Chest wall thickness measurements and the dosimetric implications for male workers in the uranium industry.

Abstract

The Human Monitoring Laboratory has measured the chest wall thickness and adipose mass fraction of a group of workers at a Canadian uranium refinery, a conversion plant, and a fuel fabrication site using ultrasound. A site-specific biometric equation has been developed for these workers, who seem to be somewhat larger than other workers reported in the literature. Chest wall thickness is a very important modifier on lung counting efficiency and these data have been put into the perspective of the impending Canadian dose limits that will reduce the limit of occupationally exposed workers to 100 mSv in a 5-y period with a maximum of 50 mSv in any one year. The sensitivity of the germanium and phoswich based lung counting systems have been compared. Over a range of chest wall thickness of 1.6 cm to 6.0 cm and using a 30-min counting time, the achievable MDA's lie in the range of 6.7 mg to 19.1 mg or 6.7 mg to 30 mg with a two-phoswich-detector array or a germanium lung counting system, respectively. Depending on chest wall thickness, these achievable MDA's are close to, or exceed, the predicted amounts of natural uranium that will remain in the lung (absorption type M and S) after an intake equivalent to the Annual Limit on Intake that corresponds to 20 mSv. Neither system is sufficiently sensitive to detect an intake of Type S natural uranium in a worker with a chest wall thickness that corresponds to the average (3.73 cm) if it occurred more than 7 d prior to the lung count.