Ernest Joachim Sternglass (24 September 1923 – 12 February 2015) was a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.
[6] In 1967, Sternglass moved to the department of radiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, where he eventually was named professor emeritus.
Stewart was head of the department of preventive medicine of Oxford University, responsible for a pioneering study on the effects of low-level radiation in England.
[9] In 1963, Sternglass testified before the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy regarding the level of strontium-90 found in children as part of the Baby Tooth Survey.
[citation needed] In 1969, Sternglass reached the conclusion that 400,000 infants had died because of medical problems caused by fallout—chiefly lowered resistance to disease and reductions in birth weight.
He claimed that when setting allowable limits for nuclear industrial emissions "the AEC grossly misjudged the sensitivity of the fetus.
"[14] In 1974, Sternglass identified elevated levels of radiation and increased cancer and infant mortality incidence in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.
The review concluded that "it was impossible to rule out the fact that there may have been a relationship between environmental radiation exposure from the Shippingport operation and an increased death rate in the population.
"[15] In 1979, Sternglass began extending his analyses of fallout effects to embrace behavioral disorders, including academic deficits seen in high school students.
[17] Alice Stewart, whose work was the inspiration for the work of Sternglass on radiation health effects, firmly repudiated it, saying of an encounter with him in 1969: A review in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Sternglass's 1972 Low-Level Radiation lauded the author for bringing the risks (and the nuclear industry's reluctance to discuss them openly) to public attention, with a relatively "calm presentation" compared to other recent titles, however, the reviewers sided more with Stewart on methodology, saying that it was The book The Phantom Fallout - Induced Cancer Epidemic in Southwestern Utah / Downwinders Deluded and Waiting to Die by Daniel Miles repeatedly examines the claims made by Sternglass, and (with extensive documentation) finds them based entirely on cherry-picked data, with extensive application of selective neglect of any data that contradicts his position, and some outright falsified data.
[20] In a paper presented at an engineering and architecture congress, Sternglass argued that an excess of 430 infant deaths in the U.S. northeast that summer could largely be attributed to Three Mile Island radiation releases.
Sternglass also wrote the book Before the Big Bang: the Origins of the Universe, in which he offers an argument for the Lemaître theory of the primeval atom.