How Open-Air Nuclear Testing Got Banned

I always suspected that there was something like this lying behind the motivation of the US, Russia, and the UK to ban open-air nuclear tests starting in 1963.

To think that humans did such stupid things blindly such as blowing up atomic weapons, which spread all kinds of nasty radioactive fallout, is just hard to fathom.  How could a species be so stupid?  If humans are a typical sort of organism for this planet, it doesn’t paint a very good picture of the life forms that inhabit it, when you think about it.  An outside observer could only conclude that life on Planet Earth is really warped.

So what was it that prompted the policy to ban open-air nuclear tests?  It was research done on baby teeth by a woman in St. Louis, Missouri, of all things.  Her research found that the levels of radioactive Strontium-90 was 50 times higher in baby teeth for infants born after the start of nuclear testing as before.  Strontium-90 behaves like calcium in the body hence would accumulate in bone and teeth.

Further ongoing research by her Radiation and Public Health Project found that of a certain group of test subjects who were followed for a long time, those who died of cancer before the age of 50 had more than twice the average amount of Strontium-90 in their bodies as those who were healthy.


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