A MATTER OF LIFE + DEATH
Tooth Fairy Project Needs Help
http://www.mothersalert.org/toothfairyneedshelp.html
and
Letter exchanges from The Nation
concerning the project, radiation, and health
Below are recent exchanges of letters carried in The Nation magazine, which describes the remarkable success of the Tooth Fairy Study, and which was the subject of a BBC World news report on April 5, seen by 90 million viewers worldwide.
The Radiation and Public Health Project’s Tooth Fairy Study to date has analyzed the radioactive strontium levels (called Sr90) in 1,500 baby teeth, mainly from those born in recent years near nuclear reactors. About 50% have levels far above the expected trace levels, in some cases 30 or 40 times higher! When 10,000 baby teeth are collected, the project will then collect medical histories of each child to ascertain the degree to which children with high levels have had such childhood illnesses as asthma, learning disabilities, infections etc. Many teeth collected thus far are from children with cancers.
The findings eventually may replicate the success of the first baby teeth study started by Dr. Barry Commoner in St. Louis in 1958. After collecting 60,000 teeth, that study found that Sr90 levels rose one-hundred fold from 1948 to 1963. In that year President Kennedy asked Dr. Ernest Sternglass to testify to Congress on radiation-induced childhood cancer, to accelerate the ratification of the ban on above-ground nuclear bomb tests. Dr. Sternglass, it should be noted, is the scientific director of the current baby teeth study.
The project is now facing an embarrassment of riches. Baby teeth are coming in from all parts of the nation and now from England, Russia, Japan and even China, because of the BBC report, as well as from mailed appeals from Alec Baldwin and Christie Brinkley as concerned parents. The Tooth fairy Project may reach its goal of collecting 10,000 teeth within the next year or two. But the number of teeth received is growing so rapidly, funds are needed to pay for testing these teeth. The project needs individuals to sponsor the testing of one or more teeth, at the cost of $50 per tooth.
If you feel this important study merits support, please send a check for $50 (or more) as a tax-deductible contribution to the Radiation and Public Health Project , Box 60 Unionville, New York 10988 USA. Also send this appeal to others who share an interest in eliminating nuclear pollution. If you wish to forward an email message to others, email Jay M. Gould at jaymgould@aol.com, and he will send the appeal to you by e-mail. When enough small donations are made to the project it will encourage foundations to fund completion of the study.
The enclosed letter exchange in the March 26th issue of The Nation illustrates the irony that this study is being opposed by the federal government which has been measuring Sr90 levels in adult vertebrae each year since 1954 -- but inexplicably terminated these efforts in 1982. Passionate appeals by local residents as well as Alec Baldwin and Christie Brinkley moved the New Jersey Legislature to approve a grant of $75,000 to analyze baby teeth from children living near the notoriously malfunctioning Oyster Creek reactor. Governor Christie Whitman (now EPA administrator) vetoed this tiny grant from a multi-billion dollar state budget. Similar grants of $60,000 from the legislatures of Suffolk and Westchester counties have yet to materialize. It is becoming clear that the primary resource will continue to be the support of individuals and foundations who are concerned that our health is being threatened by nuclear reactor emissions, and who want us to continue to establish strong scientific evidence of radioactive exposure by measuring Sr90levels in baby teeth. Also, please visit the website (www.radiation.org)
Letters to The Nation
March 26, 2001
NUCLEAR POWER & US
New York City
I would like to provide an update on some remarkable events that followed Joseph Mangano's epidemiological discovery that closing the Rancho Seco reactor in 1989 was followed by an enormous improvement in infant mortality and childhood cancer (Harvey Wasserman, "No Nukes--Better Health" Jan.29).
Mangano has now found that mortality rates for all age groups in these areas have, since 1989, improved for all diseases mediated by the immune response. San Francisco, for example (only 70 miles from Rancho Seco) had in 1998 the lowest age-adjusted mortality rate of any large US county, with extraordinary declines since 1990 in all cancers, including breast and prostate, and in all infectious diseases. Even AIDS death rates by 1998 have declined to the level of 1979.As a result of local grassroots dissemination of these facts and a generous grant from the CEO of a large San Francisco company, Mangano may soon be able to offer clinical as well as epidemiological proof of the benefits of closing reactors.
As national coordinator of our Tooth Fairy Project, which has been finding ominously high levels of bone-seeking radioactive strontium (Sr90) in the baby teeth of about 2000 children born in recent years that could not be the result of past superpower aboveground nuclear bomb tests, he may soon be able to ascertain the change, if any, in the ratios of Sr90 to calcium in the baby teeth of children born before and after reactor closings. The Nation readers can give us invaluable support by collecting baby teeth from anyone born in recent years, or even from baby boomers born as far back as the bomb test years of the 1950s, for we have found that they have the same incredibly high levels, after correction for the 29 year half life of Sr90, that prompted President Kennedy to terminate such aboveground tests in 1963. Please visit our website, www.radiation.org, and/or call 800 582 3716 for tooth envelopes.
JAY M. G0ULD
Radiation and Public Health Project Inc.
Oak Ridge, Tenn
Harvey Wasserman has shown again how adept he is at picking out a tidbit of bad science to support his views, while ignoring the vast storehouse of real science. He claims nuclear power is causing cancers and other health effects, based on a largely debunked study sponsored by an anti-nuclear group. Not mentioned is the National Cancer Institute study that examined 90, 000 cancer deaths near nuclear plants spanning 34 years and found no connection between the operation of reactors and cancer. This is only one of several highly reputable studies that have come to the same conclusion.
Ironically. The Nation recently published Ross Gelbspan's editorial on the seriousness of global warming. Any plan to deal effectively with this potentially devastating problem must contain significant levels of nuclear energy, which produces no greenhouse gases. Even the Clinton Administration's strategy to meet the Kyoto goals required substantial electricity production from nuclear plants.The fair-minded observer must agree that US nuclear plants have been a safe source of electricity. And as we try to find our way out of the increasingly frequent power crisis, it will probably be an important component for the foreseeable future.
DR. THEODORE M. BRESMANN
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Wasserman replies
Columbus Ohio
It's great fun when pro-nukers confirm the realities of global warming even while denying the devastating health and environmental impacts of their brand of radiation poisoning. No government or industry-funded will admit to the connection between nuclear power and cancer. But hidden in virtually all of them is damning hard evidence to the contrary. The cure for global warming lies in wind, solar and efficiency, not in an economically catastrophic technology that kills people and the planet. And kudos as always to Jay Gould and the vital work done by him and his colleagues in searching out the health impacts of this failed technology. See-no-evil doesn't cut it when radiation is being dumped into our bodies--and those of our children.
HARVEY WASSERMAN
Gould rejoinder to Besmann
(to be published)
As explained in my book The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors, reviewed by Blanche Cook in the December 7, 1996 issue of The Nation, the National Cancer Institute study that found no connection between reactor emissions and cancer, compared cancer deaths in counties with reactors with cancer deaths in adjoining counties with the bizarre assumption that reactor emissions would stop at the county border!
JAY M.GOULD
