Forensic Dentistry Watch: Teeth Reveal True Age

ABC News Online has Teeth and nuclear fallout reveal true age.

Forensic scientists are using tooth enamel and the fallout from nuclear tests in the 1950s to more precisely deduce the age of a person at the time of their death.

Professor Jonas Frisen from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, developed the method and said it had already been used to help identify people who died in the Indian Ocean tsunami last year.

US researchers are also offering to use the technique to determine the age of unidentified victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Until now, forensic scientists studied the skeleton and wear on the teeth to determine the age of a person, a system which was accurate to within about five to 10 years.

But by looking at the amount of radioactive carbon-14 in the tooth enamel, scientists can correctly predict a person’s age to within about 1.6 years.

Couple this method with DNA and have you have a two prong approach to identifying the victims of disaster or crimes.

Flap previously had The Value of Dental Records in Victim Identification.

But by looking at the amount of radioactive carbon-14 in the tooth enamel, scientists can correctly predict a person’s age to within about 1.6 years.

Tooth enamel is formed at distinct times during childhood and contains only 0.4 per cent carbon, so higher concentrations of carbon in teeth reflect the amount in the atmosphere when the enamel was formed.

When nuclear testing began in 1955, it increased the amounts of carbon-14 in the atmosphere.

Regardless of where the tests were done, the levels very quickly became uniform around the globe, so the technique can be used to determine the age of people around the world.

“It is a simple method to determine the age of an individual by measuring the level of the compound in teeth,” Professor Frisen said.

However, the technique does not work for individuals born before 1943 because their teeth were already formed by the time the nuclear tests began.

Professor Frisen, a cell biologist, and his colleagues were studying the age of cells in the body when they realised carbon-dating tooth enamel could help forensic scientists.

The researchers, who reported their findings in the science journal Nature, say using the technique is no more difficult than doing a blood test.

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