Executive Summary 1994
This report summarizes the salient activities and progress of the United States Transuranium and Uranium Registries for the period , along with details of specific programs areas including the National Human Radiobiology Tissue Repository (NHRTR) and tissue radiochemistry analysis project. Responsibility for tissue radioanalysis was transferred from Los Alamos National Laboratory to Washington State University in February 1994. Physical facilities at the WSU Nuclear Radiation Center were modified to meet the needs for low level actinide analysis laboratories and equipment has been purchased and installed. The laboratory project has been staffed with 4.8 full time equivalents including a senior member of the chemistry faculty who serves as project director. Draft procedures have been prepared for all aspects of the analytical work, and include strengthened chain of custody and requirements for sample handling. Initially, the LANL procedures will be utilized, but development of improved and more efficient radioanalytical methods is under way.
The University of Washington was selected as the Quality Assurance/Quality Control laboratory and a three way intercomparison with them and LANL has been initiated. The results of the initial alpha spectrometry intercomparison showed excellent agreement among the laboratories and are documented in full in the Appendices to the report.
The NHRTR serves as the initial point of receipt for samples received from participants in the USTUR program. Samples are weighed, divided, and reweighed, and a portion retained by the NHRTR as backup in case reanalysis is required or for use in other studies. Tissue specimens retained in the NHRTR are maintained frozen at -70 C and include not only those from USTUR registrants but also those from the radium dial painter and thorium worker studies formerly conducted by Argonne National Laboratory. In addition, there are fixed tissues and a large collection of histopathology slides from all the studies, plus about 20,000 individual solutions derived from donated tissues. These tissues and tissue related materials are made available to other investigators for legitimate research purposes.
Ratios of the concentration of actinides in various tissues have been used to evaluate the biokinetics and retention half times of plutonium and americium. Retention half times for plutonium in various soft tissues range from 10 to 20 y except for the testes for which a retention half time of 58 y was observed . For americium, the retention half time in various soft tissues studied was 2.2 to 3.5 y.
The USTUR has designed and largely implemented a centralized electronic database to support both analytical and administrative data services based on the commercial software package Paradox. The database has built in security features designed to protect the privacy of participants in the program while at the same time allowing for free access to data without personal identifiers. The analytical database has been made part of the DOE Comprehensive Epidemiologic Data Resource (CEDR) and through CEDR is generally available to investigators world wide.
In addition to a discussion of administrative accomplishments for the period, the report includes as appendices the minutes of the annual Advisory Committee meeting, listing of USTUR Policies and Procedures, organization charts and faculty and staff photos, and a listing of publications and presentations.
This page was last updated on May 1, 2007. usturwebmaster@tricity.wsu.edu
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