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The concentration of plutoniu,1-239 and - 2 4 0 i n t h e lung i s sonetliing like0,4 microcuries per gram, which i s considerably higher -- a factor of lo4, roughly -- higher tha: the arnount'in virtually all of us that we have accumulated from weapons-produced plutonium o r from -- most of it which was put into the atqosphere before the limited test treaty / Another group, Number2in the original slide, plutonium inject ees, eighteen inject eos -- again, nany, rna-iy y e a r s ago: 1944,-445, ' 4 6 -- with tracer doses of plutoniun. Most of then are older than age 45 and are a selec tLve qroup, All b u t two were given plutonium-239; one recei plutonium-238; and one received a combination of plutonimt-23 Pat Durbin, who is in the audience, has done a remarkable detective job, of you will, of following up this qoup of people, and there are some very fascinating pieces of data that one can fin ' d,in this interesting study. For example, the person with the large dosa of
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REPOSITORY: OFFICE OF HUMAN RADIATION COLLECTION : PLUTONIUM INJECTION INVESTIGATION FOLDER: PLUTONIUM INJECTIONS - GENERAL
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were derived by Langham and a i is li fie d by others, Mare recently, it turns out four o f these people are still alive today, almost three decades later, Three of the f o u r are now under study, One has been exhumed. That's why w e have vital statistics, You can Pro. I use this as an example of how cau io us sci ent is :or approximately twenty years, I have n o t estimated doses 3.04 microcuries for occupational per n is sib le body burden, This data provided the basis for the excretion functions, which are still quite valid and used today, that they terminal patients in 1945 and 19461 DR. RICHNOND:L You j u s t answered the question. 4 j ect a ese things and use your best judgement. But you're not always one hmdred percent right.
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are, and they should be, These were cm clu s ions nade 23 years ago by Wrigh Langham relative to the studies, He says, "Admittedly the observations made here in this study provide no evidence of what might happen inten to thirty years," We now have a little better feeling for these The point of the experiment and the intent of the original investigators was to look for early effects for relatively high doses. And they concluded that they were without acute subjective or objective clinical effects. But again, we c s n get a lot more information now from more modern followups on the study. Very recently, people at Argonne and LASL have tried to estimate the body of oae of these rather old1 wonen, an3 the agreement is remarkable. It's within a factor of four or five, using the Langham equations and anything involved i n that kind of an estimate, Where do accidents -- what kind happen? This is from a TransUranuu! technical group reporl chaired by Dr,Bair(in the audience), By year, by activity by percent cf body burden, by route of entry : this comes through loud and cleariin all t h e analyses. Inhalation appea to be the prominent r o u t e or modality of exposure',