Tooth Fairy (Project) Comes to Hackensack University MedicalCenter

["Williamson, Matthew/Medical Physics" <willim01@MSKCC.ORG>]

N.J. funds cancer study    



Thursday, November 13, 2003 



By BOB GROVES

STAFF WRITER 



  



New Jersey is collecting the baby teeth of children with cancer for a

controversial study of whether they might have become ill from radiation

produced by nuclear power plants.



Researchers with the study - called the Tooth Fairy Project - have

received a $25,000 grant from the state Legislature to collect at least

50 baby teeth from New Jersey's young cancer patients, and to test the

teeth for levels of strontium 90, a carcinogenic, radioactive chemical

produced by nuclear reactors.



"Strontium 90 is one of more than 100 chemicals only found in nuclear

reactors or an atomic bomb. It doesn't exist in nature," Joseph Mangano

said at a news conference at Hackensack University Medical Center.

Mangano is head of the Radiation and Public Health Project, a non-profit

group based in Brooklyn that is conducting the study.



Strontium 90 travels through the air in the form of tiny, yellow metal

particles, Mangano explained. The chemical, abbreviated as Sr-90, enters

the body when a person eats and breathes, and attaches to teeth and

bone. It decays very slowly and is easy to test for, he said.



The study will try to determine whether nuclear power plants, under

normal operating conditions, can make people sick.



The funding for the study was announced Wednesday at the Don Imus-WFAN

Pediatric Center for Tomorrows Children at the medical center. The event

was attended by Governor McGreevey, New Jersey Health Commissioner

Clifton R. Lacy, hospital officials, and Assemblyman Matt Ahearn of Fair

Lawn, the former Democrat who recently lost his reelection bid as a

member of the Green Party. Ahearn co-sponsored the Tooth Fairy Project

appropriation.



Mangano, who has a master's degree in public health, began studying

levels of strontium 90 in the baby teeth of healthy children in several

states, including New Jersey, in 1998. These earlier studies found a 50

percent overall increase of strontium 90 in the teeth of children born

in the late 1990s compared with those born in the late 1980s, Mangano

said.



In New Jersey, there was a 70 percent increase in strontium 90 between

the two groups, with the highest levels in residents of Ocean and

Monmouth counties, the closest areas to the Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant,

he said. That study, however, did not point to the plants as a cause of

to childhood cancer, he said. 



The new study will be the first to compare strontium 90 levels in the

teeth of healthy children and cancer patients.



Critics, primarily members of the nuclear power industry, have charged

that Mangano's previous studies linking increased cancer rates to the

proximity of reactor radiation, manipulated statistics, and have

dismissed his work as "junk science."



"In a word, yes, it's junk science," said Dr. Letty Lutzker, chief of

nuclear medicine at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston.



The $25,000 Tooth Fairy Project state grant "is a lot of taxpayer money.

There are better things to spend it on," said Lutzker, who is an unpaid

adviser to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry lobby group in

Washington.



"Miniscule strontium is emitted by nuclear plants," Lutzker said in a

phone interview.



"We have studies by reputable organizations and institutes that don't

show any increase in cancer related to nuclear plants ... reams of

studies around nuclear plants showing no increase in cancer in any age

group, before and after the plants open," she said.



One such study was a 1991 survey by the National Cancer Institute that

found no general increased risk of death from cancer for people living

in 107 counties near 62 nuclear reactors.



Paul Rosengren, a spokesman for nuclear power in New Jersey, charged

that Mangano's past studies were "seriously flawed."



"Joe Mangano collected baby teeth in South Jersey, and there's been no

results from that study that give credence to a connection between power

plants and cancer," said Rosengren, of PSEG Power, which operates the

Salem 1 and 2, and Hope Creek nuclear plants in Salem.



"Anyone who wants to be associated with this study should be careful

that they're not embarrassed in the long run," he said.



The criticism of his work, Mangano said, is "typical of people who don't

do the research."



Deirdre Imus, who will coordinate the collection of baby teeth at

Hackensack, said she was aware of the controversy surrounding the Tooth

Fairy Project, but that the subject is "worth investigating."



"We'll either find a link [between nuclear plants and childhood cancer]

or we won't," said Imus, director of the Deirdre Imus Environmental

Center for Pediatric Oncology at the medical center, and wife of radio

personality Don Imus.



"I'm not going to deny there's controversy. There's two sides to the

story. This study hasn't been done yet. We'll finish it and evaluate it.

Let's see what we have," she said.



Two other hospitals have signed on as tooth collection sites - Newark

Beth Israel Medical Center, and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.



To date, Hackensack has collected only four teeth from cancer patients -

two of them from Cory Furst, 13, of Livingston, who overcame liver and

lung cancer as a toddler. His parents, Joel and Jane Furst, attended the

press conference.



Mangano said teeth from cancer patients will be compared with 270 teeth

he collected from healthy children in New Jersey in his previous work.

He will present the results of this Tooth Fairy Project study to the

state Legislature in July. 



"It will all be useful in determining whether this particular pollutant

is a risk factor for cancer and can lead to greater prevention of

cancer," he said.



The grant money will fund advertising for the Tooth Fairy Project and

the cost of collecting the teeth in New Jersey and testing them at a

laboratory in Waterloo, Ontario, he said.



In thanking everybody connected with the study, McGreevey noted that

there will be 41,000 cases of childhood cancer in the United States and

17,800 deaths from the disease this year.



"New Jersey suffers from one of the highest cancer rates in the nation,"

McGreevey said. With the Tooth Fairy Project, "we are about to take

another step forward in investigating the cause of cancer."



 

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