Article 
Press of Atlantic City
News | Wednesday, November 10, 1999 

Actor plays Tooth Fairy at Stockton

 The actor lent his celebrity Tuesday to help with the Tooth Fairy 
Project, an effort by antinuclear activists to prove that people living 
near nuclear power plants are exposed to harmful levels of low-level 
radiation. 

By JACK KASKEY 

Staff Writer, (609) 272-7213 

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP -- Alec Baldwin wants your baby's teeth. 

The actor, whose film credits include Prelude to a Kiss and Hunt for Red 
October, believes that people living near nuclear power plants are 
exposed to harmful amounts of low-level radiation. 

To prove the theory, he made his appeal for teeth Tuesday to about 400 
people -- mostly students -- who packed an auditorium at Richard 
Stockton College of New Jersey. 

"I'd like to collect enough baby teeth to find out we are wrong," 
Baldwin said. "Because if we are right, it's going to be a hell of a job 
to undo this." 

Baldwin singled out Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey 
Township as the "dirtiest" of New Jersey's nuclear plants, but he said 
residents living near Salem County's three nuclear reactors aren't safe, 
either. 

Baldwin was joined on stage by antinuclear activists who explained that 
their Tooth Fairy Project is modeled on a study conducted between 1957 
and 1961. That tooth study found fallout from nuclear bomb tests had 
elevated children's levels of strontium-90, a radioactive byproduct of 
nuclear fission, said Joseph J. Mangano, research associate with the 
Radiation and Public Health Project in New York. 

President John Kennedy used that study to convince Congress in 1962 to 
approve an international ban on aboveground nuclear tests, Mangano 
said. After the test ban took effect, strontium levels returned to 
normal, he said. But not for people near a nuclear power plant, he said. 


"For people living near nuclear reactors, bomb testing never ended," 
Mangano said. 

To date, the project has collected about 1,500 baby teeth from children 
living near nuclear plants in New Jersey, New York and Miami. 
Preliminary results from the first 515 teeth show an average strontium 
level of 1.6 picocuries, about eight times the expected level, Mangano 
said. 

Only 73 teeth from New Jersey have been collected, and the average 
strontium level is 1.9 picocuries, he said. Five New Jersey teeth had 
levels above 5 picocuries, including a Brick Township child with a level 
of 7.4, he said. 

Baldwin said the results so far show strontium levels are as high in 
children living near nuclear plants today as in children exposed to 
radioactive fallout 40 years ago. 

"Why should those levels not be of the same concern today?" Baldwin 
asked. "Civilian reactors in this country are contaminating the 
environment." 

When released into the environment, strontium-90 falls to the ground in 
rain where it is absorbed by feed crops, Mangano said. Cows that eat 
these crops pass the radiation to people in their milk and meat, he 
said. Accumulating in bone marrow, the isotope affects people's immune 
systems and reproductive glands, possibly leading to prostrate and breast 
cancer, among other ailments, Mangano alleged. 

In advance of Baldwin's visit, a spokeswomen for the Nuclear Energy 
Institute released statements saying any claim that strontium-90 is 
linked to breast cancer is not supported by "sound science" and that 
people who live near nuclear power plants live as long as anyone else. 

Public Service Electric and Gas released a statement saying its Salem 
plants have never had a "significant" release of strontium-90. 



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