5 Things You Should Know About Nuclear Fallout

A nuclear blast releases a litany of things ranging from the nasty to the downright bowel-evacuatingly terrifying. Some of these isotopes include caesium-137, which can cause burns, radiation sickness and death; iodine-131, which affects the thyroid, and strontium-90, an element that behaves similarly to calcium and can cause cancer of the bones and a bunch of other horrifying things.

A survey conducted in December 1958 to 1970 collected teeth from children in the St Louis area of the US. Why, you ask? Because strontium-90, as we know, is one of the major by-products of nuclear fission and setting off a nuclear bomb; we also know that strontium-90 bonds with bones and teeth, so the study aimed to test the levels of strontium-90 present in the population of St Louis as a result of nuclear arms testing.

By soliciting teeth from children, and yes that sentence is chill inducing.

If you sent them your tooth you got a little badge, like a Blue Peter badge, but for teeth. The study's findings discovered strontium-90 levels had risen drastically higher than those in children born before the testing of large scale nuclear weapons worldwide.

This mass collection of baby teeth and the attendant study, combined with greater awareness of the wider effects of nuclear testing and use, led to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which limited testing of large scale nuclear weapons to underground facilities.