asbury park press letter - tfp is bogus

[Norm Cohen <ncohen12@comcast.net>]

FYI

Norm





Tooth fairy' project opposes A-plant based on pseudo-research





          Published in the Asbury Park Press 2/01/04



By LETTY GOODMAN LUTZKER



Our area is again under siege by an interest group lobbying hard for 

restricting or shutting area nuclear plants based upon highly 

questionable health studies. These are the "tooth-fairy" folks 

masquerading behind the legitimate-sounding organization called the 

Radiation and Public Health Project. They are on a crusade to close 

nuclear plants, which they claim are responsible for an epidemic of 

cancer in children. They have an automatically sympathetic audience 

because they invoke the sad reality of pediatric cancer. However, their 

conclusions result from biased interpretations of pseudo-research.



The two or three people who are the Radiation and Public Health Project 

have used movie stars, super models and self-serving interest groups to 

encourage parents to provide their children's baby teeth for their work. 

The teeth are analyzed for strontium-90, a radioactive element produced 

in nuclear reactors, but the overwhelming majority of which entered the 

environment from open-air weapons testing in years past. Of course, 

their expectations are automatically fulfilled by their claim that teeth 

from children in areas near nuclear power plants contain higher amounts 

of strontium-90 than "would have been expected" in the same years as the 

nuclear plants were in operation. Although more cautious about their 

conclusions these days, in the past they have stated that these peak 

levels coin cided with increases in cancers among children. Voila! 

Strontium-90 from power plants increases cancer in children.



One does not have to be a specialist in radiation or epidemiology to see 

the many logical inconsistencies in the work. The so-called "peaks" of 

radioactivity are minor statistical variations, as are their cancer 

statistics. Sad as it is that any child succumb to cancer, there is no 

epidemic of pediatric cancer.



The Radiation and Public Health Project also shows alleged peaks in the 

strontium-90 content of teeth coinciding closely in time with peaks in 

cancer death rates. Yet we learn in the first year of medical school 

that cancers induced by radiation take years to develop, sometimes up to 

25 years. Increased cancer rates cannot occur at the same time as 

exposure to a radiation source.



The National Cancer Institute study published in the Journal of the 

American Medical Association in 1991, using validated statistical 

methods, reached definitive conclusions about nuclear power and health. 

Examining 90,000 cancer deaths from 1950 to 1984 near nuclear power 

plants, it found no evidence of increased risk of death from a wide 

range of cancers. Dr. John Boice, who was chief of the C ancer 

Institute's Radiation Epidemiology Branch at the time of the study, 

said, "From the data at hand, there was no convincing evidence of any 

increased risk of death from any of the cancers we surveyed due to 

living near nuclear facilities."



The same answer has been found by numerous other studies of the health 

of populations living near commercial nuclear plants, including the 

Pennsylvania Department of Health study of the population around Three 

Mile Island following the 1979 accident.



Incredibly, the Tooth Fairy Project ignores the natural pathways of 

strontium dissemination. Strontium, a calcium analog, can accumulate in 

bones and teeth only if it is ingested. It can reach the food chain only 

by being in agricultural soil, and especially when concentrated in milk 

produced by cows eating contaminated feed. Unless the populations around 

nuclear plants are subsistence farmers eating and drinking their own 

produce, even the infinitesimal amount of environmental strontium 

emitted by nuclear plants could not reach them. If their food comes from 

elsewhere, so must the strontium.



We are all touched by any child's death, regardless of the 

circumstances. But those children are not served by twisting the 

language of science to meet political ends. The diversion of resources 

into false research compromises the efforts of legitimate science to 

find the root causes of cancer and the methods to cure and prevent it.



Dr. Letty Goodman Lutzker is chief of nuclear medicine at the Saint 

Barnabas Medical Center, Livingston.



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-- 

Coalition for Peace and Justice (http://www.coalitionforpeaceandjustice.org); and the UNPLUG Salem Campaign (http://www.unplugsalem.org); 321 Barr Ave., Linwood, NJ 08221; 609-601-8583/37; ncohen12@comcast.net. The Coalition for Peace and Justice is a chapter of Peace Action (http://www.peace-action.org). "You can say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one" (Lennon). "Don't be late for your life" (Mary Chapin Carpenter).







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