USTUR WHOLE-BODY CASE 0212: 17-YEAR FOLLOW-UP OF PLUTONIUM CONTAMINATED WOUND

Abstract

The National Council of Radiation Protection and Measurements’ (NCRP) wound model was applied to the bioassay data from a United States Transuranium and Uranium Registries’ whole-body tissue donor, Case 0212. This individual was exposed to plutonium nitrate as a result of an occupational wound injury and he underwent extensive chelation treatment with Ca-DTPA. All major soft tissues and bones were collected post-mortem and radiochemically analyzed for ²³⁸Pu, ^239,240Pu and ²⁴¹Am. The ^239,240Pu activity in the total body was estimated to be 232.0 Bq, with 80.3 Bq retained in the liver, 115.1 Bq in the skeleton and 14.3 Bq in the wound. The maximum likelihood method was used to simultaneously fit the ‘post-treatment’ urinary excretion and post-mortem liver and skeleton retention data. It was demonstrated that the deposited material was predominantly a strongly retained soluble compound (nitrate) with a 22% fraction of plutonium particles. The residual intake, the amount of plutonium deposited in the wound that was not removed from the system by Ca-DTPA, was estimated to be 288 Bq. The resulting committed effective dose was 134 mSv. Accounting for plutonium eliminated in the urine during chelation therapy, the actual ‘untreated’ intake was 1204 Bq, and the projected committed effective dose was 567 mSv. Hence, DTPA treatment reduced the dose by a factor of 4.