Nuclear fallout linked to cancer, tooth study finds

the study

When the teeth were found in 2001, the university donated them to the Radiation and Public Health Project, a New York-based nonprofit research group looking at the links between disease and nuclear contamination.

• Of the 85,000 teeth found in storage, project officials were able to track down addresses for 2,703 of those donors.

• Through surveys, they were able to isolate 97 teeth from 77 donors with cancer and compare them with 194 teeth from healthy donors.

• The donors who died of cancer had about 122 percent more of the isotope in their teeth than the healthy donors.