Radioactive Teeth In St. Louis
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There's a lot baby teeth can tell society. 1958 American scientists sought out to investigate the affects on the environment and human health above-ground nuclear testing was having.
They convinced parents in St.Louis to submit 85,000 baby teeth. St. Louis was chosen because nuclear testing occurred relatively nearby. The scientists then studied chemical particles in the teeth. Predictably they found calcium in the newborns' teeth, but they also found something else: the radioactive isotope Strontium-90. Strontium-90 is one of the components of a nuclear weapons. After a bomb is detonated, the chemical "spread into the atmosphere, fell onto the land, was ingested by dairy cows and passed into the milk supply" that the babies drank.
Because the scientists found Strontium-90 in baby teeth they could prove that nuclear above-ground testing was a determent to human health. Their research actuated the 1963 Test Ban Treaty that move testing to below-ground.
Although future generations of American and the world were protected from the affects of nuclear testing, unfortunately those children in St. Louis was affected for the rest of their lives. There is evidence that that generation of submitted baby teeth in St.Louis had a higher-than-average cancer rate.
For decades the teeth were simply forgotten, but now they have been rediscovered. And now an American research department in New York is seeking to trace down 6,000 of those now-grown children to study to their health conditions and, if any, premature deaths.
The study should remind the world once again about the consequences of nuclear weaponry.
