A study that used a rediscovered stash of St. Louis baby teeth to research the health impact of atom bomb testing in the 1950s got a boost this month when it was published in an international science journal.

The study by Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano in The International Journal of Health Services suggests the link between atom bomb fallout residue found in baby teeth and the incidence of cancer in those same donors about 40 to 50 years later. The authors found that the level of strontium 90 was 122 percent higher in teeth of 50-year-old men who had cancer than those without. Strontium 90 is not naturally occurring on Earth and is produced in atomic explosions. It is readily absorbed into calcium-rich teeth and bones.

The study got its start in 2001 when Washington University rediscovered 85,000 baby teeth stored in its Tyson Research Center since the 1970s. Those teeth were originally part of the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey, in which nearly 300,000 area children sent their teeth to local researchers who then determined that children were absorbing radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests.

Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project in New York, said it took nine years to get funding for the newer study to track down about 1,000 male donors, analyze the teeth and make the comparisons. The researchers first shared their results publicly about 14 months ago.

"Discovering high fallout levels in U.S. baby boomers exposed as infants during the Cold War who died of cancer at an early age is an important step in the effort to understand damage from bomb testing," Mangano said.

Mangano said he hopes to further study teeth to determine possible links to other health conditions.