14

The transfer of insoluble materials to blood was considered to be negligible, and the guides for
these substances were baaed on direct irradiation of the lungs or of some segment of the GI tract.
Half the activity deposited in the lower respiratory tract was assumed to be quickly cleared and
swallowed, and the other half eliminated from it exponentially over time; an elimination biological
half-life of 120 days was assigned to all insoluble compounds except those of plutonium and
thorium, for which the values 1 and 4 years, respectively, were used.

The GI tract was represented as a series of four segments: the stomach, the small intestine, the
upper large intestine, and the lower large intestine. The material reaching the stomach (after
ingestion or after inhalation and clearance from the respiratory system) was assumed to reside there
for I hour, after which it moved on to the small and large intestine. The dose to the wall of each
intestine segment was calculated at the entrance to the segment.

The Respiratory Tract Model of ICRP 30

The dosimetric analysis of Publication 30 employs a more refined model of the deposition in
and clearance from the respiratory tract of inhaled aerosols (ICRP 1966). Deposition of an
airborne particulate form of radionuclide in the naso-pharyngeal, trachea-bronchial, and pulmonary
regions of the respiratory system is treated as a function of the AMAD* of the aerosol. Tabulated
values of the derived guides are based on the assumption that the diameters of aerosol particles arc
distributed log-normally, with an AMAD of 1 µm. (Derived guides for other AMAD values can be
computed from information in ICRP Publication 30.) Transfer of the deposited activity to the GI
tract, lymphatic system, and blood is described by a set of coupled linear differential equations.
Material deposited in any organ, including the lung, is assumed to be eliminated without
redeposition in others. Clearance from the lung directly to blood or to the GI tract depends on the
chemical form of the radionuclide (see Table 3), and is classified as D, W, and Y, respectively, for
clearance times on the order of days, weeks, and years. The absorption of material from the GI
tract into the body fluids, generally taken to occur within the small intestine, is parameterized by
f1.t
The clearance kinetics of the Publication 30 model account for loss of material through
radioactive decay. For radionuclides that form radioactive decay products, it is assumed that only
the parent nuclide was inhaled. The calculated committed dose equivalent, however, does include
the contribution from ingrowth of decay products over the period following intake. For simplicity,
these decay products arc assumed all to exhibit the same chemical characteristics as their parent
nuclides.
Transit timer through the segments of the GI tract and the masses of their walls and contents
arc as described in ICRP Publication 23 (ICRP 1975). The transport of material through the GI
tract assumes exponential clearance from the segments. The dose to each segment of the tract is
computed as an average over the mass of the wall of that segment.

The reader is referred to the report of the Task Group on Lung Dynamics (ICRP 1966) and
subsequent ICRP publications (ICRP 1972, 1979a) for further details.

*The Activity Median Aerodynamic Diameter (AMAD) is the diameter of a unit density
sphere with the same terminal settling velocity in air as that of an aerosol particle whose activity is
the median for the entire aerosol.