Study of baby teeth yields new findings on nuclear fallout:
The new research was spurred by the 2001 reappearance of 85,000 teeth that had been donated for the 1960s study, which was conducted by Washington University scientists. The teeth were found in an old bunker at the university’s Tyson Research Center where they had been stuffed into envelopes that included information about the donors, one of whom was Edward Ketterer.“The toll from bomb fallout is probably far greater than prior estimates,” says Joseph Mangano, the lead study author and director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. “Because 40 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, it is crucial to understand causes such as bomb fallout, so actions to prevent the disease can be taken.”
Edward Ketterer’s contribution proved to be crucial to the new study. That’s because he is one of the 77 male donors diagnosed with cancer who served as case studies.
He passed away in 2006 at the age of 47, just a year after being diagnosed with invasive transitional cell carcinoma. His parents believe his exposure to nuclear fallout may have contributed to his death.
“His doctor always called him his mystery patient because no one understood how he ended up with this cancer, which is a very ugly, unpredictable kind of cancer,” said Joan Ketterer, a retired nurse.
The study is a spin-off of the St. Louis Tooth Survey in which more than 300,000 kids sent their teeth to the Greater St. Louis Citizens Committee for Nuclear Information. Washington University scientists analyzed most of the teeth for strontium-90, which was created by the bomb blasts and absorbed by the teeth and bones of infants.
They suspected that the children were exposed by drinking milk from cows and goats that grazed on grass contaminated by fallout. They called it the “milk pathway.”
The study concluded that St. Louis children born in 1964 had about 50 times more strontium-90 in their baby teeth than those born in 1950, before the start of atomic testing in Nevada.
(Hat tip to Nyrath.)