Measurements of Cs absorption and retention in man

One of the consequences of the Chernobyl reactor accident in 1986 was a comparatively high contamination of foodstuffs in Southern Federal Republic of Germany. In order to test radioecological models predicting the radiological consequences of such accidents, several thousand measurements were performed to determine Cs body burdens in members of the public. For the interpretation of these data and as a contribution to the improvement of the available database on the biokinetics of Cs isotopes in humans, we followed a small group of volunteers after their consumption of highly contaminated venison. Intakes, excretion rates and total body activities were measured during a period of more than 200 d. The data obtained were evaluated in terms of a compartment model to derive gastrointestinal uptakes, biological half-lives and dose conversion factors. The resulting uptake factors range from 65-90%, the half-lives of the long-term retention from 45 to 200 d. The majority of the resulting dose conversion factors lie below the values recommended by the ICRP, showing that the ICRP model is a reasonable and safe description of the Cs biokinetics in our study group, while the great variability of the results shows that it is not an accurate representation of the individual Cs retention.