Passage of inhaled particles into the blood circulation in humans.

Abstract

To the Editor: It is clear from Figure 2 in the article by Nemmar et al1 that their aerosol contained a high level of a species somewhere between Technegas and Pertechnegas. Technegas generation demands a 100% inert atmosphere to work properly. Even minute traces of oxygen will begin to create a mixed oxide species. Machines that are not fully serviced at regular intervals can trap sufficient oxygen in the carbon deposited on the chamber walls, for example, to generate Pertechnegas. The immediate clinical sign is thyroid uptake in the images. This alone is often the first reason to call in a service engineer. There should be no visible thyroid on a study done using a properly functioning machine. Even the original discovery of Pertechnegas arose out of a wrongly filled argon cylinder. A curious alumina micro-aerosol within gas cylinders made of aluminum was implicated in a whole series of inadvertent Pertechnegas studies generated from …