Feb. 8, 2000 internet communication from Janette D. Sherman, M.D.

(Some of the information to be presented at the AAAS meeting in DC on Feb. 21st. linking adverse health effects to ionizing radiation and toxic chemicals in those born since the late 1950s (the start of the nuclear and chemical age.) Enclosed is the abstract by Drs. Gould and Mangano. More information is available on the website www.radiation.org.)

The 80 million US baby boomers, born in 1945-65, exposed in utero to fission products from nuclear fallout equivalent to 40,000 Hiroshima bombs, are not living as long as their parents' generation. According to papers read at the Enviroshock Symposium at the AAAS meetings in Washington today by members of the Radiation and Pubic Health Project, male baby boomers have experienced more health problems as they matured than previous generations despite advances in living standards, antibiotics and medical technology.

When male baby boomers reached the age of 15 to 24 in the 1960s, they registered unprecedented high mortality rates from acts of violence (accidents, homicide, suicide and drug abuse). In 1963 when the reached the age of 18, their SAT scores declined rapidly to levels well below those of their parents born in prenuclear years. When they reached the age of 24, the numbers applying to medical school or earning Ph.Ds. also declined rapidly.

By 1970 when they reached the age of 25 to 44, they began to drop out of the labor force, so that by 1991 the 3.5 million classified as "not seeking work" was twice as great as in 1970. By 1980 baby boomer males reaching the age of 35 began to die of new immune deficiency diseases like AIDS and by 1990 began to be diagnosed with prostate cancer at the very early age of 45. Black male life expectancy can be shown to have peaked in the 1990s and will surely decline in the 21st century.

The highly anomalous decline in life expectancy and lifetime productivity of those born in 1945-65 can be associated with immune system damage from above ground testing of nuclear weapons in these years, along with significant increases in radioactive strontium in humans and increases in underweight live births, all of which improved greatly after their termination in the mid-1960s.

However, since 1982 increases in underweight live births, and in strontium-90 levels in baby teeth suggest that the children of baby boomers may be replicating damage to their immune systems, this time from emissions from reactors rather than nuclear bomb tests.

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