Our Team

Chris Neurath is the FAN and AEHSP (American Environmental Health Studies Project) Research Director. He evaluates scientific evidence, interprets it for non-specialist and lay audiences; conducts research; produces scientific reports for publication in peer-reviewed journals, submission to government agencies, and testimony in public hearings. He has a BSc degree from Yale University in Geology and Geophysics and subsequent graduate-level studies in environmental science at the Yale School of the Environment. He first started working with Paul and Ellen Connett on environmental health issues 40 years ago, soon after they began their efforts to halt trash incineration and promote recycling and zero waste solutions.

His main focus has been on toxic chemicals, including fluoride, dioxins, pesticides, lead, mercury, and radionuclides. Prior to reading the Project Censored award article on the connection between fluoride-polluting industries and fluoridation, he had grown up accepting his dentist’s opinion, his parent’s opinion, and the incessant Procter & Gamble Crest toothpaste advertising of his childhood, all saying that fluoride and fluoridation were wonderful. Then, Paul Connett asked him to review the foundational fluoridation trial studies in Newburgh NY and Grand Rapids MI. The questionable scientific quality and overt fluoridation boosterism in those studies caused him to start re-evaluating his prior uncritical acceptance that fluoridation was “safe and effective”. Over the past 20+ years having carefully reviewed hundreds of scientific papers as well as conducting his own original research on fluoride, his naïve early view of fluoridation has reversed. An objective review of all the scientific evidence finds fluoridation to be unsafe and relatively ineffective.

Prior to his work with the Connetts, Work on Waste, AEHSP, and the Fluoride Action Network, he worked on toxic chemical and pollution issues for the environmental groups Save The River, Greenpeace, and the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.

While working with the Connetts in the North Country of New York State, he built and lived in an off-grid solar and micro-hydroelectric powered house and campaigned on energy conservation, sustainable living, and climate change issues. 

Michael joined the Fluoride Action Network in October 2021 as the editor of the Fluoridation Review. His newsletters include important developments and research related to fluoride and fluoridation that are often underreported or go unreported entirely by the press. Since being recruited to the campaign to repeal fluoridation by Paul Connett at Clark University in Worcester, MA more than twenty-five years ago, Mike has been writing and testifying against fluoridation across Massachusetts

Michael was a research professor at the University of Massachusetts and a lecturer in the Department of Biology. He was instrumental in the formation of the fluoridation archives at the university’s W. E. B. Du Bois Library in Amherst.  

Paul Connett, Ph.D.

Science Advisor

Paul was the Director of the Fluoride Action Network since its inception in 2000, with the exception of 3 years between 2013-2016. He ended his role as Director in May 2022 and is now a Science Adviser to the group. Paul is a graduate of Cambridge University and holds a PhD in chemistry from Dartmouth College.  From 1983 -2006 Paul taught chemistry at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY where he specialized in Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology.

Over the past 36 years his research on waste management has taken him to 49 states in the US, 7 provinces in Canada and 64 other countries, where he has given over 2500 pro bono public presentations.

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

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

Currently, Paul is the Senior Adviser to FAN and specializes in international liaison among groups in other fluoridating countries. See Paul’s curriculum vitae. 

Bill Osmunson, D.D.S., M.P.H. 

Senior Advisor 

Bill Osmunson graduated from Loma Linda University with Masters in Public Health in 1974 and Doctor of Dental Surgery in 1977.  For over 40 years, Dr. Osmunson has been a General, Family, Cosmetic, and Neuromuscular TMD  comprehensive dentist.  He is an author, researcher, teacher, and grandfather.  For about 25 years after graduation, Dr. Osmunson promoted water fluoridation or fluoride supplements.  Evaluating the research on both sides of the fluoridation controversy, convinced him that many are ingesting too much fluoride which is causing harm to teeth, bones, brains, thyroid and all cells.   

Ellen Connett

Senior Advisor 

Ellen has been with the Fluoride Action Network since it’s inception in 2000, first as Director of Pesticides, and then as Managing Director. She has been Treasurer of the group from 2009 to 2023. She retired from FAN in August 2022 and is a senior advisory as well as the Secretary for the board of directors.

Ellen has a long history of environmental and social activism having been highly involved with the American Committee to Keep Biafra Alive (a war that caused the death of an estimated one million people in eastern Nigeria), Operation Omega (co-founder of group to help Bengali refugees that were too weak to cross the border into India during the brutal war that created Bangladesh in 1972), Work on Waste St. Lawrence County, NY (a five-year effort battling a proposed municipal waste incinerator), and Waste Not (editor of weekly newsletter that tracked the waste industry’s efforts to build waste incinerators from 1986-2000). 

Billy Hirzy, Ph.D.

Consultant

Bill received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from the University of Missouri, then worked 19 years as a research and development chemist. He joined EPA in 1981 as a senior scientist in the Risk Assessment Division of the Toxics Office at Headquarters. Bill’s interest in fluoride toxicity began in 1986 as a Union official at EPA headquarters in 1986, following the lead of Dr. Robert Carton. Both Bill and Bob are charter members of the professionals’ labor Union at EPA HQ and served several terms as Union president. They were responsible for establishment of EPA’s Principles of Scientific Integrity, and they have published articles on fluoride toxicity and the ethical problems with water fluoridation. Bill has also taught chemistry and environmental science and ethics at the university level in Missouri and Washington, D.C.

Michael Connett, J.D.

Consultant 

Michael earned his bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from St. Lawrence University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was awarded a Juris Doctor degree, magna cum laude, from Temple University Beasley School of Law. While in law school, Michael served as Editor in Chief of the Temple Law Review. He also received the Faculty Award for Academic Achievement, the Jerry Zaslow Memorial Award, the Kranzel Award, and was recognized for Outstanding Oral Argument in Trial Advocacy. After graduating from law school, Michael served as a law clerk to the Honorable Franklin Van Antwerpen of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Easton, PA and the Honorable Michael M. Baylson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. Michael is a member of the American Association for Justice, Public Justice, and he is licensed to practice law by the State Bars of California and Pennsylvania.

Michael has extensive background and expertise in the area of fluoride toxicology, and has filed several federal administrative petitions on behalf of various consumer, environmental, and medical health organizations.