Re: RADSAFE digest 3143

[Norman & Karen Cohen <norco@bellatlantic.net>]

I'll answer what I can. in the dashes --------

Holloway3@aol.com wrote:

> Norm writes:
>
> <<
>
> Thanks for your efforts in obtaining this information.
> It would be interesting to see the geographic location of the teeth.
> Apparently, the Tooth Fairy Project is not yet releasing any information,
> even on their analytical techniques.  (I note that as of  the middle of 1998,
> they had collected 400 teeth).

------- You are correct that they are not releasing any specific info. As it was
explained to me, this is to limit criticism that samples are too small or too
concentrated in one area or another.
They want 1000s of teeth and teeth from all over the country.  As of now, teeth
collected are mostly from nuclear counties, as I suggested in a previous post.
Thats mainly do to where the activists and concerned citizens are. I would
venture a guess that as they collect enough teeth from nuclear areas and get them
analyzed, and that will take awhile, then they will look for "non-nuclear",
control teeth. ---------------


> There are many other possible answers, in
> addition to your favorite one.   I can think of a number of other
> explanations as to why the Sr-90 levels might be almost constant over a
> decade.  For example, how can you rule out a change in food sources to
> sources that might have a higher Sr-90 content, enough to counteract the
> decline due to decay?  People's diets do change over time and one thing that
> is certain is that Sr-90 is not at the same level in all foods.   The time
> period from the early 1980s to the early 1990s corresponded to a big
> improvement in the economy.  You cannot rule out that this improvement may
> have changed the average diet and with it, perhaps the average Sr-90 content.
>  There are many other possibilities, contrary to the claim that it can only
> be due to reactors.   The answer favored by the Tooth Fairy Project, that of
> reactor emissions, does not make sense if the emissions are
> insignificant.Incidentally, the time period mentioned above, where the claim is
> made that there is virtually no change in teeth, covers only a 10 year period -
> short in comparison to the 29 year half -life of Sr-90.  A large decrease would
> not be expected even if all of it is from fallout.

--------- i believe that sr-90 peaked several years after nuke testing stopped,
and then began a slow decline through the 1970s. From the late 70s on, and
especially into the 80s, sr-90 began to either increase or no longer decrease.
No, I don't have the citiations in front of me! :) -----

>  I am not sure what is meant

> by "virtually no change" - perhaps they are admitting a small decrease? In
> any event the preliminary results you mention are not especially remarkable.
> One other important factor is the geographic origin of the teeth.  Sr-90 from
> fallout is not evenly distributed over the country.  Considerable variations
> are to be expected.  In general, rainy areas of the country will have a lot
> more Sr-90 than dry areas and there may also be variations due to latitude,
> acidity of rainfall and soil type.  I understand that the teeth collection is
> coming from many different locations.   They are also going to have to take
> into account the large regional differences in the Sr-90 content of the soil.
>  Unless the project also studies food sources and the Sr-90 in those food
> sources, then it would seem to be of limited value. For example,  one could
> imagine, if your friends are right, that some particular food, grown a few
> miles from a reactor, might be elevated in Sr-90 and that this elevation
> could then be traced to particular teeth.  But oddly enough, the idea of
> measuring Sr-90 near a reactor, in food crops, does not seem to have been
> included in the Tooth Fairy project.  It is odd that they do not want to try
> the obvious and most straight forward approach, that of trying to trace the
> Sr-90 from its source to the teeth.
>

--------- I touched on this previously. Even with movie stars, RPHP is a small
non-profit, and they felt that they could not afford a massive study like what
you suggested, Instead, because
the sr-90 study was already done in the 50s (the "St Louis study among others) it
was decided
to focus on baby teeth as a beginning to further study, with the hope that any
massive study wouldl be funded at least with the help of federal monies ---------

>
> But Sternglass and Gould are doing something that is new for them.  They are
> producing measurements of their own, although perhaps not personally doing
> the work.  The big advantage of doing one's own measurements is that you
> learn something about the limitations of your results and the uncertainty of
> the measurements (all measurements have uncertainty, whether stated or not).
> Previously, they worked mostly with death rates of various sorts produced by
> various government agencies.  I suspect that no one really knows the quality
> of that data and especially how the quality has changed over several decades.
> This is an issue that they never seem to have mentioned.

> To give an example of the pitfalls of drawing conclusions from data produced
> by others, I will cite the recent paper by Mangano in Environmental
> Epidemiology and Toxicology (2000) 2, pp. 32 - 36.  Mangano attempts to show
> an effect of the Rancho Seco Power plant by citing slight increases in the
> level of Iodine-131 present in Sacremento's pasteurized milk.  He mentions
> that while the reactor was closed for repairs, the I-131 content was 1.91 pCi
> (presumably per liter) and after restart, it rose to 2.67 and 2.54 in 1988
> and 1989 and fell to 1.82 in 1990. What he did not mention was the
> uncertainty in those measurements.  If these measurements are typical, they
> are very near the detection limits and the uncertainty (error term)  may be
> quite high, perhaps as much as 40%.  So there is a good possibility that the
> numbers he cited have overlapping error bars and therefore the slight
> differences are not of any statistical significance and his conclusions are
> faulty.  Whatever the size of the error term, he was working with numbers
> that are extremely low and most investigators learn not to make too much out
> of differences between numbers that are very near the detection limit.
>

-------- Again, I think that these studies by Mangano, which are admittedly
statistical studies,
are not meant to be the final word, but more to raise a red flag for further work
and to
push the idea that we need lots of baby teeth to help verify his studies------

norm



>
> R. Holloway
> holloway3@aol.com
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