St. Louis baby tooth study shows greater impact from nuclear fallout
A study that analyzed 85,000 teeth collected from St. Louis children in the 1960’s shows that male donors who died of cancer as adults had more than double the amount of a radioactive isotope created by nuclear fallout than healthy people.
The study’s authors say their findings suggest that nuclear fallout from atomic bomb tests had a greater impact on exposed children than previously thought.
“The toll from bomb fallout is probably far greater than prior estimates,” says Joseph Mangano, the lead study author and director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. “Because 40% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, it is crucial to understand causes such as bomb fallout, so actions to prevent the disease can be taken.”
The study is a followup of the St. Louis Tooth Survey in which 300,000 kids sent their teeth to the Greater St. Louis Citizens Committee for Nuclear Information. Washington University scientists analyzed most of the teeth for strontium 90, which was created by the bomb blasts and absorbed by the teeth and bones of infants.
The study received international attention and helped persuade national leaders to push for a 1963 treaty banning atmospheric tests.
Then in 2002, the study advanced when scientists found 85,000 teeth from the survey that had been stored in an ammunition bunker at Tyson Research Center.
The university donated the teeth to the Radiation and Public Health Project, a New York-city based nonprofit research group looking a the links between disease and nuclear contamination.
The study’s authors say that further studies should be conducted on female tooth donors who have been diagnosed with cancer.
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Kim McGuire joined the Post-Dispatch in August 2007. She has covered the environment for almost 10 years while working at The Denver Post and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. In 2004, McGuire was named a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder. 
More crap from the scare mongers!
“Then in 2002, the study advanced when scientists found 85,000 teeth from the survey that had been stored in an ammunition bunker at Tyson Research Center.”
I don’t know what type of ammunition was in the bunker at Tyson but the US Army uses depleted uranium rounds in their large caliber weapon systems. These teeth may have been exposed to radiation in the bunker.
Interesting story, hopefully we will get to read more about this. Makes me wonder what stupid **** we’re doing to ourselves right now that will be painfully obvious in another 20yrs.
Ray - I agree it is scary!
Kurt - exposure to radiation will not cause Strontium 90 to be found in the teeth. The only way for it to be in the teeth is for it to be in the body. So it would have had to have been in the food, air or water the child took in.
#1 those bunkers date from WWII, they did not use DU rounds back then. #2 proximity radiation exposure is not the same thing as metabolic uptake exposure. #3 the specific isotope measured in these teeth is Strontium 90, the primary source of which is radioactive fallout from above ground nuclear testing(Chernobyl produced prodigious quantities of Sr90 as well). DU does not emit Strontium 90. Strontium 90 follows the same uptake pathways as calcium so it readily incorporates itself in bone and teeth and it has a reasonable half life of ~29 years, that is what makes it the ideal isotope for these studies.
If the Post-Dispatch had any credibility at all they would research the Radiation and Public Health Project and Mangano and then report that the CDC, NIH and the public health departments of 7 different states have debunked this group’s results and even called them “junk science.”
Where did they test the atomic bomb? Nevada? Arizona?
And they are saying that the atomic bomb testing had an effect on the people of St. Louis?
I wonder how many people are getting sick from the accident in Simi Valley, CA: Simi Valley California was the site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history in 1959, and the amounts of radiation leaked to the environment and atomosphere were more than 240 times that of the accident at 3-Mile Island. The area is beautiful today, but what still remains from many decades ago? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAHmaEs5cYU
Read a copy of a previous Post Dispatch story of how St. Louis was chosen and what they call the milk path. http://www.radiation.org/press/080528_stlouisdispatch.html
I read the report and it is interesting in particular because my teeth were part of the 85,000 and I have had two bouts with cancer. Lisa, show me where they debunked this report (not the group, the report). Pretty simple study if you ask me.
The facts are that thousands of people in St. Louis have been affected by nuclear materials production and use. The very evils they were fighting Communism and fascism now continue to attempt to discredit their claims with fake science. These fascists wish to further harm those that defeated Hitler and his bunch. Many people from St. Louis have suffered ills and other affects of civil maladministration as a result of those sympathizing with fascists and communists. Anyone that does not have compasion for the thousands of Missourians who suffer from the affects of this crime are fascist or communist sympathizers who should be held to account.
Wow. That comment was from left field (pun intended)