RE: How much plutonium?????

["Heinmiller, Bruce" <heinmillerb@aecl.ca>]

Bernie, with regard to 20% of 15 000 gamma rays from within, this would be
3000, but the only significant (in terms of activity) gamma-ray emitter in
the body is K-40.  The average K-40 activity is nominally 3000 Bq, but the
gamma-ray yield is only 10.7%.

Bruce Heinmiller CHP
heinmillerb@aecl.ca

> ----------
> From: 	Bernard L Cohen[SMTP:blc+@pitt.edu]
> Reply To: 	radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
> Sent: 	Monday, May 08, 2000 10:38 AM
> To: 	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: 	Re: How much plutonium?????
> 
> 
> On Mon, 8 May 2000, Cathy Lee wrote:
> 
> > I recently read that half a kilo of plutonium
> > could induce lung cancer in everyone on the planet.
> > 
> > I was wondering if any of you could tell me about the
> > scientific merits of this claim.
> 
> 	--A typical estimate is that one lung cancer may be caused by each
> 0.000200 grams of plutonium inhaled by people (the easiest available
> reference for me is  my paper in Health Physics 32:359; 1977, but later
> papers give similar results). The number of cases that may be caused by
> 1/2 kilo = 230 grams is thus 230 / 0.000200 = 1,150,000; this is only a
> tiny fraction of the population of the Earth. Of course a much more
> relevant question is how this plutonium can be inhaled by people. As a
> practical illustration, if it is dispersed in the center of a large city
> in the most effective way for causing harm, my paper calculates that there
> would be 27 eventual deaths.
> 	Note that 10,000 pounds of plutonium has been dispersed into the
> atmosphere by bomb tests. This is millions of times more than is ever
> expected to be released by the nuclear power industry. 
> 
> > Also, has anyone actually calculated the number of radio
> > active decays in the body, say, per second. I would
> > be interested to know!
> 
> 	--Our bodies are struck by about 15,000 gamma rays every second
> from natural sources. About 20% of these come from radioactive decays
> inside our bodies. The rest are from cosmic rays, radioactivity in the
> ground and in building materials, etc.
> 
> > Bernard L. Cohen
> Physics Dept.
> University of Pittsburgh
> Pittsburgh, PA 15260
> Tel: (412)624-9245
> Fax: (412)624-9163
> e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu
> 
> 
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