depleted uranium

[D J Hornsey <bssdjh@bath.ac.uk>]

  I think many of us will be interested to read Eric Daxon's response to
the New Scientist's piece on depleted uranium contamination of the army
health physicist Doug Rokke. The assessments of worse case scenarios made
by some members of this mailbase do not seem to correspond with what Dr
Rokke must have taken in if the uranium concentration of his urine is the
reported value of 400ug/l. This value was made on a sample taken 
apparently three years after the event. Even ignoring faecal excretion
(which I have always assumed is greater that urinary excretion), Dr Rokke
must have had intakes of at least several hundred mgs, although probably
more likely to be gram quantities!! From what I have read on this
mailbase, this does appear to be an unlikely occurrence unless Dr Rokke
was a very careless health physicist.
  As I have never decontaminated a tank, let alone 23 of them, and
assuming the US Department of Energy's measurements of urine concentration
are correct, how does an expereienced health physicist pick up such a
apparently large body burden? 



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