[ RadSafe ] Pu-239 famous chemical toxitity or visiting Singapore. Re: Radiation-induced chromosomal aberrations long-lived (Pu study)

[Emil]

John,

Same as you, I could not see much new in the article.
But may be it is just you and me, me who was just sucking up the PAPR
rubber for the last three years, trying to keep thousands of DAC's of
Pu-239 out of workers lungs and get aggravated by being too strict.

I looked up in Radsafe archive, could not find much about mechanism
of Pu chemical toxicity.
I am NOT a toxicologist so my question is: what is the mechanism of
such famous Pu chemical toxicity? It replaces some good metals like
Ca, Cu, Fe.. in the bones, creates toxin compound which causes
structural deformations. So the other heavy metals like Thorium,
Lead..do similar damage, right? Or they do not stuck in the bone's
surface?

Pu chemical toxin would not cause aberrations in chromosomes as a
result of changing the bone marrow structure and then alter
chromosomes?
Or may be it could? 
If it could not why is the chemical toxitity limit is lower?

I am wondering about the article's wording: 

"Chromosomal aberrations persist for years after occupational
exposure to ionizing radiation, according to a report
in the September issue of Genes,..."


We all knew back in school about the ionized radiation induced
aberrations, but then we..... forgot??? 

So they left Singapore, went into Russia to re-discover that ionized
radiation is still capable causing biological damage and that Pu-239
is still has a very long physical and biological half lives...Okay.
Aberrations are very similar to the tumor tissue so what?
May be because of that similarity, then Pu-239 cause cancer.
Wouldn't it be more unusual if they did not find similarity in
aberrations?

The wording:"... years after occupational exposure.." is misleading.
More proper wording would be:.. years after UPTAKE or INTAKE or even
exposure to Plutonium but with out words about exposure to ionized
radiation....
Exposure to the ionized radiation on the other hand obviously is
still happening as we speak because Pu-239 is still in the body and
of course bone tissue is exposed to Radiation from Pu-239, and it is
causing those aberrations.

It looks that in the midst of being busy with assigning ALL internal
dose in the year when occupational exposure/INTAKE/UPTAKE occurred,
we assigned and forgot and then we say: "Look even the guy is not
working with Pu-239 now, but we still see those abnormalities in
chromosomes..then yes, these Pu is bad...

Couldn't they just find something more interesting to do in Russia?
Like, go and see Bolshoi Theater.. or just give that research grant
money to former Mayaks workers so that they could go and see how nice
and beautiful Singapore is ?

Have a wonderful evening, everyone.

Emil.
 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 9
> Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 08:18:26 -0700 (PDT)
> From: John Jacobus <crispy_bird at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Article: Radiation-induced chromosomal
> 	aberrations	long-lived (Pu study)
> To: radsafe <radsafe at radlab.nl>, know_nukes at yahoogroups.com
> Message-ID: <20050907151826.8837.qmail at web54315.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> Of course, an important point is whether or not the
> aberations lead to the cancers.  
> 
> -------------------------
> Radiation-induced chromosomal aberrations long-lived
> 9/6/2005
> By: Reuters Health
> 
> NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Sep 6 - Chromosomal
> aberrations persist for years after occupational
> exposure to ionizing radiation, according to a report
> in the September issue of Genes, Chromosomes & Cancer.
> 
> "Establishing a link between the presence of complex
> chromosome aberrations or even a marker chromosome
> aberration with a disease will always be beneficial
> for proper diagnosis/prognosis of a disease," Dr.
> Manoor Prakash Hande from National University of
> Singapore, Singapore, told Reuters Health. "Our study
> was mainly focused on the identification of a
> biomarker for plutonium exposure and as such it may
> have minimal clinical implications." 
> 
> Dr. Hande and colleagues investigated the presence of
> chromosome aberrations involving three or more breaks
> in two or more chromosomes (complex chromosome
> aberrations) in former workers at the Mayak weapons
> complex in Russia who were occupationally exposed
> decades earlier to sparsely and densely ionizing
> radiation. 
> 
> The highly exposed plutonium workers showed a 2.9%
> frequency of complex chromosome aberrations, the
> authors report, compared with a frequency of 0.2%
> among those with zero or moderate plutonium exposure.
> Unexposed controls had no complex chromosome
> aberrations. 
> 
> The frequency of simple translocation aberrations was
> similar in the highly exposed plutonium workers and
> the workers who received only high doses of sparsely
> ionizing gamma rays, the report indicates. 
> 
> The yield of complex aberrations correlated
> significantly with the bone marrow exposure to
> plutonium, the researchers note, and the complex
> chromosome aberrations detected were strikingly
> similar to those found in some tumor cells. 
> 
> "As the Mayak Facility at Ozyorsk has a large database
> of samples collected from exposed individuals,
> including the ones who have died from cancer, it would
> be interesting to collect those samples and analyze
> for complex chromosome aberrations," Dr. Hande said.
> "Such a study would definitely provide us with
> evidence whether or not the cancer patients have such
> chromosome aberrations or not." 
> 
> Last Updated: 2005-09-05 4:30:06 -0400 (Reuters
> Health)
> 
> Genes Chromosomes Cancer 2005;44:1-9.
> 
> Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. 
> 
> +++++++++++++++++++
> "Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea and
> never shrinks back to its original proportion." -- Oliver Wendell
> Holmes, Jr.
> 
> -- John
> John Jacobus, MS
> Certified Health Physicist
> e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com
> 





	
		
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