Radiation protection of workers in medical practices. The analysis of the health condition of workers in nuclear medicine

Aim: Nuclear medicine uses short living radio-nuclides which are relatively quickly excreted in urine. However, long-term work with open sources of ionizing irradiation causes numerous disorders because of the constant risk from internal contamination. When radionuclide reaches the organism it causes internal irradiation and the lesions may be long lasting in various tissues depending on its metabolism, and even remain after the radionuclide is excreted. Methodology: In this study were presented results of blood cells, chromosomes, by conventional methods, and results of measuring of urine radioactivity by gamma-spectrometric, in nuclear workers. Results: Most of them had urine contamination with J 131 (as a working-places contamination indicator, the values ranged from 0.1- 10 Bq/l.) and with Cs 137 (as an environmental contamination indicator, the values ranged from 0.5-0.7 Bq/l). Although those values did not exceed the yearly quota for professionally exposed individuals (meaning that the yearly absorbed dose was not higher that the allowed 20 mSv) they still had characteristically chromosome aberrations in peripheral blood lymphocytes. Alkaline phosphatases and myeloperoxidase activity were inhibited in the granulocytes. The neutrophilic granulocytes count was lower while the number of eosinophils was higher. The number of platelets was higher, too. Conclusion: In relation to the control group, the most prominent were changes of enzymes activity in the granulocytes (neutrophils and eosinophils), indicating maturation disorders at the bone marrow level and inhibition enzymes in peripheral blood cells. Enzymes in leukocytes will be used as bio markers of contamination with radionuclide in nuclear medicine workers. (authors)