Executive Summary 1996
This Annual Report covers the period October 1, 1995 through September 30, 1996, and includes both scientific and administrative activities. As of September 30, 1996, the Registries had a total of 886 registrants of whom 350 were deceased and 292 classified as active. An anticipated funding cut of approximately 35% for the period beginning October 1, 1996, necessitated some staff cuts, but it is anticipated that the Registries core research will be maintained albeit at a somewhat slower pace.
The Registries received approximately 60 public information requests or inquiries ranging over a wide range of topics, about a third of which came from the media or official agencies, including Congress. Specific noteworthy inquiries were received from the President's Advisory Committee on the Gulf War Veterans with regard to uranium biokinetics and toxicity, and from the County of Los Angeles and the State of California with regard to the management and dosimetry of two separate instances of acute accidental intakes of 241Am.
Other administrative activities included incorporation of the National Radiobiology Archives into the USTUR, and transfer of documents including original notebooks and laboratory data along with histopathology slides and similar biological materials from completed U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored radiobiology research programs. The USTUR home page on the World Wide Web, provided as a public service, was equipped with a counter which indicated an average of 240 visits per month during the first five months that the counter was in operation.
The regular annual Institutional Review Board review was completed and the program approved without change for another year. A revised Policies and Procedures Manual was issued along with a new similar manual specific for the radiochemistry operations. The regular annual USTUR Newsletter was sent to all registrants.
A proposal for collaborative research with the Dosimetry Registry of the Mayak Industrial Association, operated by Branch No. 1 of the Institute of Biophysics, Ozersk, Russian Federation was approved for funding as a three-year program. This proposal calls for 12 specific tasks to be accomplished, including comparison and standardization of tissue sampling radiochemical analysis procedures, characterization of workplace aerosols, various biokinetics studies, lung, lymph node, organ, and systemic depositions, in-vivo counter calibrations, tissue autoradiography and biomarker assays.
Significant scientific activities included an eight month follow-up of USTUR Case 0855, who had suffered an acute accidental inhalation of 241Am which was instrumental in refinement of previously established USTUR biokinetic parameters for this nuclide. The new provisional biokinetic parameters for the four compartment excretion model are fractional uptake of 0.35, 0.20, 0.25 with retention half-times of 50, 2.5 and 10 years, respectively, for skeleton, liver and the rest of the body, with 0.20 going to early excretion.
Uranium content and concentrations in the tissues of two whole body donors with no known occupational exposure to uranium, USTUR Cases 0213 and 0242, showed concentrations of uranium in the bone of 4.8 and 5.8 ng/g wet weight, in close agreement with the Reference Man value of 5.9 ng/g. Uranium was well distributed among the soft tissues as a whole, and concentrations among the tissues as well as individual bones were quite variable. The largest concentrations were found in the tracheobronchial and other pulmonary related lymph nodes. Concentrations in liver were lower than for most soft tissues and the quantity of uranium in liver was less than in kidney. Complete tabulations of radiochemically determined 238Pu in the tissues of USTUR case 0259, a whole body donor with an acute accidental exposure, are included, along with the completed radiochemical data for USTUR whole body donors Case 0262 and 0769.
The causes of death in the USTUR of the cohort of 260 deceased registrants who had enrolled in the USTUR were examined. Cause of death was established with virtual certainty in 244 of the 260 cases (94%) and the correlation between cause of death reported on the death certificate and from autopsy was 89%. Because of the self-selected and highly biased nature of the USTUR cohort, statistical comparison of causes of death in this cohort with the general population, or indeed with any other group is clearly inappropriate. However, it was evident that no grossly elevated causes of death were apparent in this cohort, nor was there an apparent excess of tumors or leukemia, other than an apparent excess of brain tumors (astrocytomas) among workers at Rocky Flats who were members of the cohort.
The sensitivity of acute 60Co exposure with that from alpha radiation from radon in both CHO cells and deep lung fibroblasts was compared using a radiation damage criterion and RBE/cell sensitivity criterion to assess the sensitivity for the formation of micronuclei and the deposition, retention and local dose to the cells from the radon progeny in the different regions of the respiratory tract with the ultimate goal of developing a practical biodosimetric technique applicable to other -emitters, such as plutonium. Evaluation of the dose-response curves for the two types of radiation demonstrated that biological dosimetry can be very useful in determining the distribution of dose and damage in the respiratory tract following inhalation of radon or other environmental pollutants.
Interspecies comparisons of actinide biokinetics and radiation doses utilizing beagle dog data available in the National Radiobiology Archives and human data from the USTUR revealed that in general, such ratios were essentially the same for the two species. Most significantly, the beagle dog appears to reasonably approximate plutonium biokinetics in humans. The data for beagle dogs suggest that individual tissue retention curves based on initial lung deposition would be useful in modeling the biokinetics of plutonium in humans and could yield reasonable estimates of radiation doses to all of the tissues or organs studied.
Significant radiochemistry development activities included an ion exchange method for 228/232Th determination in tissues, a high resolution alpha spectrometry for determination of 239/240Pu ratios in human tissues, a high sensitivity method for uranium in urine using kinetic phosphorescence analysis, progress towards development of a high resolution alpha spectrometry technique for determination of 239/240Pu ratios in human tissues utilizing a software program specifically developed to deconvolute the combined five-peak multiplet from the two Pu isotopes, and a combined neutron activation analysis and alpha spectrometry for Th isotope determination, and determination of 239Pu in low activity samples of human tissues by fission track analysis with a sensitivity of less than the currently achievable level of 0.7 mBq (0.02 pCi) accomplished by alpha spectrometry.
This page was last updated on May 1, 2007. usturwebmaster@tricity.wsu.edu
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