Baby Tooth Survey

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The Baby Tooth Survey was initiated by the Greater St. Louis Citizens' Committee for Nuclear Information in conjunction with Saint Louis University and the Washington University School of Dental Medicine as a means of determining the effects of nuclear fallout in the human anatomy by examining the levels of radioactive material absorbed into the deciduous teeth of children.

Contents

Founded by the husband and wife team of physicians Eric and Louise Reiss, along with other scientists such as Barry Commoner and Ursula Franklin, the research focused on detecting the presence of strontium-90, a cancer-causing radioactive isotope created by the more than 400 atomic tests conducted above ground that is absorbed from water and dairy products into the bones and teeth given its chemical similarity to calcium. The team sent collection forms to schools in the St. Louis area, hoping to gather 50,000 teeth each year. [1] The school-aged children were encouraged to mail in their newly lost baby teeth by colorful posters displayed in classrooms, and the reward of a colorful button. [2] Ultimately over 320,000 teeth were donated by children of various ages. The inception of the project took place in December 1958, continuing for 12 years, eventually ending in 1970. [3] [4]

Preliminary results published by the team in the November 24, 1961, edition of the journal Science showed that levels of strontium-90 in children had risen steadily in children born in the 1950s, with those born later showing the most increased levels. [5] [6] The results of a more comprehensive study of the elements found in the teeth collected showed that children born in 1963 had levels of strontium-90 in their baby teeth that were 50 times higher than those found in children born in 1950, before the advent of large-scale atomic testing. The findings helped convince U.S. President John F. Kennedy to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the United Kingdom and Soviet Union, which ended the above-ground nuclear weapons testing that placed the greatest amounts of nuclear fallout into the atmosphere. [7]

Background

According to Irish scientist Kathleen Lonsdale, in the mid-1950s or earlier it was known that strontium 90 is taken up particularly easily by children, that it causes bone tumors, and that "according to the British and American official reports, some children in both countries have already accumulated a measurable amount of radioactive strontium in their bodies." [8]

In an article published in 1958 in Nature , a British science and technology journal, Dr. Herman Kalckar, a biochemist at Johns Hopkins University, explained that to find out more about how the human body uptakes radioactive elements, research should be done on the elements present in a child's first set of teeth. [9]

Follow-up analysis

A set of 85,000 teeth that had been uncovered in storage in 2001 by Washington University were given to the Radiation and Public Health Project. By tracking 3,000 individuals who had participated in the tooth-collection project, the RPHP published results [10] that showed that the 12 children who later died of cancer before the age of 50 had levels of strontium-90 in their stored baby teeth that were twice the levels of those who were still alive at 50. [7] [11] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports that these finding are seriously flawed and that the Radiation and Public Health Project has not followed good scientific practice in the conducting of these studies, in particular confusing correlation for causation and incorrectly conflating risk from nuclear weapon testing fallout with radiation from nuclear power plants. [12]

The Baby Tooth Survey inspired a number of similar initiatives in other parts of the world. For example, what became known as the Tooth Fairy Project was developed in South Africa by Dr. Anthony Turton and his team at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in order to determine whether human health impacts arising from radioactivity and heavy metal pollution downstream from gold mining activities, driven by acid mine drainage, was occurring. [13] [14]

A number of related studies by the Radiation and Public Health Project assert that levels of radioactive strontium-90 (Sr-90) are rising in the environment and that these increased levels are responsible for increases in cancers, particularly cancers in children, and infant mortality. The group also made the claim that radioactive effluents from nuclear power plants are directly responsible for the increases in Sr-90. In one study, researchers reported that Sr-90 concentrations in baby teeth are higher in areas around nuclear power plants than in other areas. However, numerous peer-reviewed, scientific studies do not substantiate such claims. [15] This has also sometimes been referred to as “The Tooth Fairy Project.”

Similar baby tooth studies

In early 1970s Herbert Needleman used baby teeth in the same way that Barry Commoner did but for testing lead levels instead of strontium-90. [16]

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician who helped expose the Flint Water Crisis, has been promoting a similar study to track lead levels in the local children. Per the news coverage, "She expects the forthcoming report to include information on the initial results of brain assessments of children exposed to Flint water and early results of testing baby teeth of Flint children to measure their exposure to lead." [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Strontium</span> Chemical element, symbol Sr and atomic number 38

Strontium is a chemical element; it has symbol Sr and atomic number 38. An alkaline earth metal, strontium is a soft silver-white yellowish metallic element that is highly chemically reactive. The metal forms a dark oxide layer when it is exposed to air. Strontium has physical and chemical properties similar to those of its two vertical neighbors in the periodic table, calcium and barium. It occurs naturally mainly in the minerals celestine and strontianite, and is mostly mined from these.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuclear fallout</span> Residual radioactive material following a nuclear blast

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuclear fission product</span> Atoms or particles produced by nuclear fission

Nuclear fission products are the atomic fragments left after a large atomic nucleus undergoes nuclear fission. Typically, a large nucleus like that of uranium fissions by splitting into two smaller nuclei, along with a few neutrons, the release of heat energy, and gamma rays. The two smaller nuclei are the fission products..

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Strontium-89 is a radioactive isotope of strontium produced by nuclear fission, with a half-life of 50.57 days. It undergoes β− decay into yttrium-89. Strontium-89 has an application in medicine.

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Project GABRIEL was an investigation to gauge the impact of nuclear fallout resulting from nuclear warfare. The United States Atomic Energy Commission surmised that the radioactive isotope strontium-90 (Sr-90) presented the greatest hazard to life globally, which resulted in the commissioning of Project SUNSHINE: which sought to examine the levels of Sr-90 in human tissues and bones gathered from around the world.

Project SUNSHINE was a series of research studies that began in 1953 to ascertain the impact of radioactive fallout on the world's population. The project was initially kept secret, and only became known publicly in 1956. Commissioned jointly by the United States Atomic Energy Commission and USAF Project Rand, SUNSHINE sought to examine the long-term effects of nuclear radiation on the biosphere due to repeated nuclear detonations of increasing yield. With the conclusion from Project GABRIEL that radioactive isotope Sr-90 represented the most serious threat to human health from nuclear fallout, Project SUNSHINE sought to measure the global dispersion of Sr-90 by measuring its concentration in the tissues and bones of the dead. Of particular interest was tissue from the young, whose developing bones have the highest propensity to accumulate Sr-90 and thus the highest susceptibility to radiation damage. SUNSHINE elicited a great deal of controversy when it was revealed that many of the remains sampled were utilized without prior permission from relatives of the dead, which wasn't known until many years later.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Washington University School of Dental Medicine</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Reiss</span> American physician (1920 – 2011)

Louise Marie Zibold Reiss was an American physician who coordinated what became known as the Baby Tooth Survey, in which deciduous teeth from children living in the St. Louis, Missouri, area who were born in the 1950s and 1960s were collected and analyzed over a period of 12 years. The results of the survey showed that children born in 1963 had levels of strontium-90 in their teeth that were 50 times higher than those found in children born in 1950, before the advent of widespread nuclear weapons testing. The findings helped convince U.S. President John F. Kennedy to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the United Kingdom and Soviet Union, which ended the above-ground testing of nuclear weapons that placed the greatest amounts of nuclear fallout into the atmosphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radiation effects from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster</span> Effects of radiation released from the Fukushima nuclear disaster

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll</span> US nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Pecher</span>

Charles Pecher was a Belgian pioneer in nuclear medicine. He discovered and introduced strontium-89 in medical therapeutic procedures in 1939.

References

  1. ↑ Staff. "Teeth to Measure Fall-Out", The New York Times , March 18, 1969. Accessed January 10, 2011.
  2. ↑ Tomich, Jeffrey. "Decades later, Baby Tooth Survey legacy lives on", St. Louis Post-Dispatch , August 1, 2013. Accessed February 11, 2018.
  3. ↑ Gerl, Ellen (2014). "Scientist-citizen advocacy in the atomic age: A case study of the Baby Tooth Survey, 1958-1963" (PDF). PRism. 11 (1).
  4. ↑ "Page 131". digital.shsmo.org. Retrieved 2023-08-23.
  5. ↑ Sullivan, Walter. "Babies Surveyed For Strontium 90; Ratio to Calcium in Bones Is Discovered to Be Low A survey has shown that pregnant mothers and their unborn children absorb radioactive strontium, as a substitute for calcium, only about 10 per cent of the time", The New York Times , November 25, 1961. Accessed January 10, 2011.
  6. ↑ Reiss, L. Z. (24 November 1961). "Strontium-90 Absorption by Deciduous Teeth: Analysis of teeth provides a practicable method of monitoring strontium-90 uptake by human populations". Science. 134 (3491): 1669–1673. doi:10.1126/science.134.3491.1669. PMID   14491339.
  7. 1 2 Hevesi, Dennis. "Dr. Louise Reiss, Who Helped Ban Atomic Testing, Dies at 90", The New York Times , January 10, 2011. Accessed January 10, 2011.
  8. ↑ Kathleen Lonsdale, Is Peace Possible? by Penguin Books, 1957, pp 42-43.
  9. ↑ Kalckar, H. M. (1958-08-02). "An international milk teeth radiation census". Nature. 182 (4631): 283–284. Bibcode:1958Natur.182..283K. doi: 10.1038/182283a0 . ISSN   0028-0836. PMID   13577816. S2CID   21653286.
  10. ↑ Mangano, Joseph J.; Sherman, Janette D. (January 2011). "Elevated in Vivo Strontium-90 from Nuclear Weapons Test Fallout among Cancer Decedents: A Case-Control Study of Deciduous Teeth". International Journal of Health Services. 41 (1): 137–158. doi:10.2190/HS.41.1.j. PMID   21319726. S2CID   22704351.
  11. ↑ Wald, Matthew L. "Study of Baby Teeth Sees Radiation Effects", The New York Times , December 13, 2010. Accessed January 10, 2011.
  12. ↑ https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0721/ML072150423.pdf Radiation Protection and the "Tooth Fairy" Issue retrieved 11/29/2018
  13. ↑ Tooth fairy project may reveal effect of uranium - Environment South Africa. Environment.co.za (2010-05-22). Retrieved on 2011-01-12.
  14. ↑ South Africa Water Crisis - Poisoning the Masses. Southafricawatercrisis.blogspot.com (2008-11-22). Retrieved on 2011-01-12.
  15. ↑ https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0721/ML072150423.pdf Radiation Protection and the "Tooth Fairy" Issue retrieved 11/29/2018
  16. ↑ Rosner, David; Markowitz, Gerald (2014). Lead wars: the politics of science and the fate of America's children. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 84. ISBN   9780520283930. Needleman drew upon a method perfected by Barry Commoner...
  17. ↑ Fonger, Ron (13 March 2020). "Dr. Mona tells '60 Minutes' 80% of Flint kids tested need special services". The Flint Journal . Advance Publications. Archived from the original on 7 April 2020. Retrieved 21 March 2021.
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