Any journalists wanting to contact Dr Gould can reach him at: JayMGould@aol.comJay M. Gould, Director
Radiation and Public Health Project
PO Box 330, Unionville NY 109882001
Dear FriendI enclose an exchange of letters carried in a recent issue of The Nation magazine, which describes the remarkable success of our Tooth Fairy study. We have to date analyzed the radioactive strontium levels (called Sr90) in 2500 baby teeth of children, mainly born in recent years near nuclear reactors, and have found that about half have levels far above the expected trace levels, in some cases 30 or 40 times higher! When we have about 10,000 baby teeth we hope then to 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. We already know that a disproportionate number have cancer, extremely rare for children.
We think that our findings may eventually replicate the success of the first baby teeth study started by Dr. Barry Commoner in St. Louis in 1958, which found , after collecting 60,000 teeth ,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 is the scientific director of our current baby teeth study.
We are however now facing an embarrassment of riches. The number of baby teeth that we are now collecting from our web site (www.radiation.org) and from appeals by Alec Baldwin and Christie Brinkley as concerned parents, is rising so rapidly that we may reach our goal of 10,000 teeth within the next year or two. But since the cost of testing each tooth cannot fall below $50 , we will need to raise far more funds for testing than the one million dollars raised so far from a small number of family foundation and individuals.
So we are turning to all our friends and teeth donors, who generally cannot afford more than $50--the cost of testing one tooth.. If you feel that our study merits support, please send a check for $50, (or more) to the above address as a tax-deductible contribution . At the same time copy this letter and enclosure to send to all your friends who you believe may also respond positively, by again copying this letter for their friends. (This letter will also be available on our web site). We believe in this way we will have enough small donations to move the big foundations to help complete our study.
The enclosed letter exchange illustrates the irony that our study is opposed by the federal government which has been measuring Sr90 levels in adult vertebra each year since 1954 but inexplicably terminated these efforts in 1982. Passionate appeals from Baldwin and 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, but 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 been blocked by the New York State Department of Health, so that it is clear that our only resource is the potential support of the millions of persons who are learning that our health is threatened by nuclear reactor emissions, the only possible source of the ominous Sr90 levels we are finding in baby teeth.
Sincerely
Jay M. Gould
Letters to the NationMarch 26,2001
NUCLEAR POWER & US
New York CityI 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 by1998 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 above-ground 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. 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 above-ground tests in 1963.
Please visit our website, www.radiation.org, and/or call 800 582 3716 for envelopes for baby teeth.
JAY M. G0ULD
Radiation and Public Health Project Inc
Oak Ridge,TennHarvey 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 signifiacnt 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 OhioIt'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 later)As explained in my book The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors, reviewed by Blanche Cook in the Dec.7, 1997 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
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