[ RadSafe ] Arafat Po poisoning report

[KARAM, PHILIP]

The report estimates an administered dose on the order of 1 GBq. After about 20 half-lives there would be about 1 kBq of total activity remaining of the original dose - only a fraction of this would be in any single location and a fair amount would have been excreted, but with detection limits in the vicinity of 1 mGq it is plausible that there would be enough left to be detectable.

According to an HPS fact sheet on Po-210 (http://hps.org/documents/po210factsheet.pdf) the dose from 1 microgram (about 166 MBq) is 40 Sv. If the Po-210 had an uptake fraction of about 0.1, so 1 GBq administered would give a dose of about 24 Sv. This would seem adequate to cause fatal ARS.

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of clayton bradt
Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2013 6:55 PM
To: brickner at smile.net.il; radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Arafat Po poisoning report

There is no way to estimate a dose from the activities reported in this
paper.  The uncertainties are large and by the time you back-calculate the
ingested activity the uncertainty is so large as to make any estimate
meaningless.

All that can be said is that the results of this study are consistent with
a lethal dose of Po210 being administered (tens of millicuries to result in
death within a month).  That being said, just about any activity measured
this far out would be consistent with that assumption.

Clayton Bradt
Principal Radiophysicist
NYS Dept. of Health

*********************
Dear List
Can anybody calculate  a dose (Since no attempt was done in the report) ? I
mean can we suggest an Acute Radiation Syndrome as a cause of death without
a dose estimation??
Dov Bricner (Dubi)  MD
Beer-Seva         ISRAEL
_______________________________________________
You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list

Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood the RadSafe rules. These can be found at: http://health.phys.iit.edu/radsaferules.html

For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings visit: http://health.phys.iit.edu