Dear Friends,

 Please read the letter below from Dr Jay Gould of RPHP [http://www.radiation.org] and respond. Also, please "CC" Bill McDonnell [Bill@oldbooks.net] of RPHP with your response and please dissemenate this message as widely as you can. RPHP needs all the help they can get as quickly as they can get it to help us all end this DEADLY, INSANE nuclear "business." The good news is this IS very doable. These murderous criminals CAN & WILL be put out of business with the help of good people like you. Hopefully they will be jailed for their crimes against humanity, too, but first things first.

Again, please spread this message FAR & WIDE to media, NGOs, lists & individuals, responding to Dr Jay Gould at: JayMGould@aol.com& "CC"ing Bill McDonnell at: Bill@oldbooks.net . Thank you.

 -Bill Smirnow

Dear Friend

As one who has expressed interest in our work in the past, you may be interested in the enclosed recent exchange of letters carried in The Nation magazine, which describes the remarkable success of our Tooth Fairy Study, and which was the subject of a BBC World news report on April 5, which was seen by 90 million viewers worldwide.We have to date analyzed the radioactive strontium levels (called Sr90) in 1,500 baby teeth, mainly from those born in recent years near nuclear reactors. We have found that about half have levels far above the expected trace levels, in some cases 30 or 40 times higher!

 When we have around 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 have many teeth from kids with cancer.

Our findings eventually may replicate the success of the first baby teeth study started by Dr. Barry Commoner in St. Louis in 1958. After collecting 60,000 teeth, that study found 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, it should be noted, is the scientific director of our current baby teeth study.

We are now facing an embarrassment of riches. We are now getting baby teeth from all parts of the nation and now from England, Russia, Japan and even China too, because of the BBC report, as well as mailed appeals from Alec Baldwin and Christie Brinkley as concerned parents. We may reach our goal of collecting 10,000 teeth within the next year or two. but the number of teeth received is growing so rapidly, we need to raise funds to pay for testing these teeth . Our hope is that individuals such as yourself will help us by sponsoring the testing of one or more teeth, at the cost of $50 per tooth. If you feel that our study merits support, please send a check for $50 (or more) as a tax-deductible contribution to my address above. But this will work only if you can send this appeal to others who share our interest in eliminating nuclear pollution. If you can forward this message by Email write me at jaymgould@aol.com, and I will send this to you by e-mail. In this way we hope to have enough small donations to encourage foundations to fund completion of our study.

The enclosed letter exchange in the March 26th issue of The Nation illustrates the irony that our study is opposed by the federal government which has been measuring Sr90 levels in adult vertebrae each year since 1954 but inexplicably terminated these efforts in 1982.

Passionate appeals by local residents as well as Alec Baldwin and Christie 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. 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 yet to materialize. It is becoming clear that our primary resource will continue to be the support of individuals and foundations who are concerned that our health is threatened by nuclear reactor emissions, and who want us to continue to establish strong scientific evidence of radioactive exposure by measuring Sr90 levels in baby teeth. Also, please visit out website
(www.radiation.org)

Sincerely, Jay M. Gould (jaymgould@aol.com)

I 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 by 1998 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 aboveground 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.The 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 aboveground tests in 1963.

Please visit our website, www.radiation.org, and/or call 800 582 3716 for tooth envelopes.

JAY M. G0ULD
Radiation and Public Health Project Inc.

Harvey 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 significant 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

It'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

As explained in my book The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors, reviewed by Blanche Cook in the December 7, 1996 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