[ RadSafe ] Sickening Solar Flare

[Stabin, Michael]

>As we all know, dose rate is a significant factor.  

Yes, absolutely. We recently had a mini-breakthrough in the
understanding of the radiotoxicity of internal emitters when this factor
was appropriately considered. At the European Association of Nuclear
Medicine meeting in Helsinki in September, Mark Konijnenberg showed how
calculating the biologically effective dose (BED) for a continuously
decreasing dose rate source, for a number of radiopharmaceuticals with
which we had seen acute toxicity in human subjects, gave a threshold
that was not only fairly similar for these agents (where the simply
calculated total absorbed dose was quite different), it was also fairly
similar to toxicity thresholds seen in fractionated external beam
therapy. 

Mike

Michael G. Stabin, PhD, CHP
Assistant Professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences 
Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences 
Vanderbilt University 
1161 21st Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37232-2675 
Phone (615) 343-0068
Fax   (615) 322-3764
Pager (615) 835-5153
e-mail     michael.g.stabin at vanderbilt.edu 
internet   www.doseinfo-radar.com