Collateral contamination concomitant to the polonium-210 poisoning of Mr Alexander Litvinenko.

Mr Litvinenko died on 23 November 2006, having been poisoned with polonium-210 on 1 November, with evidence of a previous poisoning attempt during October 2006. Measurements of Po in urine samples were made for a large number of people to determine whether they may have been contaminated. In the majority of cases, measured levels were attributable to the presence of Po from normal dietary sources.

The polonium-210 poisoning of Mr Alexander Litvinenko.

Mr Litvinenko died on 23 November 2006 after having been poisoned with polonium-210 on 1 November. Measurements of the polonium-210 content of post-mortem tissue samples and samples of urine and blood showed the presence of large amounts of Po. Autoradiography of hair samples showed two regions of Po activity, providing evidence of an earlier poisoning attempt during October 2006, resulting in absorption to blood of about one-hundredth of that estimated for 1 November.

Harnessing QbD, Programming Languages, and Automation for Reproducible Biology.

Building robust manufacturing processes from biological components is a task that is highly complex and requires sophisticated tools to describe processes, inputs, and measurements and administrate management of knowledge, data, and materials. We argue that for bioengineering to fully access biological potential, it will require application of statistically designed experiments to derive detailed empirical models of underlying systems. This requires execution of large-scale structured experimentation for which laboratory automation is necessary.

Fetal organ dosimetry for the Techa River and Ozyorsk Offspring Cohorts, part 2: radionuclide S values for fetal self-dose and maternal cross-dose.

One of the many objectives of the European Union's SOLO (Epidemiological Studies of Exposed Southern Urals Populations) project is to quantify the radiation dose-response following chronic in utero exposures to ionizing radiation. The project is presently conducting a pooled analysis of two cohorts of individuals born to exposed mothers-the Techa River Offspring Cohort (TROC) and the Ozyorsk Offspring Cohort (OOC). The TROC includes the offspring of mothers with external exposures to contaminated riverbanks and internal ingestions of (89)Sr, (90)Sr/(90)Y, and (137)Cs/(137m)Ba, while the OOC includes the offspring of mothers with external exposures seen within the Mayak plutonium production facilities and internal inhalation of (239)Pu and possibly (131)I.

Fetal organ dosimetry for the Techa River and Ozyorsk offspring cohorts, part 1: a Urals-based series of fetal computational phantoms.

The European Union's SOLO (Epidemiological Studies of Exposed Southern Urals Populations) project aims to improve understanding of cancer risks associated with chronic in utero radiation exposure. A comprehensive series of hybrid computational fetal phantoms was previously developed at the University of Florida in order to provide the SOLO project with the capability of computationally simulating and quantifying radiation exposures to individual fetal bones and soft tissue organs. To improve harmonization between the SOLO fetal biokinetic models and the computational phantoms, a subset of those phantoms was systematically modified to create a novel series of phantoms matching anatomical data representing Russian fetal biometry in the Southern Urals.

Retrospective estimation of Plutonium-239 doses from transfer to the fetus for Mayak PA workers.

Purpose: The estimation of plutonium fetal transfer and the calculation of individual in utero and postnatal doses for the Mayak Production Association (PA) offspring cohort.

Materials And Methods: The model developed by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) for the transfer of plutonium to the fetus following maternal intakes before and during pregnancy has been adjusted for application to analysis of the fetal transfer of (239)Pu for Mayak workers. Improved estimates of fetal to maternal concentration ratios (CF:CM) have been obtained based on a correlation observed between adult offsprings' measured daily urine (239)Pu activity and estimates of their mothers' systemic activity at conception.

An image-based skeletal tissue model for the ICRP reference newborn.

Hybrid phantoms represent a third generation of computational models of human anatomy needed for dose assessment in both external and internal radiation exposures. Recently, we presented the first whole-body hybrid phantom of the ICRP reference newborn with a skeleton constructed from both non-uniform rational B-spline and polygon-mesh surfaces (Lee et al 2007 Phys. Med.

Reconstruction of (90)Sr intake for breast-fed infants in the Techa riverside settlements.

The Techa River (Southern Urals, Russia) was contaminated as a result of radioactive releases by the Mayak plutonium production facility during 1949-1956. The persons born after the onset of the contamination have been identified as the "Techa River Offspring Cohort" (TROC). The TROC has the potential to provide direct data on health effects in progeny that resulted from exposure of a general parent population to chronic radiation.

A simple method for assessing that internal doses are below action levels.

The accidental or deliberate dispersal of radioactive aerosols into the public environment may require urgent assessments of radiation dose to be made to aid decisions on whether treatment should be implemented, or to reassure the public that doses are acceptably low. However, rapid assessments will be difficult due to lack of information on factors such as the particle size distribution and biokinetic characteristics of the aerosol. A procedure is described that relates the amount of activity of a radionuclide in the body and excreta to time after intake for a specified dose, taking into account the likely variations in aerosol size and differences in the biokinetic behaviour of the same or different chemical forms of the radionuclide.