Hello!
We hope this newsletter finds you well! We are so excited to be re-invigorating the old St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey by trying to identify original tooth donors and find out about their current health. This effort will allow us to explore how early life factors influence later life health in ways not possible before — that means your tooth donation to the original study keeps on giving! We are eager to share some important updates and insights from our ongoing study. But first, while some of you may already be familiar with the history of this study, we think it’s worth highlighting again!
In Case You Missed It: A Brief History
The Baby Tooth Survey was originally designed to explore the link between above-ground nuclear testing and radiation levels in baby teeth donated by you! The first nuclear bomb “Trinity” was tested 210 miles south of Los Alamos on July 16, 1945 (featured in the recent movie Oppenheimer). A total of 215 nuclear weapons would be exploded into the atmosphere by the United States. However, even atmospheric nuclear weapons tested by other countries could have led to the deposition of radioactive material inside the US.
In December 1958, Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis University, and the Greater St. Louis Citizens Committee for Nuclear Information launched the Baby Tooth Survey, eventually collecting over 320,000 baby teeth by 1970. The findings were startling: children born in 1958 had levels of strontium 90 – a radioactive by-product of bomb fallout – more than 30 times higher than children born in 1947 (Rosenthal, Bird, Gilster, Pinto, & O’Neill, 1966). The Baby Tooth Survey played a vital role in President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 decision to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban treaty prohibiting above-ground nuclear testing.
Fortunately, not all the collected teeth were used for strontium-90 testing. In May 2001, about 100,000 untested teeth were discovered, in excellent condition, in an abandoned armory owned by Washington University. The university transferred the teeth to Joe Mangano, Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. Recognizing that these teeth still offered significant scientific potential, Mangano began a collaboration with Dr. Marc Weisskopf at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, leading to our current study: the St. Louis Baby Tooth– Later Life Health Study.
Our best estimate is that those 100,000 teeth come from about 35,000 original donors. And so far, a little over 5,000 of you have joined our Later Life Health study! We can’t thank you enough for your dedication to public health research!
Who Are You?
We hope to see the number of you participating continue to grow, but here is a snapshot of what your fellow participants look like:
The following map shows where you were when you donated your baby tooth:
Since most of you were in the St. Louis area, the subsequent map zooms in that region:
Including study participant demographics (that is, the characteristics of a given population) in statistical models help us figure out how important age or education or environmental exposures are to any observed health differences, and whether there are differences in exposure concentrations across different kinds of people. And, of course, we always want to know about the differences among our study population to better understand the results —we call that generalizability, and it is really important for public health.
We’re also eager to share that we are working on several papers based on this study! While the peer review process is lengthy, our first paper was accepted by the journal Psychological Medicine. You can find a summary and citation for this paper, as well as future publications, on our website at hsph.me/SLBTPapers
Sample Collection is Happening Now!
We are excited to announce the beginning of our sample collection efforts! We are extending invitations to 1,000 randomly selected participants who have completed both the survey and cognitive test. These participants will be asked to donate samples of their blood, water, and even toenail clippings. Please keep an eye out for messages from our team—you may be invited to join this effort!
We are also preparing to launch a second survey and second round of cognitive testing! Everyone who participated in the first survey will be invited to join Survey Round 2. (If you haven’t yet participated in the first survey, you still can — see below!) For this second survey, your feedback has been invaluable! Those of you who sent comments have helped us create this new survey with questions that are more relevant to you, and deepen our understanding of how environmental exposures impact health over time. We really appreciate this feedback, and always welcome more through our Update Information Form
If you haven’t already, please be sure to:
- Finish your first survey and cognitive test. Please go to hsph.me/SLBT and click “Start the Study!” to read our consent form and begin the first survey.
- Give us your preferred contact information. Please fill out our Update Information Form or visit hsph.me/SLBT and select “Update my Information” to make sure we can reach you with future newsletters, updates, and invitations. You can also provide feedback here!
What Comes Next
We think it’s truly remarkable that these teeth were found all these years later in good condition, and we are so deeply grateful that you have gifted your time and effort to the continuation of this study.
We want to keep you engaged and informed on our progress through these newsletters. Plus, it gives us another opportunity to say thanks for your essential contributions to this research! In future newsletters, we will share details from published results, highlight key researchers, and let you know what happens next.
Many of your questions will be answered by going to hsph.me/slbt and selecting “FAQ.” But if you want to contact the study team, you can reach us at slbt@hsph.harvard.edu (fastest response time) or 617-432-0041 with any questions.
Our sincere thanks,
SLBT Study Team
Dr. Marc G. Weisskopf
