Tooth Fairy Project press release

[pete genzer <genzer@bnl.gov>]

All,

The Radiation and Public Health Project distributed a press release
containing "preliminary" results at a NYC press conference today.  I'll let
RADSAFE consider it on its merits.

***

CANCER-CAUSING RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL FOUND IN CHILDREN'S TEETH

The cancer-causing radioisotope Strontium-90 (Sr-90) has been found in the
teeth of children born in the 1980’s at levels equal to those of the middle
1950’s when the U.S. and the former Soviet Union were conducting routine
aboveground bomb tests.

Directors of the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP), who today
released an initial report from an ongoing study of baby teeth, said their
findings indicate that Americans continued to absorb radiation for years
after all atmospheric nuclear testing ended in 1980.  One scientific paper
based on the RPHP results has been accepted for publication in the
International Journal of Health Services, and a second has been accepted
for presentation later this month at an international meeting of scientists
in Italy.

"The early results are quite alarming," said Dr. Ernest Sternglass,
Professor Emeritus of Radiological Physics at the University of Pittsburgh
School of Medicine and co-director of the study who played a key role in
the scientific debate that led to the original banning of bomb tests.  "The
levels of Strontium-90 should have dropped down to near zero once humankind
stopped exploding nuclear weapons in the atmosphere.  Instead the levels
stayed essentially the same as during the bomb-test years, or in some areas
they even increased."

The RPHP researchers correlated one increase in Strontium-90 during the
1980’s in Suffolk County, New York, to a corresponding rise in childhood
leukemia and cancer (which also have been on the rise nationally since the
early 1980’s).  Studies linking Strontium-90 to childhood cancer caused
widespread health concerns during the Eisenhower and Kennedy
administrations, resulting finally in the historic Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in 1963.

The new higher-than-expected levels of radiation were found in 515 teeth
measured thus far, most of them for children born in the states of New
York, New Jersey and Florida.  Many of the areas where teeth were collected
are near nuclear power plants with a history of unusually large radiation
releases.  Strontium-90, a man-made element that was first introduced into
nature as a byproduct of atomic bomb tests, is also produced by fission in
nuclear reactors.  It enters the body through drinking water and food,
concentrating in bones and teeth.

The largest majority of teeth analyzed by the RPHP researchers were from
the 1979-92 period and contained Strontium-90 in the range of 1.1 ? 2.0
picocuries per gram of calcium.  A few of the teeth were found to have
reached levels as high as 16 or 17 picocuries per gram calcium.  Baby teeth
from the middle 1950’s that were tested in a St. Louis-based teeth study
contained approximately similar average concentrations.

After reaching a peak in 1963, Strontium-90 levels in the U.S. declined
steadily but did not disappear entirely due to ongoing French and Chinese
aboveground testing as well as releases from U.S. and U.S.S.R. underground
testing and from a growing number of civilian reactors.  With the end of
French and Chinese tests in 1980, the projected rate of decline should have
dropped Strontium-90 levels to about 0.1 picocuries/gram by 1990, according
to Dr. Jay Gould, an RPHP co-director and statistician who previously
served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board.
Instead the levels were still as high as 1.99 picocuries/gram in 1988 and
had dropped only to 1.19 picocuries/gram in 1992?? (can't read on fax).

"The fact that we’re finding numbers at much higher levels that we expected
indicates that the dangers from radiation in our diet were not eliminated
with the cessation of atmospheric bomb testing," Dr. Gould said.
"Strontium-90 is still persisting in the human environment."

  The RPHP researchers attributed some of the new radioactive fallout to
the accidents at the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979 and
at the Chernobyl reactor in Russia in 1986.  In addition, they noted that
state and federal records show a large amount of officially reported
airborne emissions during the early 1980’s from four nuclear reactors
located in the vicinity of Suffolk County, the area from which the majority
of the RPHP teeth were collected.

 "Regardless of the precise source of the radiation, it is clear that more
investigation is urgently needed," Dr. Sternglass said.  "It is especially
urgent given that Strontium-90 is a known carcinogen and a marker for other
shorter-lived fission products and simply should not be present at all in
our children’s teeth."

The private foundations supporting the RPHP study have agreed to assist in
financing the collection and analysis of 5000 baby teeth over the next two
years.  At the same time the RPHP directors called for the U.S. government
to conduct a national-scale study of Strontium-90 in the environment.  The
U.S. Department of Energy ended a program in 1982 that previously measured
the intake of Strontium-90 in all adult diets, and the EPA stopped monthly
reports of fission products in milk in 1990.


Thomas M Lashley wrote:

> Radsafe,
> Has anyone seen any information about the "Tooth Fairy Project" that was
> to have been released yesterday (October 20th) by Radiation Public
> Health (RPHP)?
>
> Tom Lashley
> LashleyT@DTEenergy.com
>
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