dinner they had reserved a place for me next to them. This was the first time I met Dr Waldbott and his ever-helpful wife Edith. I already knew that he was one of the world's leading allergy specialists, so I was eager to meet him. This meeting was the beginning of a long association that lasted until his death in 1982 and has continued with the ISFR.
During our discussions Dr Waldbott made frequent reference to our research at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He said he thought our contributions on skeletal muscle involvement in fluoride intoxication represented "a monumental piece of work." My presentation at the conference was published afterward in Fluoride.1
Besides skeletal muscle tissue, my laboratory has also been investigating changes in gastric and intestinal mucosa in response to complaints of persons living in endemic fluorosis areas, who reported loss of appetite, nausea, stomach pain and gas, a bloated feeling, flatulence, and constipation alternating with intermittent diarrhoea. These studies were conducted using a careful protocol to eliminate other, nonfluoride causes of these non-ulcer dyspeptic complaints. Our diagnoses were confirmed through endoscopy and scanning electron microscopy of biopsy material obtained from gastric and duodenal regions, revealing a "cracked clay appearance of the mucosa," loss of microvilli from the mucosal surface, and even disappearance of mucus. Moreover, these same changes were found in patients with skeletal fluorosis whose drinking water contained 2.5 ppm or more fluoride as well as with patients undergoing fluoride therapy for otosclerosis for 3 to 12 months. Usually the non-ulcer dyspeptic symptoms disappeared in 10 to 15 days when the patients were diverted to safer drinking water containing less than 0.8-1.0 ppm fluoride. These observations have been reported in a series of articles published since 1992.2-6
Dr Waldbott's previously unpublished article, "The Pre-skeletal Phase of Chronic Fluoride Intoxication," which appears in this issue of Fluoride (pp 13-18), reveals he had examined and successfully treated patients with fluoride-induced non-ulcer dyspeptic complaints that were initially undiagnosed by other clinicians. He was one of the very few clinicians who understood the connection between fluoride toxicity and gastrointestinal symptoms and was able to relieve them. In the 1980s we confirmed this correlation of gastric disorders with excessive fluoride intake, and it is now widely used in India for detection of fluorosis. Additional tests include assessing fluoride levels in the drinking water, blood, and urine. Diverting patients from fluoride-contaminated water to a source of safe drinking water relieves the gastrointestinal complaints in 10-15 days, providing they are caused by fluoride. Thus, simply providing safe drinking water with the least amount of fluoride has proved to be one of the best approaches to treating fluoride-induced non-ulcer dyspepsia.
As noted by Dr Waldbott, Kaj Roholm found in the 1930s that 55 out of 68 cryolite workers (80.9%) had either acute or subacute gastric symptoms. Data from our current studies in an aluminium plant in India confirm these findings.
Although Dr Waldbott's own clinical observations on fluoride intoxication date back to the mid-1950s, the manner in which he made them is worth bringing to the attention of practising clinicians throughout the world. His patients who suffered from gastrointestinal symptoms while living in a fluoridated area obtained relief when they moved to a nonfluoridated area, only to find their illness recur after moving back into a fluoridated area. Fluoride-induced non-ulcer dyspepsia leads to reduced haemoglobin, anaemia, weakness due to non-absorption of nutrients as the microvilli are lost, and a range of other health problems including depression. Fluoride intoxication and related health disorders need to be viewed in their totality to understand the seriousness of the resulting problems facing millions of people around the globe.
Dr Waldbott's article also reveals how many practising clinicians feel they need to advise patients not to disclose their diagnosis and their recommendation to avoid fluoridated water - for fear of action against them by their colleagues. Again, we see Dr Waldbott's undaunted courage and conviction in seeking to alleviate the misery and suffering of those who experienced severe health problems due to drinking fluoridated water or exposure to fluoride dust and fumes in industrial environments.
I look forward to the day when adding fluoride to drinking water will be recognized for the harm it causes and will therefore be considered a criminal offense. Sometime soon, I hope, fluoridation will be banned on the basis of such pioneering research as by Dr Waldbott, his colleagues, friends, and associates around the world, whom he inspired and encouraged to continue and expand their investigations on the effects of fluoride on the human body.
A K Susheela, Professor
Director, Programmes
Fluorosis Research and Rural Development Foundation
C-13, Qutab Institutional Area
(Nutrition Foundation of India Building)
New Delhi 110016, India
REFERENCES
ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGY: WHAT I OWE TO DR WALDBOTT
We all respect and admire George L Waldbott as the founder of the International Society for Fluoride Research and as the editor for many years of its official journal Fluoride. As a member and past officer of the Society, I share with others a deep indebtedness to Dr Waldbott for the large body of very important work he did on fluoride.
For me personally, however, I remember Dr. Waldbott particularly well for another reason. One of the books he wrote made a strong impression on me and greatly influenced my career activities.
During the early 1970s, at the newly established Huxley College of Environmental Studies at Western Washington University, I was developing a new course titled "Pollution and Health." In looking for a suitable textbook for this course, I came across Dr Waldbott's monograph entitled "Health Effects of Environmental Pollutants," which had just been published by the C V Mosby Company. I adopted the book and used it as a textbook for several years.
This book not only helped me teach the course, but it also greatly influenced other aspects of my career. In particular, it introduced me to the study of environmental toxicology, a branch of science that was attracting a growing interest among researchers. From that time on, environmental toxicology became the primary focus of my teaching and research.
Mainly because of the basic knowledge I had gained from Dr Waldbott's book and related research, I was able to co-author with Wayne G Landis a book entitled Introduction to Environmental Toxicology: Impacts of Chemicals Upon Ecological Systems, published in 1995 by Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, Florida. This text is now used in colleges and universities in the United States and several other countries. At present I am writing another book entitled Fundamentals of Environmental Toxicology.
Although many years have passed since I first became aware of Dr Waldbott's book, my appreciation of his influential work continues to deepen as I recall my earlier days of teaching and research at Western Washington University.
Ming-Ho Yu| FLUORIDE 31(1) 1998, pp 1-12 |
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