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TFP update article, E Magazine







Mark Graffis wrote:



> Baby teeth studies reveal childhood radiation exposure

>

> Friday, September 13, 2002

>

> By Joni Praded, E/The Environmental Magazine

>

> The discovery came last spring. Some Washington University researchers

> were wading through a musty old ammunition bunker at Missouri's Tyson

> Research Center, doing some cleaning.

>

> There they stumbled across a bizarre find: hundreds of boxes

> containing baby teeth. Each tooth was accompanied by a card carrying

> details of the child who lost it. There were 85,000 teeth in all, and

> stumped university administrators nearly discarded them.

>

> Luckily, they didn't; the cached teeth turned out to be a scientific

> treasure trove. Over the next few years, they will give researchers

> the rare chance to measure how radiation levels in children's bodies

> affect their health in later life.

>

> The teeth were unused specimens from the St. Louis Baby-Tooth Survey,

> a massive public health study mobilized by scientist and antinuclear

> activist Barry Commoner from 1958 to 1970.

>

> The United States had been conducting above-ground nuclear weapons

> tests, setting off about 100 bombs in the American West in the years

> following World War II. Radioactive fallout was increasingly detected

> in milk supplies and in the environment, and the public was growing

> uneasy about how much radiation might be accumulating in their own

> bodies and what ills it might spur.

>

> Researchers working on the survey collected some 300,000 baby teeth

> from children in the St. Louis area to see if strontium-90 (a

> carcinogenic radioactive agent) was accumulating in their bodies. They

> found that the amount of strontium-90 in those teeth rose dramatically

> during bomb-test periods and fell dramatically after testing ceased.

> This helped spur the United States to sign the 1963 treaty banning

> atmospheric bomb tests.

>

> TRACKING THE BABIES

>

> But what happened to those St. Louis children later in life? Did their

> exposure lead to high cancer rates or other illnesses? No one knows,

> but Joe Mangano and his colleagues at the New York-based Radiation and

> Public Health Project (RPHP) now have the opportunity to find out.

>

> The 85,000-tooth goldmine has been shipped to RPHP's lab, the only

> place in the United States currently measuring the level of radiation

> in people's bodies. (The U.S. government hasn't funded such research

> in nearly 20 years.)

>

> These modern-day tooth fairies test fallen teeth from children born

> near nuclear power plants. And like their predecessors, their aim is

> to find out how much strontium-90 resides in these children's bodies

> and what impact it has on them. Says Mangano, the St. Louis teeth have

> provided an opportunity to follow the medical histories of thousands

> of people with known levels of childhood radiation exposure.

>

> For countless boomers who strolled around in the 1950s and '60s

> wearing "I Gave My Tooth to Science" pins, the news of the tooth

> discovery has revived old questions. As they heard about the find,

> many of them began contacting Mangano. "So far, 2,150 people have

> called, and they're all willing to fill out health questionnaires,"

> said Mangano. RPHP's task is to match teeth with owners, analyze

> radiation levels and health histories, and begin to assess what impact

> the Cold War fallout had on public health.

>

> "It's not an idle look into the past," said Mangano. "It's about the

> present and the future." And the reason why should pique the interest

> of every parent, because many of the teeth from today's children show

> strontium-90 levels as high as those found in St. Louis children at

> the height of the atmospheric bomb tests.

>

> WHAT RADIATION?

>

> But where is today's radiation coming from? Not from residual bomb

> fallout, say nuclear experts: Strontium-90 from the bomb tests would

> have decayed to fairly low levels by now. According to RPHP studies

> published in peer-reviewed journals, the radioactive agent appears to

> be highest in children born near nuclear power plants.

>

> Strontium-90 enters human bodies through cow's milk, water, and fruits

> and vegetables grown in soil exposed to radioactive runoff or

> contaminated rainfall. Since it mimics the calcium fetuses and young

> children need to form teeth and bones, it easily permeates growing

> bodies. Once there, it can disturb bone marrow -- where the immune

> system forms the white cells that fight cancer, bacteria, and viruses.

> All of this, postulate researchers, puts exposed children at risk of

> leukemia, cancer, and infectious diseases.

>

> Over the past few years, Mangano and his fellow researchers have

> released their findings on some 2,000 teeth from children born near

> reactors in five states. In some regions, the researchers have shown

> that radiation levels and death rates from childhood cancers have

> grown at an almost identical pace. They have also found that when

> reactors close, area infant mortality rates improve dramatically, and

> cancer mortality rates of those over 65 improve even more

> significantly.

>

> So far, teeth from children born in Miami-Dade County and other

> southeastern Florida counties have the highest concentrations of

> strontium-90 in the United States, which might be explained by the

> fact that two nuclear reactors there emitted 10.39 trillion picocuries

> of radioactivity into the air between 1970 and 1987, an amount equal

> to about three-fourths of all the radioactivity released during the

> infamous Three Mile Island accident.

>

> In the same region, cancer rates for children under 10 rose 35.2

> percent from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, compared to a 10.8

> percent rise nationwide, according to one RPHP report. Breast cancer

> mortality rates are up 26 percent near one of the reactors and 55

> percent near the other, compared to a 1 percent increase nationwide.

>

> Childhood cancer rates jumped 75 percent in the San Louis Obispo,

> Calif., area after a reactor opened there. In Pennsylvania, the baby

> tooth researchers also tracked a rise in childhood cancers that

> corresponded with a reactor opening. "We think that when you have this

> documented increase in radiation in the body after the reactor is

> opened, followed by an increase in childhood cancer, this is strong

> evidence suggesting a cause-and-effect relationship," said Mangano.

>

> A CALL TO ACTION

>

> As startling as they are, RPHP findings haven't yet translated into

> public policy, which worries the researchers more than ever. Little

> more than a year ago, most pundits were predicting a gradual phase-out

> of nuclear power in the United States. But now the Bush Administration

> wants to license new nuclear power plants, and many of the 103 nuclear

> power plants soon up for relicensing may get a previously unexpected

> extended lease on life.

>

> According to Victor Sidel, past president of the American Public

> Health Association, "The [RPHP] studies are certainly cause for others

> to be done. If the findings are the same, then that's cause for social

> policy to be based upon them." The odds of other studies getting

> underway, though, do not appear high. The baby-tooth researchers have

> had to rely on private grants and direct-mail appeals for funding and

> volunteers to solicit teeth.

>

> Connecticut nurse Agnes Reynolds is one of those volunteers. The

> mother of a 9-year-old boy battling leukemia, Reynolds doesn't know

> what caused her son's illness. But she does want to know why childhood

> cancer rates are soaring among children living near nuclear power

> plants, as her family does.

>

> So she asks parents to snatch fallen teeth from beneath their

> children's pillows and donate them to the baby tooth project. She

> posts messages to online parenting groups, stocks flyers in waiting

> rooms, and otherwise helps to get the 3,000 new baby teeth needed for

> further study. She wants people "to pay attention" to the risks around

> them. That's a lesson she says she may have learned the hard way.

> Unless the government taboo on studying radiation-caused health risks

> is broken, say researchers, countless others will too.

>

> New Hampshire-based writer Joni Praded covers wildlife and

> environmental issues for a variety of magazines.

>

> Copyright 2002, E/The Environmental Magazine

>

>

>

>

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