Assessing dose equivalent from intensive short-term U product inhalation.

Abstract

Intensive exposure of a product packaging operator to U product dust resulted in the uncontrolled inhalation of natural U. In-vivo counting yielded an estimate of about 40 mg of natural U initially deposited in the lung. An effective committed dose equivalent in the range of 67 mSv and 137 mSv was calculated to correspond to this lung contamination, using a single exponential lung clearance and the modified ICRP models, respectively. The effective committed dose equivalent of a person 47 y old involved in this incident can hardly be used to quantify the risk, and therefore committed and annual dose equivalent systems were discussed in light of risk assessment.