The Baby Tooth Survey was launched in 1958 by the Greater St.  Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information and scientists at Washington University.  The initiative, which collected over 320,000 baby teeth globally, demonstrated that Strontium-90 levels in children had risen 50 times higher by 1963 compared to 1950.  These findings were pivotal in convincing President John F. Kennedy to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which prohibited above-ground nuclear testing.

  In August 1958, biochemist Herman Kalckar at Johns Hopkins University published an article in Nature proposing an "International Milk Teeth Radiation Census" to measure radioactive fallout absorption in children.  The idea was brought to St. Louis, where alarmed citizens and scientists had just formed the Greater St.  Louis Citizens' Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI) in March 1958 at a meeting organized by Edna Gellhorn, former president of the League of Women Voters.  The CNI's 185 charter members included 36 doctors, 9 ministers, 3 rabbis, and 93 women.

In December 1958, the CNI formally launched the Baby Tooth Survey in partnership with the Washington University School of Dental Medicine and Saint Louis University School of Dentistry, receiving an initial five-year grant of $197,454 from the National Institute of Dental Research (U.S. Public Health Service).

  From 1958 to 1970, researchers collected over 320,000 baby teeth, primarily from the St.  Louis area but also from all 50 states and internationally (including Japan, Germany, and Alaska). Parents, teachers, dentists, scout groups, churches, libraries, and parent-teacher associations all helped with collection. Children were given "Operation Tooth Club" membership cards and buttons in exchange for their teeth — a grassroots, volunteer-driven effort unlike the secret AEC bone-collection program.

The teeth were analyzed at Washington University for strontium-90 (Sr-90), a radioactive isotope produced by nuclear fission that behaves like calcium in the body and concentrates in bones and teeth.

Findings

Children born in 1958 had Sr-90 levels more than 30 times higher than children born in 1947 (before large-scale testing)

 Children born in 1963 had 50 times more Sr-90 in their teeth than those born in 1950

 Sr-90 levels peaked in the mid-1960s and then dropped by half within four years after the Test Ban Treaty went into effect

 A 1961 preliminary finding showed Sr-90 in deciduous teeth had tripled since the start of nuclear testing

  Political ImpactIn June 1963, Dr. Eric Reiss presented the study's findings at U.S. Senate hearings on fallout effects, citing the buildup of radiation in humans as a critical reason to support the treaty.  Two months later, in August 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (also called the Limited Test Ban Treaty) with the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, banning above-ground nuclear weapons testing.

Kennedy argued that governments could not be indifferent to "children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs."

Aftermath & Legacy

  The CNI and the university halted tooth collection around 1970 once the treaty's success was evident

 The CNI later dissolved, having accomplished its primary goal

 A portion of the teeth is now part of a collection in the Smithsonian Institution

 The survey is considered the first modern global environmental agreement to stem the poisoning of the planet

 The tooth collection has since been reused for research on other pollutants (lead, cadmium, etc.) in the St.  Louis Baby Tooth – Later Life Health Study at Harvard

 A Japanese filmmaker is working on a documentary about the survey

 Why Baby Teeth Specifically?

 Baby teeth (deciduous teeth) were ideal because:

Children absorb radioactive strontium and cesium more intensely than adults

Baby teeth are naturally lost and easily collected

 They form early in life, capturing exposure during the peak testing years

They serve as a biological dosimeter for the most vulnerable population group

  The Smithsonian Institution (specifically the National Museum of American History) acquired artifacts from the Baby Tooth Survey — including the "I Gave My Tooth to Science" pins that children received — as part of its collection of objects documenting American social and political history.  Their interest was historical and cultural rather than scientific: the survey represents a landmark example of citizen science and grassroots activism during the Cold War, and it directly influenced a major international treaty.  The teeth and related materials serve as physical evidence of how ordinary citizens, schools, and dentists mobilized to generate the empirical evidence that helped end above-ground nuclear testing.

In short, the Smithsonian saw the survey as a significant chapter in the story of public engagement with science and policy in the 20th century — a rare case where volunteer-collected data from children's lost teeth helped shape arms-control

 The above was produced by my Brave Browser AI.

I did this because young people who were not college students in 1963 as I was. 

Very few people I meet can remember President Truman on the radio.

I did meet an elderly Black man yesterday who was wearing a Korean war veteran cap.

I talked to him.