Plutonium content of tissues of members of the general public

Abstract

Operation of nuclear power stations and reprocessing plants entails some risk, both to people working in the installations and to the general public, of contamination with plutonium. Any such contamination can be assessed only by comparing concentrations of plutonium in tissues of exposed persons with corresponding concentrations in people not occupationally exposed to plutonium and not living near to a nuclear installation. Few data have been published for such unexposed subjects in the UK. Therefore plutonium concentrations have been measured in samples of lung, liver, vertebra including marrow and vertebral marrow alone, taken at autopsy from twelve people who died in West Yorkshire in 1980 or 1981. The measurements of bone marrow alone were considered to be particularly important because it has been suggested that plutonium in marrow may give rise to leukaemia or other blood dyscrasias. Median concentrations in the four tissues were 1.9, 14.2, 7.5 and 0.9 mBq/kg respectively. The resulting dose equivalent rates to lung, liver, marrow and osteogenic cells lining bone surfaces were 1.5, 6.5, 2.1 and 2.8 mu Sv/a respectively. These dose equivalent rates are all much less than those received from natural sources.