Re: Whizzing away tritium

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 11:55 AM 4/28/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
>I can reasonably see the RSO telling the patient that he must drink five
extra
>liters of water per day for the next month, but a short term treatment with a
>single six-pack, or even 2 or 3, is unlikely to be effective.

My question would be, how long following intake (usually inhalation, I
assume) does it take for tritium to equilibrate in the body? It may be
beneficial to drink a lot of fluids promptly after exposure with the goal
of reducing the tritium before reaching equilibrium. Otherwise, I think you
are quite right - the amount of water that would have to be consumed to
affect tritium in equilibrium would be ridiculous.

===================================
Bob Flood
Dosimetry Group Leader
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(650) 926-3793
bflood@slac.stanford.edu
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