Respiratory Tract Dosimetry Of Radon And Thoron Daughters: The State-Of-The-Art And Implications For Epidemiology And Radiobiology

INTRODUCTION In 1979 the Committee on Radiological Protection and Public Health of the Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD) defined a programme of work needed to improve radon dosimetry and monitoring. A Group of Experts in this field was established by the NEA and at the first meeting of the Group the authors were designated an initial task with the following terms of reference:- To review dosimetry of radon, thoron and their daughters, and in particular:- - to examine analytical models for the assessment of dose to individuals who are exposed to aerosol mixtures of these nuclides; - to examine the state of knowledge of the characteristics of aerosol mixtures of these nuclides and other factors that influence the dose to the lung, and identify those parameters which should be measured for dosimetric purposes in radiological surveillance programmes; - to identify areas where further study or research are needed. In this presentation we attempt to examine, with these objectives, the relationship between exposure to radon and thoron daughter aerosols expressed in terms of the working level month l (WLM), or its SI equivalent, and dose accumulated by sensitive tissues of the lower respiratory tract. Over the past two decades many attempts have been made to calculate the lung dose equivalent to l WLM exposure in mine atmospheres, usually in terms of the maximum dose to basal cells in a small part of the bronchial tree. The calculations have employed variously detailed models of airway anatomy, aerosol deposition, ciliary clearance and dosimetry of tissue at the bronchial surface, and are well reviewed elsewhere (Walsh, 1970; UNSCEAR, 1977; Jacobi, 1977; Fry, 1977). They agree in the conclusion that basal cells in segmental bronchi (between about the third and fifth bronchial generations) receive the highest dose, although estimates of this dose differ by more than an order of magnitude, ranging from about 0.2 to 12 rads per WLM (2 mGy to 120 mGy). The most critical parameters of these models are the assumed depths of basal cells below the bronchial surface and the fraction of the WL carried by free ions. When more realistic values of these parameters are substituted (Jacobi, 1977), the dispersion in calculated maximum doses to basal cells is reduced to give a much smaller range from about 0.3 to 1 rad/WLM (3 to 10 mGy/WLM). The parameters and methods employed in these various models, however, remain too diverse to infer the sensitivity of the dose conversion to practical variations in aerosol characteristics and the additional factors determining lung deposition and clearance. We have therefore taken the approach of developing newer models (Jacobi and Eisfeld, 1980; James et al, 1980) that can encompass the range of available experimental data on the physical and biological behaviour of radon and thoron daughters and also accommodate the different interpretations that can be put upon them. We have paid particular attention to the averaging of dose over tissues of equal sensitivity in the lung