Re: More on baby teeth/Sr-90 in environment/Basic radiation points

[RadiumProj@cs.com]

The organizers of this study are obviously doing what they are doing not for 
any legitimate scientific purpose but for its pure appeal to the media and 
the public on an emotional level.

However looking at a few basic numbers regarding Sr-90 levels in the 
environment may be helpful in considering just how silly their study is. To 
wit.

Within a few years following the ban of open air nuclear weapon's testing in 
1963 total Sr-90 deposition in the northern hemisphere peaked at about 12 
million curies [excuse my old units]. Let say that by about 1980, based on 
Sr-90 half life a little more than 8 million Ci of Sr-90 remained. The Tooth 
Fairy organizers are claiming that Sr-90 from nuclear plants is somehow 
causing Sr-90 in baby teeth to increase of late.

Think about the point - what is the annual decay of the environmental 
inventory of Sr-90 at any point in time post 1963. As of 1980, the 8 MCi was 
decaying at a rate of about 190,000 Ci year. Just to maintain the 
environmental inventory of Sr-90 in the northern hemisphere, nuclear plants 
would have had to be pumping out 190,000 Ci per year of Sr-90 from 1980 on,  
This needed level of total release to the environment is likely [I'm not sure 
of the average Sr-90 releases of today's nuclear plants, but I know its 
probably a mCi/year or less - input anyone??] a million fold greater than the 
actual release of nuclear plants into the environment. Accordingly, the hope 
of the Tooth Fairy study in claiming to find increases in baby teeth linked 
to nuclear plant emissions is a fairy tale at best.

Their expectations and claims fail on a first order analysis of activity in 
the environment from fallout and annual and cumulative inventory of Sr-90 
from nuclear plants.

BTW. Their claims of higher Sr-90 levels in S. Florida is interesting. Back 
in the 1960s the highest levels of Cs-137 in milk were being seen in Florida 
and the Caribbean not because this region had the highest level of bomb 
fallout but because its soil was very deficient in K and therefore there was 
a higher transfer of Cs from soil to plants and into milk.

In the early 1990s when I sampled woodash from all over the country as part 
of a study I conducted [paper presented at HPS Annual Meeting in Washington 
in 1991: "Cs-137 in Woodash -Results of Nationwide Study; or Woodburners and 
Organic Farmers --Is it Time to Kiss Your Ash Goodbye?] Cs-137 levels in 
woodash were measured and found to vary from about 100 pCi/kg of woodash up 
to about 20,000 pCi/kg of woodash for fairly even bomb deposition across the 
US [about a factor of 3 or so variation in total deposition]. Subsequent 
measurements I made of woodash from northern Florida for Cs-137 [my 
sister-in-laws fireplace ash] showed it to exceed 30,000 pCi/kg. Florida has 
lower than average cumulative Cs& Sr deposition than the rest of the nation 
from fallout.  I don't know what the average Ca levels are in Fl soil but if 
they tend to be low on average vs. the rest of the US,  than more residual 
bomb test Sr-90 will also find its way into the food chain in FL than 
elsewhere for any unit deposition.  This is because just as with K and Cs, 
there is an inverse relationship between soil levels of Ca and Sr-90 uptake. 
The lower the K or Ca, the higher the level of Cs or Sr uptake respectively. 
If indeed Sr-90 levels in baby teeth from FL really exits, this might account 
for the Tooth Fairy project's findings of somewhat higher Sr-90 levels in 
baby teeth from FL, due to residual weapon's test fallout. Perhaps someone FL 
can advise Radsafe as to what the levels of stable Ca is from various parts 
of FL.

Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
Public Health Sciences
Director - Radium Experiment Assessment Project
172 Old Orchard Way
Warren, VT 05674
[802] 496-3356
email: radiumproj@cs.com
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