Re: Whizzing away tritium

[Scott Schwahn <schwahn@jlab.org>]

> >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.

Keep in mind as well as the increase in turnover rate due to uptake of any liquid,
alcohol is also a diuretic, which stimulates urine production.  Caffeine has the same
effect, so drinking loads of regular iced tea or coffee would work as well.  Stress
is also considered to be a diuretic, so if the beer reduces your stress from the
tritium uptake, I would stick with the iced tea.

The nominal biological half-life of tritium is about 10 days, but can decrease to
only 3-4 days or less for people who drink alcohol regularly (after work, of
course).  If this is the case for night-time drinking (where you eventually sleep
through many removal opportunities), imagine the rate at which it will make a
difference if you drank iced tea all day and into the evening.  Since virtually your
entire dose is governed by the removal rate, you can make a huge difference.

Exercise also helps, as it increases your removal from sweating.  But do it at home,
so you don't create a contamination area ;-)!

Bob, to answer your question, all the literature I've read indicates that you can
treat it as virtually immediate equilibrium.  I would have to review them again to
see if that is for conservatism or if it approaches reality.

Stick with the iced tea.

--
Scott O. Schwahn, CHP
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
schwahn@jlab.org
<mailto:schwahn@jlab.org>


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