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They Still Have My Teeth [1]
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Date: 2025-02-12
The legacy of the cold war lives on. It’s important for us to remember what that period in our history entailed, especially as we enter a time where there are plans to begin to use our military in different ways going forward. We have a President eager to deploy troops domestically, who has questioned why we don’t “nuke” hurricanes, and who seems eager to threaten use of his big button in nuclear confrontation. All this leads me to recall the various aspects of growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, with the hope that we’re not heading back to where we once were. But I fear we are.
By the early 60s, the US had conducted 231 atmospheric, underwater, and space-based nuclear tests, starting with Trinity. I guess they really wanted to be sure those bombs would work. A lot of that testing was done in Nevada. We lived downwind and were young, with growing bones and developing teeth. The teeth of young children absorb Strontium 90, since it is chemically similar to calcium. Baby teeth are excellent for study, since they are accessible once shed, and since they are a good proxy for determining the amount of strontium absorbed in the bones. Bones and permanent teeth are with us for life. Long-live isotopes like Strontium 90 continue to decay and expose the surrounding tissues with resulting radiation, for life. Strontium 90 decays by emitting beta radiation.
Washington University, an excellent local resource, conducted a study of teeth collected from the area during the time of these atmospheric tests. (Decades later, I would find out that my mother-in-law had done the artwork for that research program.) Recognition of the levels of strontium we had absorbed helped accelerate the adoption of the Partial Test Ban treaty, signed by Kennedy in 1963. Our teeth had roughly 50 times the levels from before the nuclear testing program. I’m sure that spoiled all the fun they were having in Nevada and in the Pacific.
I recently learned that they still have my baby teeth in storage, along with many others, opening up possibilities for longer-term research concerning the health effects on those exposed to the fallout. They’re only about 1/4th as radioactive as they were when I owned them though, since Strontium 90 has a 29 year half-life. But now the Heritage Foundation argues we should be testing again. Possibly even in the atmosphere. And we know how much the Heritage Foundation controls the Republican agenda.
There is a Harvard study following up on my teeth, and many others. I complete a periodic health questionnaire and take an hour or so of cognitive performance tests every couple of years. They are attempting to correlate early radiation exposure with long-term health impacts. They have geolocated us throughout our lives, from early childhood addresses to where we live today. Those early addresses are tied to very granular data on fallout in the area. They know the degree of our exposure and the amount we absorbed. Eventually we may find out what that means. That is, as long as the study isn’t cancelled by the new administration.
But we had more things happening besides fallout. There was a surface-to-air missile site in Pacific, MO another one near Alton, IL, and many more scattered about the US. Dad used to take us on a drive past them on occasion. They were there to shoot down any Russian TU-95 Bears that might be headed our way. The Nike Hercules missiles carried 20kt nuclear warheads out to a range of 100 miles or so, making up for the lack of accuracy and enabling the military to tell us they wouldn’t be detonating over the urban area. Had war ever arrived, we would have been detonating nukes over more rural places like Kirksville, MO and Springfield IL. Our nukes. I don’t believe people knew that was once the plan. We watched a movie in grade school about how to build a fallout shelter in your basement using concrete blocks. Good stuff. Perfect content for second grade.
These days we’re working to deploy a new ground-based ICBM system, a new class of nuclear missile subs, a new nuclear bomber (it just recently flew for the first time), and an updated inventory of B-61 nuclear gravity bombs. I understand the need for deterrence, but the idea that we need thousands of warheads scattered across so many systems seems a bit crazy, and an awful waste of money. We don’t need to go back to where we were. But somehow I don’t think nuclear redundancy is very high on the DOGE list.
We had sonic booms in the good old days, too. Lots of them. Cracking plaster and rattling windows. A lot of them were relatively small booms from F-4s being cranked out at McDonnell Douglas, just north of us. But some were much larger. The Air Force didn’t want restrictions on flying supersonic over the city, and were eager to show it was no big deal. Years later, I read about this lovely test program, using B-58s flying supersonic over the area to test the effects on people and homes. Seems the F-4s didn’t generate enough overpressure, so B-58s were dispatched from Wright-Patterson. I can testify that the 3lb/ft2 overpressures produced by a supersonic B-58 can knock you off your swing if you’re not braced for it. But no big deal, since the bulk of the 3114 damage complaints recorded were only for cracked plaster, with wall and foundation damage accounting for less than 20%. Sounds like a fun test, and I’m glad they learned from us, but one wonders why it used to be acceptable to conduct tests like this on our citizens.
Nearby, US Army personnel in protective suits regularly misted zinc cadmium sulfide into the air from the tops of buildings and from vehicles. This was focused on predominately black neighborhoods. They were trying to analyze how chemical and biological weapons might disperse through an urban population. I wonder what they learned. We never heard about any results, just the later lawsuits for health impacts. And if there was no risk, I wonder why the testers wore protective suits.
We weren’t worried much about the nuclear waste at Weldon Spring. Nor did we worry about Coldwater Creek. The contamination was there, but it would be years before it would make the news, and decades before any cleanup would occur. But cleanup did eventually occur, and that was a good thing. Progress.
The power plants and school heating plants belched black smoke from all the coal being burned. All the building exteriors were dark gray. I thought that was the intended color for decades, until the air was cleaned up and the buildings sandblasted. New regulations ended all of that. Now I keep hearing about how we need to burn more coal.
A lot of the parents worked at Carter Carburetor, amongst the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), trichloroethylene (TCE), and asbestos. Those were good-paying jobs, as were the Superfund cleanup jobs that would follow for that site. Back then, the leaded gas that flowed through those carburetors went out our tailpipes and into the air. Yeah, we breathed that lead. Those chemical exposures at that site were typical of what often happened in the workplace back then. Before our regulations. Before OSHA, now on the chopping block.
Our sewer bills were cheap back then, too. The city’s combined sanitary/storm sewer system would be overwhelmed in heavy rain, forcing it into a bypass mode that released raw sewage into the rivers. They’re in the process of fixing that, but I hear so many complaints about the high cost of our sewer bills now. It was so much cheaper before. I guess those folks were okay with the smell, as long as the bill was cheap. Damned EPA. Screw the Clean Water Act. Now we have plans in motion to reduce the power of the EPA. We may be headed back to more raw sewage releases. The environment just doesn’t matter anymore, I guess.
When I listen to the intentions of the MAGA movement, I just can’t imagine what they are thinking. Without the EPA fighting for a clean environment, the Justice Department fighting discrimination, and the push to eliminate the secrecy from government, things would be a lot worse. The programs implemented decades ago have done a lot to make life better in this country. But we have stalled, and now they want to take us backward. I will fight that. We all need to fight that. I remember how things were. Thanks for reading my rant.
Cheers.
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