Retention of ⁷Be in the lungs following intake by inhalation

Several workers were internally exposed to ⁷Be particles following their dispersion in air from a damaged electrodeposited source. A series of in vivo measurements performed with one worker up to 108 days post exposure determined that retention of ⁷Be in the thoracic region of the respiratory tract was best described by a two-component exponential function with half-lives of ∼ 0.4 and ∼ 109 days. The initial deposition in the thoracic region was estimated to be 6.8 kBq. The concentration of ⁷Be in single void urine samples collected from this worker up to 3 days post intake ranged from 1 to 10 Bq/l. In the absence of specific knowledge about the physical and chemical characteristics of the inhaled particles, the committed effective dose was estimated to be 0.3 μSv. (authors)