![]() The damage is manifest in various forms, i.e., severe anemia, osteitis, and osteogenic sarcoma. The effects of this type of chronic exposure to radiation are well documented in the case reports on radium poisoning in workers in the luminous dial industry. Moreover, because the radiation persists for such long periods of time, only minute amounts of certain radioelements, i.e., plutonium and radium, need have entered initially to produce considerable injury. Where long-lived elements, such as plutonium with a biological half-life of the order of 100 years or radium with one of 45 years, are involved, the body can be subject to continuous radiation for the remainder of its lifetime. While it is possible to remove external sources of damaging radiation once the hazard is recognized, the internal radiation emitters often are not readily displaced and the body remains exposed to prolonged continued radiation. Internally deposited radiation emitters can be particularly insidious since so many of them become fixed in the skeleton and are eliminated at very slow rates. In a consideration of possible approaches more » to therapy, one must distinguish between radiation front sources external to the body and radiation which results from radioactive materials which by some means or other have gained access into the body. At the present time, when increasing numbers of our population are being exposed to radiation because of the great increase in availability and use of radioactive isotopes and because of the potential exposure of much greater numbers of people to radiation following a possible atomic bomb burst or from disseminated radioactivity, the need for development of adequate therapy is becoming an increasingly pressing medical problem. = ,Īlthough the deleterious effects of exposure to ionizing radiation were first recognized and described over fifty years ago, the adequate treatment of these effects still remains a therapeutic challenge. This document is written as a brief summary of current knowledge accumulated in this incomplete study. The study has now been terminated, even though more than 1,000 subjects with measured radium burdens are still alive. The Argonne study is the largest every undertaken of the effects on humans of an internally deposited radioelement, in which the insult has been quantitated by actual measurements of the retained radioisotope. Nevertheless, great gaps remain in the knowledge of radium toxicity. As a consequence of the efforts made to locate, measure, and follow exposed individuals, a great deal of information about the effects more » of radium is available. Some of this group have been located and followed until death in these cases the cause of death is known without a body content measurement. Many more individuals acquired radium internally but were never measured. Some 2,400 subjects have had their body contents of radium measured, and a majority of them have been followed for most of their adult lives, to understand and quantify the effects of radium. The effects of internally deposited radium in humans have been studied in this country for more than 75 years. The extensive references included will allow the interested reader to find additional information. Further, because the Argonne studies were not the only such efforts, brief overviews of the other radium programs are included. It soon became evident, however, that to document the widespread use of radium, a brief review of the application of radium in medicine and in the US dial painting industry is required. This document was originally conceived as a description of the radium studies that took place at Argonne National Laboratory.
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