Wednesday May 17, 2000

Baby teeth collected from children in the United States show an unsettling pattern: Children whose teeth contain a lot of radioactive material live in areas with high breast cancer rates.

And the radioactive levels are rising. Teeth of children born since 1990 show some of the highest levels of radioactive materials since the early 1960s, when superpowers tested atomic bombs in the atmosphere.

Leaders of the Tooth Fairy Project, which asks parents to mail in their children's teeth after they fall out, will present detailed results in Ottawa at this week's World Conference on Breast Cancer.

The likeliest cause of the rising radioactive levels in teeth, they say, is leaks from nuclear power plants.

And they're hoping to collect teeth from Canadian children next. It's the easiest way of testing what's in children's bodies.

The U.S. and Soviet Union agreed to ban atomic bomb tests in the atmosphere in 1963. A crucial argument at the time was that baby teeth from U.S. children showed a buildup of strontium-90, a radioactive element.

Now the strontium is coming back.

"The data will be released at the meeting," said Dr. Janet Sherman, a speaker at this week's conference, which begins tomorrow. "But in general we are finding that strontium-90 levels in baby teeth of children born since 1990 are reaching the levels that were in existence during the above-ground bomb-testing years, which is very scary.

"Where's it coming from? Well, we're not doing above-ground testing of bombs, so there's only one place it could be coming from. And that is normally acting nuclear reactors. 

"This should be a bombshell, if you'll pardon the expression," Dr. Sherman said.

She said the group has found strontium in about 300 teeth from children living on Long Island, near New York City.

"Long Island has one of the highest breast cancer rates in the United States. We're finding that the area where the high breast cancer and childhood cancer rates (are found) is exactly where the plumes cross from two very big nuclear power reactors."

The two plants are the Millstone plant in Connecticut, just north of Long Island, and Oyster Creek in New Jersey.

People living in the paths of those "plumes" of radiation, downwind of reactors, have more radioactive material in their teeth, the project found.

"We ultimately will want to collect some (teeth) from Canadians both upwind and downwind" from nuclear reactors here, Dr. Sherman said.

She said children with high levels of radioactive material also show a higher-than-normal rate of rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer.

Dr. Sherman is an internal medicine specialist and toxicologist in Virginia. She has a regular medical practice but volunteers on the side for the Tooth Fairy Project. She is the author of two books: Chemical Exposure and Disease, and Life's Delicate Balance: A Guide to Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer.

Jay Gould, director of the Tooth Fairy Project, said the project has already collected teeth from a few Canadian children, but not enough to see a pattern.

Coincidentally, the project already sends all the teeth it collects to Canada for analysis at the University of Waterloo.

The nuclear industry in Canada and the United States closely follows the health of nuclear workers, and says these people are, if anything, healthier than the general population.

But Dr. Sherman says children are vulnerable in a way that adults are not.

Radioactive material from the air, either from bombs or nuclear plant emissions, gets into vegetation, including grass and vegetables. If cows eat tainted grass, their milk picks up the radioactive material, which stays active for years.

"The mother eats milk and vegetables and cheese and the strontium 90 goes up the food chain. The biggest thing is pre-natal exposure," Dr. Sherman said. "These kids are getting it in utero (in the womb).

"So if you're talking about the healthy (nuclear) workers, these are men who may not drink much milk. And they are already developed."

In Ontario, fish near the Pickering and Bruce nuclear plants on Lake Ontario and Lake Huron, respectively, pick up low levels of radioactivity. Tonnes of mildly radioactive waste water from the plants are routinely flushed into the lakes.

Last year, a farmer near the Bruce plant learned from Ontario Hydro that his apples and onions were up to 100 times more radioactive than normal "background" levels, though still within official safe limits.

Federal Environment Minister Christine Stewart has just given the Bruce plant permission to build more than 1,200 new silos above ground to store high-level radioactive waste for an estimated 30 to 50 years. There was no environmental assessment.

Dr. Sherman's group asks anyone interested in sending baby teeth to the Tooth Fairy Project to check instructions on the group's Web site at www.radiation.org.