Published in the Asbury Park Press
By ALLISON GARVEY
MANAHAWKIN BUREAU
DOVER TOWNSHIP -- A nonprofit research group trying to collect baby teeth to test them for radioactivity brought actor Alec Baldwin with them last night to talk about the so-called "Tooth Fairy Project."
The New York-based Radiation and Public Health Project launched a campaign earlier this year to collect baby teeth from children born within 30 miles of Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey, three other New Jersey power plants and a Long Island nuclear research facility.
They have collected about 1,500 teeth and have tested 400 teeth and found elevated levels of strontium-90, a radioactive form of a naturally occurring element, in "a majority" of teeth tested, said Joseph J. Mangano, a researcher with the project.
Mangano, Baldwin, Ernest Sternglass, who is project director, and others spoke last night at Ocean County College.
Baldwin said he got involved with the Tooth Fairy Project through his association with the Standing for Truth About Radiation Foundation, based in Long Island, where he lives. His mother is a breast cancer survivor. He urged residents to fight for the closing of nuclear power plants.
"You are all good, decent, naive, well-intentioned people," said Baldwin, whose movies include "The Hunt for Red October" and "The Juror."
"If you sit back and wait for the government to do something about it -- my hand to God in heaven on a stack of Bibles . . . the government of the United States is not going to do anything about this," he said.
Mangano said the project aims to get the public concerned about nuclear power.
"We want to make people aware of our study, of course, and to really get them interested in knowing how these emissions from nuclear plants and research facilities are affecting their lives," Mangano said.
Results of all Tooth Fairy Project testing will be released at a press conference in New York City on Oct. 20, Mangano said.
The group believes that strontium-90, the radioactive isotope of the element strontium that occurs naturally in small amounts in the earth's crust, is being absorbed by children who live around nuclear plants. Strontium-90 is chemically similar to calcium, following calcium through the food chain and appearing in human bone and teeth.
The levels of strontium-90, the researchers said, are at the same levels now as they were before 1963 -- when weapons testing released the toxin into the environment before being banned in 1963.
According to the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C., the safety barriers and monitoring used at nuclear power plants assure that any strontium-90 releases are so small as to be undetectable in comparison with the amount of strontium-90 already in the environment. That level, the institute says, is well below government limits.
"No credible scientific study has shown that the levels of strontium found in the environment today pose a health risk," says a statment released this month by the institute.
A 1997 report by the American Cancer Society also stated that although reports about cancer case clusters have raised public concern, studies show that clusters do not occur more often near nuclear plants than they do by chance elsewhere in the population.
Source: Asbury Park Press
Published: September 22, 1999
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