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Toothfairy strikes again....
Toothfairy strikes again.....for those who are interested. the entire article can be found ..http://www.westchesterweekly.com/articles/toothfairy.html
How the Indian Point reactors are
harming our children.
By Lorraine Gengo
I keep my son's baby teeth in a little Ziplock bag
in my jewelry box. It's one of my maternal
quirks, I guess, but after tiptoeing into his room
to replace his lost tooth with a dollar bill I
couldn't bring myself to discard that little
precious kernel in the trash. It had taken so
much wiggling and cajoling to come out, and it
was a part of him and his rapidly vanishing
babyhood.
My son is 7 and he's only lost a couple of his
baby teeth. Perhaps by baby tooth No. 20 I will
have become inured to such sentimentality. But I
suspect not. And, I suspect, there are many
mothers like me who save their children's baby
teeth because they love their children so
immensely that they would like to freeze frame
and keep them children forever. But since we
can't, we keep their teeth as markers, mementos
of innocent times.
These same mothers and fathers expend
enormous amounts of energy and make many
personal sacrifices to keep their children safe
from harm. We buy baby monitors to eavesdrop
on them while they sleep, we erect baby gates
and baby-proof our homes, we immunize them
against childhood diseases, we strap them into
expensive car seats and insist that they wear a
helmet when they ride their bikes or scooters.
We take countless precautions daily because
that's our No. 1 job -- to make sure our kids
reach adulthood in one piece.
The terrible irony is, that sweet symbol of
childhood passing, that baby tooth, contains a
time bomb for many children. The danger that
we haven't been able to protect our children
from is a manmade substance called
Strontium-90 (Sr-90), one of the deadliest
products of nuclear fission that nuclear power
plants have been emitting through accidental
releases like the one that occurred Feb. 15 at
Indian Point and through regular allowable
emissions that the government classifies as
"below regulatory concern." The chemical
makeup of Sr-90 is so similar to that of calcium
that the body gets fooled and it stores the Sr-90
deposits in the bones and teeth, where it
remains for many years. As Sr-90 decays over
time, it kills or impairs cells in the bone
marrow, which is the seat of our immune
system, resulting in an increase of childhood
cancers such as leukemia, bone cance and
multiple myelomas and a surge in childhood
asthma rates that haven't been seen since the
years of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons
in the 1950s.
Sr-90 has been found in higher-than-expected
levels in the baby teeth of children born in the
1980s and early 1990s in Westchester and
Suffolk counties in New York, and in Tom's
River, N.J., and Miami, Fla. (all areas that are
home to nuclear reactors), according to the
Manhattan-based Radiation and Public Health
Project (RPHP), a nonprofit scientific
organization dedicated to understanding the
effects of low-level nuclear radiation on public
health. The federal government stopped testing
for Sr-90 in humans in 1982.
"At what levels will [Sr-90] induce harm?
That's the big question," says Joseph Mangano,
a research associate with RPHP, who has been
studying that question intensely for the past two
years.
In early 1999, RPHP mailed a letter to 15,000
households with children ages 6-18 in New
York and New Jersey requesting that parents
donate their children's baby teeth to the
organization's Tooth Fairy Project. The letter
was signed by the actor Alec Baldwin, whose
mother, a native of Long Island, survived breast
cancer and became an activist as a result.
Baldwin himself became familiar with the
Tooth Fairy Project when RPHP was collecting
teeth in Suffolk County. In response to the
campaign, mothers throughout the New York
metropolitan area dug through their jewelry
boxes and put their children's teeth in envelopes
and mailed them to RPHP.
In the year and a half since that mailing, RPHP
has collected 2,250 baby teeth; of that number,
1,463 teeth have been processed and measured
for levels of Sr-90. What researchers found was
alarming: Sr-90 concentrations in the baby teeth
of children born mainly after the end of
worldwide atmospheric nuclear bomb tests in
1980 were found to equal the level in children
born in the mid to late 1950s, when the United
States and the former Soviet Union were
conducting routine aboveground nuclear bomb
tests. What's more, RPHP researchers were
able to document a significant correlation
between Sr-90 levels in baby teeth culled from
Suffolk County and the incidence of cancer in
young children.
Last month, two peer review journals, Archives
of Environmental Health and the International
Journal of Health Services, both published
RPHP's findings in a paper entitled
"Strontium-90 in Baby Teeth as a Factor in
Early Childhood Cancer." (To read the full
report, visit RPHP's web site at
www.radiation.org.)
"Of course, we have our detractors who say this
is voodoo science, but we have two journals to
point to now that say our methods are
professionally acceptable," Mangano quipped.
In Suffolk County, where 563 baby teeth were
measured for Sr-90, researchers were able to
chart, year-by-year, dates of birth and the
childhood cancer rate. "And the two lines are
paralleling each other," Mangano said. "This
isn't the last word of proof in science, but it's a
strong indication that there is a statistical link
here."
Mangano said that RPHP's goal is to create a
similar chart for Westchester, where so far
researchers have collected only 73 baby teeth,
not nearly enough to constitute a statistically
significant sample. However, Mangano said,
Westchester's sampling shows similar levels of
Sr-90 and similar patterns correlating Sr-90
with the cancer rate in young children.
The RPHP study also strongly points to the
"major role of nuclear reactor releases in the
recent increase in cancer and other immune
system-related disorders in young children in
the United States since the early 1980s."
"A radioactive particle does not come with a
label: 'I'm from Indian Point.' But we can
reasonably presume that this is primarily an
Indian Point issue," noted Mangano. "Some
other areas are easier to draw a correlation
between the reactor and the levels of Sr-90,"
such as the Turkey Point reactors 3 & 4 in
southern Florida, where there are no other
reactors.
Unfortunately, we live in a geographic area rich
with nuclear reactors: with two nuclear plants
in Connecticut -- Millstone in New London and
Haddam Neck near Middletown -- and the
Oyster Creek plant near Tom's River, N.J., plus
the now-closed Brookhaven National
Laboratories in Suffolk County, N.Y., we are
virtually surrounded.
RPHP's latest findings concerning levels of
Sr-90 and cancer rates in Westchester children
are expected to be announced Nov. 2 at an open
meeting of the county board of legislators'
health committee, chaired by Tom Abinanti, one
of the few county legislators to call for shutting
down Indian Point after the Feb. 15 incident in
which the Indian Point 2 reactor released
radioactive steam from a leaky generator. Alec
Baldwin will present RPHP's findings to the
legislators and members of the public, who are
urged to attend the 10 a.m. meeting on the 8th
floor of the 800 Michaelian Office Building at
148 Martine Ave. in White Plains. The meeting
will be followed by a press conference at 11:30
a.m., when Baldwin will address the media.
Mangano said he hoped that local members of
Congress will be in attendance.
When contacted last week, Abinanti said that
his colleagues were not yet aware that the
Hollywood actor was going to address them on
the dangers of low-level radiation from their
controversial hometown reactor. Despite the
fact that county officials have little control over
the current operations or the future disposition
of Indian Point, Abinanti said it was important
to have RPHP's findings on the public record
and for county officials to be aware of this issue
so that the county could then lobby the state's
public health department as well as the federal
regulatory agencies.
"As locally elected officials, we have to
highlight the health hazard that is present in our
Westchester community. I have a mandate to
protect people," said the legislator from
Greenburgh.
The federal government no longer checks for
Sr-90 in baby teeth, which is why RPHP
launched its own national study. RPHP hopes to
collect 5,000 teeth from counties with nuclear
reactors all over the country in the next several
years to gather enough clinical evidence to
determine whether nuclear power is
contributing to America's cancer epidemic.
RPHP's baby teeth study has a compelling
historical precedent. In 1954, three years after
the first atmospheric nuclear weapons tests
were conducted in Nevada, public health
officials, responding to widespread public
concern, began monitoring levels of
radioactivity in human bones and teeth. They
also used Sr-90 as a measure because this
radioisotope's long half-life of 28.7 years
makes it very feasible to study over a broad
period of time.
What these public health officials discovered
was that Sr-90 levels increased precipitously
from 1954-1964, when aboveground testing
was allowed, and then declined sharply after a
ban went into effect, ending American, British
and Soviet atmospheric nuclear weapons tests.
The countries that agreed to the ban switched to
underground testing after 1964.
What led to the historic Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty between the United States and the
U.S.S.R. in 1963 was an independent study
conducted by scientists who were also
concerned about the increasing fallout from
aboveground testing. Organized by Dr. Barry
Commoner, dental associations in St. Louis
began collecting baby teeth in 1958 to
determine Sr-90 levels since the commencement
of bomb testing in 1945. Between 1958 and
1963, the St. Louis tooth fairy project, known
officially as the Committee for Nuclear
Information (CNI), collected more than 60,000
teeth. The St. Louis researchers soon found that
there had been statistically significant increases
in Sr-90 levels since 1951. Their baby-tooth
analysis showed a rise in Sr-90 levels from .77
picocuries of Sr-90 per gram of calcium for
1954 births to a peak of 11 picocuries of Sr-90
per gram of calcium in babies who were born in
1964, just after the Test Ban Treaty went into
effect. Sr-90 levels declined by more than half
from 1964 to 1970 after aboveground testing
ceased.
What's really frightening is how this data
correlated with the changes in the cancer rate
among young children in Connecticut, the only
state that tracked cancerous tumors during this
time period. Childhood cancer in Connecticut
reached a peak in 1964 and then plummeted in
the latter half of the 1960s. However, with the
proliferation of nuclear power plants coming
online in the 1970s -- Connecticut had four
operating nuclear reactors -- the childhood
cancer rates began again to skyrocket.
According to RPHP's recently published report
in the International Journal of Health Services,
Connecticut's cancer rate, which was as low as
14.42 cases per 100,000 children in the late
1960s, reached 21.95 cases per 100,000 in the
late 1980s, an increase of more than 52 percent.
That should come as no surprise given the
troubled safety record of Connecticut's reactors.
Haddam Neck and Millstone have released 32.6
curies of radioactive emissions since 1970 --
the third highest release among all U.S. nuclear
plants. This total far exceeds the 14.2 curies
that were released during the 1979 Three Mile
Island accident. In the winter of 1995-'96, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission shut down all
three Millstone reactors due to safety
violations. While Unit 1 was closed
permanently, the other two reactors were
brought back online after extensive
improvements were made. But the damage was
already done. Thyroid cancer, which is known
to be caused by exposure to radioactive iodine,
reached significantly high levels in New
London, near Millstone, in the late 1980s and
early '90s before the plant was shut down.
What Alec Baldwin is expected to tell
Westchester County legislators in early
November is that the latest results of RPHP's
baby teeth study show Sr-90 levels that are
about three times higher than the levels
expected based on the findings of the original
Tooth Fairy Project. The current study of
children born in the 1980s and early 1990s
shows 1.5 picocuries of Sr-90 per gram of
calcium, according to Mangano. "0.1 or 0.2
picocuries is what we would have expected to
find if things had continued like they did after
the bomb tests were curtailed," Mangano added.
Baldwin is expected to release specific data on
Sr-90 levels and its relationship to cancer in
Westchester children.
The fact that Sr-90 levels are not dissipating as
they did in the St. Louis study and are, in fact,
increasing in some areas indicates the major
role emissions from nuclear reactors play,
notwithstanding accidents like Chernobyl, the
radioactive clouds from which rained nuclear
fallout on the United States in May 1986.
"The average levels of Sr-90 are not changing
and we would have expected to see them go
down," Mangano explained. "What's in kids'
teeth now has got to be from something other
than fallout from nuclear bomb testing. It's got to
be coming from emissions from nuclear
reactors."
RPHP researchers hope that once public
officials become aware of the mounting clinical
evidence that their findings will have the
breakthrough policy impact of the first baby
teeth study, which led President John F.
Kennedy and Congress to ratify the Test Ban
Treaty.
Short of a mandate to shut down all nuclear
reactors, RPHP would at the very least like the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission to examine
local health patterns when these reactors come
up for re-licensing. At present, public health
issues aren't even a consideration.
There are two ways that a fetus can acquire
Sr-90: through the mother's diet and through
maternal bone stores. Adults acquire Sr-90 in
their bones through contaminated drinking water
and through food supplies that have been grown
with soil and water that contain the
radioisotope. The winds carry radioactive
emissions that come to earth when it rains,
cows eat the contaminated grass and
Sr-90-laced milk is the result.
A fetus is much more sensitive than an adult or
even a child to the harm caused by small
exposures to radiation, because a fetus is
undergoing rapid cell growth. However,
permissible low-level releases from nuclear
reactors are based on what might be safe for an
adult, not a fetus.
RPHP's report "Strontium-90 in Baby Teeth as
a Factor in Early Childhood Cancer" cites huge
increases in a number of diseases among
American infants and young children since the
early 1980s due to immune system damage from
exposure to radioactivity. "In New York State,
with a majority of the population living within
50 miles of the troubled Indian Point reactors,
cancer incidence age 0-1 from 1980-'82 to
1991-'93 increased 97.8 percent, compared to
35.2 percent for all children under 5 years of
age," according to the report.
Asthma has also become an epidemic,
particularly among children. From about 1980
to the mid-1990s, the prevalence of asthma in
children surged 160.4 percent. I don't need
RPHP's statistics to convince me of that. My
son developed asthma when he was 4. The
nurse at his elementary school showed me the
large cabinet in her office that is filled with
children's asthma medications; it used to be that
asthma meds took up a single shelf, she
lamented.
So, are spiraling childhood leukemia and
asthma rates a fact of life that we as parents are
just going to get used to? Like mothers in Africa
who must resign themselves to the fact that half
the children born to them will die of AIDS
before they reach 16, are we in this country
willing to accept that there's a 40 percent
chance of being diagnosed with cancer in our
lifetimes?
"To me, there should be such a frantic attempt at
preventing cancer, but we're not really doing
it," says Mangano when posed with these
questions. "It's only focused on individuals:
'Stop smoking, Joe. Put more fiber in your diet
so you don't get colon cancer.' But when it
comes to nuclear reactors there's silence."
There are three entities that should be held
accountable for the adverse health effects of
nuclear power plants. The first is the utilities
that operate the plants. In the case of Indian
Point, that would be Consolidated Edison and
the New York Power Authority. The second
group that should be looking out for the public's
best interests is the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, which is supposed to monitor
plants to ensure that they don't pose a threat to
public health, and which has the authority to
issue licenses or shut plants down. And then
there are the state and county health
departments, which have a mandate to protect
the public health.
"In all three cases, they have failed in this
mission," Mangano asserted. "They have taken
the concept that low-level emissions are not a
threat and as long as they're low they won't
acknowledge that there's any possibility that
there's harm being done to the community, and
that's irresponsible and dangerous. That's not
just the case with Indian Point -- it's across the
country."
But there is a silver lining. This past spring,
Mangano began looking into what happens to
people who live near reactors once the reactor
is shut down. "To my knowledge, no one has
ever looked at what happens to public health
once a plant closes," he said. That's because all
the debate surrounding plant closures is usually
about whether it will cost ratepayers more for
electricity. Mangano chose seven shuttered
reactors, including the Rancho Seco plant in
Sacramento, Calif., and studied the infant
mortality rates in the communities surrounding
those reactors. He also looked at cancer rates in
people over the age of 65, since the elderly are
also more vulnerable to the effects of
radioactivity. Both infant deaths and cancer
deaths of the elderly dropped sharply when
reactors were closed. "It's very doubtful that the
results were due to any other factor," said
Mangano, who presented his findings last April
at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
But what's a mother to do? Margo Schepart
found her answer six years ago when she and
her husband Daryl were awakened on a Friday
morning by the sounding of Indian Point's
warning sirens. The couple, who live in
Peekskill, were used to hearing the sirens
during the routine test drills, but those were
usually done on Tuesdays at 11 a.m. and the
sirens weren't sounded at full volume like the
blasts they heard on this particular morning.
"I had the feeling of what it would be like in a
real emergency. It gave me a taste of panic,"
recalled Schepart. A faulty electrical wire was
to blame for the scare, but it was enough to
motivate Schepart to become involved with
local anti-nuke activists.
Worried about Westchester's high breast cancer
rates and the health and safety of her two
children, Schepart began writing letters to local
newspapers and TV stations about the dangers
posed by Indian Point. "But it wasn't going
anywhere," she said. "All these people care
about is getting their kids to soccer practice."
Out of frustration, Schepart and her husband
raised the money to buy billboard space to get
across their message -- that there's no escape
from low-level radiation and no escape route
from Indian Point. No Escape, the group that
grew out of the billboard, now has its own web
site and its members regularly dress up in
radiation suits and hold protests along Rte. 202
and Rte. 6 to bring attention to the issue.
Schepart said she first heard of the Tooth Fairy
Project when she went to hear Dr. Jay Gould
speak at One Station Plaza in Peekskill. Gould
and Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass co-founded RPHP
in 1995. For the past three years, Schepart has
been Westchester's very own tooth fairy. She
can be found, dressed in full fairy costume, at
crafts fairs and various festivals handing out
envelopes to children and their parents, urging
them to send in their baby teeth for RPHP's
landmark study. To draw a crowd, Schepart
said, she plays her guitar and sings this pretty
little ditty: "Please, donate a tooth for
science/we're counting on your
compliance/we're measuring radiation in
children across the nation/to see how far the
poisons reach/scientists around the country and
the world have evidence to prove it's true/when
radiation flies you can see the cancers rise/but
there's a little something you can do...
"I'm absolutely having an impact," she asserts.
And I believe her.
Where to Go From Here
If what you've read in these pages troubles you,
here are some practical steps you can take to
make a difference:
First of all, participate in the RPHP's
landmark scientific study by donating a lost
baby tooth. You can acquire a pre-addressed
tooth fairy envelope by going to RPHP's web
site at www.radiation.org.
Attend the county health committee's meeting
at 10 a.m. or the press conference at 11:30 a.m.
on Thursday, Nov. 2, on the 8th floor of the 800
Michaelian Office Building, 148 Martine Ave.
in White Plains, directly across from the old
mall.
Get politically active by joining citizen-based
groups like No Escape or the Westchester
People's Action Coalition (WESPAC) that are
demanding that utility companies be held
accountable for the public health hazards
caused by nuclear reactors. For more
information, call WESPAC at (914) 682-0488.
As far as protecting your own health, the No. 1
thing you can do is work to shut down Indian
Point by writing and calling your county
legislator and your local congresspeople.
Remember, once an unsafe plant is closed, the
cancer rates go down and people's health
improves.
Take your vitamins, especially if you're
pregnant. Antioxidants like vitamins C and E
help the body counteract the damage caused by
environmental pollutants. If you're pregnant,
take folic acid in dosages recommended by your
doctor.
Wizard of Science
How an economic statistician and
a lunar research scientist joined
forces to fight the public health
threat posed by nuclear power.
By Chile Mayo
"I never lost a case," says Dr. Jay Gould, during
an interview in his spacious apartment on
Manhattan's Upper West Side. Gould is
co-founder and co-director of the Radiation
Public Health Project (RPHP), a
Manhattan-based non-profit, which seeks to
research and publicize the health effects of
low-level radiation.
By profession, Gould is an economic
statistician who first made his mark as an expert
witness in Justice Department antitrust suits
where he pioneered the use of statistics in
determining market shares, later going on to do
the same in disputes between corporations. No
chest beating. The voice doesn't rise a quark.
He's merely stating a conclusion based on
irrefutable statistics. Of rather frail stature,
Gould is a gray man lit up by crackling black
eyes. At 80, he possesses a mind honed by vast
experience.
Gould and Dr. Ernest Sternglass co-founded
RPHP in 1995. Using RPHP's computer
research capacity and funding from the STAR
(Standing for Truth Concerning Radiation)
Foundation, Gould is currently squaring off to
shut down Indian Point reactors 2 and 3, which
he calls his "neighborhood nukes." The Indian
Point plant is situated in Buchanan, only 30
miles upriver from Gould's apartment, which as
the radiation flies is not far. In 1999, the
ever-resourceful Dr. Sternglass came up with
the idea of RPHP doing independent
monitoring. He proposed measuring the level of
the man-made radioactive element Strontium-90
in baby teeth. This is a reprisal of a study
organized by Dr. Barry Commoner, who
mobilized dentists at St. Louis University to
collect and analyze thousands of little pearly
whites after the 1950s Nevada bomb tests. That
study helped to convince President Kennedy to
sign the 1963 Test Ban Treaty that curtailed
atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.
Gould's corporate clients included Monsanto,
DuPont and IBM. Westinghouse e
Patricia A Milligan, CHP
pxm@nrc.gov
301-415-2223
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