weapons coincided with a rise in public concern about nuclear fallout debris contaminating food sources, particularly the threat of high levels of strontium-90 in milk (see the Baby Tooth Survey). This survey was a scientist and citizen led campaign which used "modern media advocacy techniques to communicate complex issues" to inform public discourse. Its research findings confirmed a significant build-up of strontium-90 in bones of babies and helped galvanise public support for a ban on atmospheric nuclear testing in the US. Lewis Strauss and Edward Teller, dubbed the "father of the hydrogen bomb," both sought to tamp down on these fears, arguing that fallout [at the dose levels of US exposure] were fairly harmless and that a test ban would enable the Soviet Union to surpass the US in nuclear capabilities. Teller also suggested that testing was necessary to develop nuclear weapons that produced less fallout. Support in the US public for a test ban to continue to grow from 20% in 1954 to 63% by 1957. Moreover, widespread antinuclear protests were organized and led by theologian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Albert Schweitzer, whose appeals were endorsed by Pope Pius XII, and Linus Pauling, the latter of whom organized an anti-test petition signed by more than 9,000 scientists across 43 countries (including the infirm and elderly Albert Einstein). The AEC would eventually concede, as well, that even low levels of radiation were harmful. It was a combination of rising public support for a test ban and the shock of the 1957 Soviet Sputnik launch that encouraged Eisenhower to take steps towards a test ban in 1958. There was also increased environmental concern in the Soviet Union. In the mid-1950s, Soviet scientists began taking regular radiation readings near Leningrad, Moscow, and Odessa and collected data on the prevalence of strontium-90, which indicated that strontium-90 levels in western Russia approximately matched those in the eastern US. Rising Soviet concern was punctuated in September 1957 by the Kyshtym disaster, which forced the evacuation of 10,000 people after an explosion at a nuclear plant. Around the same time, 219 Soviet scientists signed Pauling's antinuclear petition. Soviet political elites did not share the concerns of others in the Soviet Union. However; Kurchatov unsuccessfully called on Khrushchev to halt testing in 1958. On 14 June 1957, following Eisenhower's suggestion that existing detection measures were inadequate to ensure compliance, the Soviet Union put forth a plan