Project Sunshine

Project Sunshine was a study launched in 1953 by the Atomic Energy Commission and the RAND Corporation to measure how much strontium-90, a radioactive element in nuclear fallout, was building up around the world. Because strontium behaves like calcium, it collects in bones, especially in growing children. To measure it, scientists needed human bones, and the youngest were the most valuable. Over the following years, samples were gathered from thousands of bodies, many of them stillborn babies and infants, from hospitals and pathologists in the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and other countries.¹²

The program was led scientifically by chemist Willard Libby, later a Nobel laureate for radiocarbon dating, who told a 1955 meeting that anyone who knew how to do a good job of body snatching would be serving their country. Families were generally not asked. Sunshine's data showed fallout was rising in human bones, adding to pressure for limits on atmospheric testing. The collection came to wider public attention through the 1995 Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments and, in 2001, through reporting in Britain and Australia, prompting official inquiries there.¹