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CARBIDE AND CARBON CHEMICALS COMPANY A DIVISION OF UNION CARBIDE AND CARBON CORPORATION M a s sachitsetts General Hospital Subject: First Results of Uranium Distribution and Excretion Study Dear Doctor Sweet: Following our discussion with you and others in the Atomic Energy Commission and at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, w e agreed t o provide analytical services in exchange for additional data, not directly concerned with the therapeutic application of uranium to the treatment of brain tumors. This experiment, a s you well know, provides a wonderful opportunity t o secure "human data" for the analysis and interpretation of industrial uranium from patient number 68927. our general observations concerning the results obtained on this subject. We have completed the analysis and assembly of the data taken The purpose of this letter is t o inform you OL It might be of interest to restate what we believe to be the objectives of our cooperative effort. These objectives are: 1. Concentration of uranium in normal fluids and tissues and in tumor after intravenous administration. 2. Concentration of uranium i n blood with respect 3. Distribution of uranium within major organs and bone. 4. Build-up and disappearance of uranium in urine and feces. 5. Evaluation of urine excretion curves in terms of our method of On November 11, 1953, patient number 68927 received, by intravenous administration, 12.9 milliliters of sterile isotonic solution containing 1.60 ,milligrams of uranium 233 and 3.90 milligrams of uranium 238.
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dose equivalent to .30 micro curies per kilogram of body weight. large. .quantities of uranium appear i n the urine immediately following injection, followed by a gradual decrease in rate of excretion; there are the usual fluctuations in individual samples; and a l a r g e percentage of the injected dose is eliminated in the urine. Bone - T h i s tissue shows a significant uptake of uranium--at one hour post injection and remains fairly constant throughout the remainder of the study. The variations in the sample concentrations indicate that the techniques of sampling may have resulted i n contamination of the s m a l l samples because of the existing high activity level in the blood. However, the amount of the injected dose found i n the bone (14 percent) agrees well with previous experimental findings. .Muscle - The muscle data similarly indicates the possibility of contamination, with added factor of vascularity in this tissue to further this possibility. The samples taken from8 hours t o 32 hours post injection show little uranium depositing i n the tissue. Cerebrospinal Fluid - T h e lumbar fluid shows a slight concentration of uranium at one hour with subsequen t samples showing comparable amounts. The ventricular fluid exhibits little uptake of uranium for the first 16 hours post injection. However, at this latter time an elevated value appears which is higher than previous values by a factor of approximately 10: T h i s observation is again evident at 32 hours post injection. The significance of these elevated values is unknown to us. In comparing lumbar fluid with ventricular fluid it is evident that the former exceeds the latter consistently, with the exception of the ventricular samples at 16 and 32 hours post injection. Here again the explanation is not obvious t o us. Blood - T h e activity in the blood at one hour after injection is not indicative of the rapid decrease that is expected to occur during the first 60 minutes. Considering the injected dose and assuming a total volume . of blood for the standard man of 5.5 liters, it is seen that the blood concentration h a s decreased by an approximate factor of 10. Following the rapid decrease, the blood concentration is observed to deminish slowly f o r the duration of the study. Autopsy Samples - (Table 111) The kidney, a s expected, contained the highest concentration of uranium per unit weight. *The next three sites in order of decreasing content per unit weight are pancreas, brain and In summary the data are presented in the following table.
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Distribution of Injected Dose a t 57 Hrs Post Injection Soft Tissue (other than kidney) Percent of Injected. Dose The results obtained i n the first experiment are generally incomplete and inconclusive due to the brief duration of the study. Furthermore,there are disc.repancies i n duplicate samples which appear t o have been caused by experimental technique and it is expected that the changes we have inaugurated will lead to more precise results. We have discussed with you the inadequacies of our Associate Health Physicist
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BIOPSY SAWLES TISSUE CONCh TT RAT ION %ET WEIGHT POST INJECTION ALIQUOT ACTIVITY
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The following table lists the limit of error (95%) associated with the above results. -Designation Limits of Range Average Recovery Injected 12.9 m l of solution having 24/39 X 0.2 mgm of U 233 and 13/39 X 0.9 mgm of U 238
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