Dose-response relationships for female radium dial workers: A new look

Conference · Sun May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1994

OSTI ID:10150264

Rowland, R E

The values of initial systemic intake and of skeletal dose for all of the U.S. radium cases have recently been revised. This revision was required following the demonstrations by Rundo and by Keane that humans who were exposed to radium as adults lost radium at a rate that depended on the quantity of radium originally deposited within their bodies. These new values have been used to define new dose-response relationships for both the bone sarcomas and the carcinomas arising in the paranasal sinuses and mastoid air cells induced by internally deposited radium. The population examined was employed in the U.S. dial painting industry prior to 1950 and consisted of 1530 female dial workers for whom radium body burden measurements were available. By the end of 1990, 46 cases of bone sarcomas and 19 cases of head carcinomas had been diagnosed in this cohort. The head carcinoma incidence can be adequately fitted by a simple linear function, as was found in previous analyses. The bone sarcoma cases were previously fitted by a dose-squared-exponential function. With the revised values of systemic intake, the sarcoma results could not be satisfactorily fitted with this expression. When the exponent on D was increased to larger values, excellent fits were obtained.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Lab., IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-31109-ENG-38
• OSTI ID: 10150264
• Report Number(s): ANL/ER/CP--81061; CONF-940437--4; ON: DE94011506
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

550900
560151
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
63 RADIATION, THERMAL, AND OTHER ENVIRON. POLLUTANT EFFECTS ON LIVING ORGS. AND BIOL. MAT.
BIOLOGICAL RADIATION EFFECTS
BODY BURDEN
CARCINOMAS
DIAL PAINTERS
DOSE-RESPONSE RELATIONSHIPS
HEAD
MAN
OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE
PATHOLOGY
RADIUM
SARCOMAS
SINUSES
SKELETON
WOMEN