By Stuart Rosebrook, Ph.D.

From 1945 to 1964, the United States, the U.S.S.R, the United Kingdom, France and China set off approximately 663 nuclear tests above ground into our world’s atmosphere, with the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. respectively testing 356 and 212 nuclear weapons between 1955 and 1964. The U.S. alone, according to the “Baby Tooth” exhibit at the St. Louis branch of the Missouri Historical Society, “conducted almost 200 nuclear tests between 1945 and 1958, most of them above ground” at atomic blast sites in Nevada (the Trinity site in New Mexico was the first in 1945). Fallout from the bombs “showered the country with nuclear radiation.” The West and Midwest were both particularly hard-hit and “cancer causing radiation seeped into the air, water, and even milk supply, as cows ate contaminated grass.”

One woman, St. Louis physician Louise Reiss, led the formation of the Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for Nuclear Information in 1958. Reiss was inspired by Johns Hopkins University biochemist Dr. Herman Kalckar’s 1958 article on baby teeth in Nature, “The official public health agencies of every nation…should organize a large-scale collection of milk teeth…and conduct measurements of radioactivity on this material.”

In early 1959, according to the February 9th edition of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, the Citizens’ Committee had already collected 1,000 baby teeth from the St. Louis area and around the country when an official “scientific advisory committee” was created to supervise the “baby-tooth survey,” including key dental scientists and researchers from the Washington University School of Dentistry and Medical School in St. Louis. Dr. Reiss’s husband, Dr. Eric Reiss, a professor of medicine, also part of the project, testified before the U.S. Senate. 

According to the “Children of Atomic Veterans” website, the Tooth Fairy Project studied 100,000 baby teeth from babies born between 1946 and 1965. “Children born in 1963 had levels of strontium 90 in their teeth 50 times higher than children born in 1950 due to large-scale atomic testing.” Foreign countries, such as Canada and Japan, started studies too.

In the summer of 1963, President John F. Kennedy was in negotiations with the U.S.S.R. and the United Kingdom to limit nuclear testing. The three nations agreed to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on August 5, 1963. Later that month, the findings of the Tooth Fairy Project were presented to the U.S. Senate and President Kennedy. The Senate ratified the treaty on September 24, 1963, and the agreement to ban above-ground nuclear detonations went into effect October 10, 1963. France and China didn’t end their atmospheric testing, respectively, until 1974 and 1980.

Before the Tooth Fairy Project was completed in 1970, they tested more than 320,000 teeth from around the world, which, according to the Missouri Historical Society exhibit, “absolutely proved a direct link between above-ground testing and high radiation levels.” In April 1963, federal agencies began working with farmers and dairies to test feed and remove Strontium 90 from milk for public consumption. Over 60 years later, scientists are still studying the effects of radioactivity in our atmosphere and food supply, but we owe a great deal of thanks to Dr. Louise Reiss, who took it upon herself to study the baby teeth of American children. We might want to consider that there really was a tooth fairy, and her name was Louise.

Stuart Rosebrook, Ph.D., Sharlot Hall Museum’s executive director, was born in 1963 and is eternally grateful to the scientists who convinced President John F. Kennedy to end aboveground nuclear weapons testing, and that the federal Downwinders program was reinstated for Americans affected by the nuclear testing program. On July 18, 2026, a free Downwinders & Resources Presentation will be made at Sharlot Hall Museum. For more information and to reserve a seat, visit SharlotHallMuseum.org.

“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are also available at www.archives.sharlothallmuseum.org/articles/days-past-articles/1 The public is encouraged to submit proposed articles and inquiries to dayspast@sharlothallmuseum.org Please contact SHM Research Center reference desk at 928-277-2003, or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information or assistance with photo requests.