St. Louis children sacrificed their baby teeth to help answer a somber question: Was radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing being absorbed by children in their bones and teeth?

Twelve years, 320,000 tiny teeth and thousands of children later, the Baby Tooth Survey answered that question.

The study found that children born in St. Louis at the height of the Cold War in 1963 had 50 times as much strontium 90, a radioactive isotope found in bomb fallout and at nuclear reactors, in their teeth as children born in 1950 — before most of the atomic tests. Results ultimately contributed to the signing of an international treaty to ban atmospheric nuclear weapons testing.

Read more about the survey in this 2013 article.

But beyond that first answer, the survey has continued

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