RE: Toothy Fairy

["Weiner, Ruth" <rfweine@sandia.gov>]

I don't know if the "tooth fairy project" people thought it through to this
extent, but baby teeth could conceivably give an idea of the extent of
bioaccumulation (or bioconcentration) of Sr-90.  However, in order to do
that, the concentration in the teeth would have to be correlated to the
initial exposure concentration, and that would be nearly impossible by just
randomly collecting baby teeth.

Clearly only my own opinion.

Ruth F. Weiner, Ph. D.
Sandia National Laboratories 
MS 0718, POB 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0718
505-844-4791; fax 505-844-0244
rfweine@sandia.gov


-----Original Message-----
From: Franz Schoenhofer [mailto:schoenho@via.at]
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 1999 1:33 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: Toothy Fairy


At 14:00 11.03.1999 -0600, you wrote:
>Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the original intent of the "Tooth
>Fairy" project, two plus years ago (I'm not sure when it started - I
>thought 1996 time frame), was to determine the extent of Sr-90 fall-out
>from Chernobyl.  The project included collecting children's teeth in the US
>as well as all over Europe.
>

With regard to Europe Sr-90 need not be determined in children's teeth,
because there is a large amount of direct data from precipitation and
aerosols available and indirect contamination data from soil contamination,
milk. In fairly close areas like Western Europe the input of Sr-90 by
fallout to soil and milk etc. was approximately of the same magnitude as
the Sr-90 which was still present from the atmospheric weapons tests. This
additional Chernobyl-Sr-90 was relatively quickly washed off or strongly
bound by soil and therefore not available for plant uptake. I doubt that in
the USA really an additional input of Sr-90 from Chernobyl could be
observed (except perhaps very small amounts in precipitation or in
aerosols) and I am sure that measurements from surveillance networks in the
USA are available. There exists also a global network on precipitation
sampling, but I do not have the data. (Perhaps RADSAFERs could comment on
this?) I also doubt from our experience that Sr-90 in teeth can serve as a
quantitative measure for Sr-90 fallout. I have in a previous comment
already mentioned the problem of establishing a background Sr-90 value for
teeth. For soil, precipitation, milk etc.  pre-Chernobyl backgrounds -
which vary a lot depending on the area of origin - are well known.

Franz


Franz Schoenhofer
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
Austria
Tel.: +43-1-495 53 08
Fax.: same number
mobile phone: +43-664-338 0 333
e-mail: schoenho@via.at

Office:
Hofrat Dr. Franz Schönhofer
Federal Institute for Food Control and Research
Department of Radiochemistry
Kinderspitalg. 15
A-1095 Vienna
Austria
Tel.: +43-1-40 490 27820
e-mail: schoenhofer@baluf.via.at
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