Overview
The Baby Tooth Survey, conducted by the Greater St. Louis Citizen’s Committee for Nuclear Information starting in 1958, was an x factor in the push to stop the international nuclear arms race. The survey, led by environmentalist Barry Commoner and Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, exposed the extreme dangers of nuclear fallout to the public by analyzing the levels of strontium-90, a radioactive isotope, in baby teeth sent in from all around the country. President John F. Kennedy was greatly influenced to find a peaceful solution with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis when Dr. Pauling showed him the data from the survey. Outraged by the unhealthy levels of radiation in America’s next generation, JFK worked with the Soviets to create the Limited Test Ban Treaty, ending all above-ground nuclear testing, protecting the environment from extensive damage, saving humans in every country from unhealthy exposure to radioactive elements, and preventing a huge nuclear war that could have killed entire nations and mutilated the population.