THE TOOTH FAIRY PROJECT A study of the levels of radioactivity in American baby teeth


October 01, 2025

Background:

In 1958 dental associations in St. Louis, organized by Dr. Barry Commoner, concerned about increasing fallout from aboveground nuclear tests, independently began collecting baby teeth to ascertain strontium-90 levels since the bomb tests began in 1945. It was soon clear that there had been statistically-significant, geometric increases since 1951. More than 60,000 teeth were collected and, by 1965 levels indicated a fifty-fold increase in strontium levels since 1951.

The St. Louis findings were supported by United Nations measurements of the strontium-90 levels found in the bone in autopsies of New York City adults who died each year from 1955 to 1970. By the 1960s, at least two dozen nations began their own measurements of strontium-90 (sr-90) levels in the teeth of children, which are better than autopsies performed on adult cadavers, because birthdates provide a better indication of when one's major burden of sr-90 was acquired. All published studies tell a similar story; peak levels were reached in the mid-1960s, when the huge amounts of Sr-90 released in the final massive US/USSR hydrogen bomb tests of 1962 finally rained out by 1964 and 1965.

In the 1970s, Sr-90 levels in baby teeth dropped back down to about the same level reached in the US by 1958. Studies published by Denmark and Japan were continued until the early 1980s, suggesting that sometime in the mid-1970s the strontium-90 levels in teeth leveled out, followed by a slight upturn.

However, a current study of some 6,000 German baby teeth collected since 1992 by the German Section of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War--winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize Award--found the trend has changed. The German Section of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War found a tenfold increase in the teeth of German children born in the period following the arrival of Chernobyl fallout in May of 1986, as compared with children born in 1983.

Why Study Baby Teeth?

Radioactive Strontium-90 (Sr-90) is one of these elements, and one of the deadliest. The chemical structure of Sr-90 is so similar to that of calcium that the body gets fooled and deposits Sr-90 in the bones and teeth where it remains, continually emitting cancer-causing radiation.

Most of the strontium in the baby teeth is transferred to the fetus by the mother during pregnancy. Because we know when and where the baby was born, and where the mother lived while carrying, we can accurately determine when and where radioactivity was absorbed from the environment.

The Federal Government no longer measures strontium intake in baby teeth. The Radiation and Public Health Project has launched its own national study of the levels of radioactivity in American baby teeth. This study will gather the necessary clinical evidence to determine whether nuclear weapons fallout and power reactors are affecting our public health and contributing to America's cancer epidemic.

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