DOI: 10.1097/01.HP.0000315805.49841.d5
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Issn Print: 0017-9078
Publication Date: 2008/08/01
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Excerpt
The development of depleted uranium as an armor penetrator and its subsequent use in armed conflicts has prompted calls to ban its use. The reasons cited are claims of wholesale radioactive contamination of combat zones and poisoning of combatants. Combatants are allegedly poisoned as the result of inhalation of uranium particles and wounding with depleted uranium fragments. While these claims are grossly exaggerated, they are based on fact. The interpretation of the facts requires perspective.
A major objective of NCRP Report No. 156 was to develop a perspective as regards depleted uranium wounds through a description of the physiological process the body undergoes when a solid, foreign object is introduced somewhere below the skin.
The report is a comprehensive review of both animal experiments in which radioactive material is injected below the skin and reports of human radioactive wounds. The reviewed data (mainly animal) were used to model radioactive material movement and excretion. The modeling effort involved the fitting of multiple parameters; some parameters describe the sequestering of foreign material within the body. Two sequestering compartments (parameters) are CIS (colloid and intermediate state) and PABS (particles, aggregates and bound state). It would have been easy to fit a multi-parameter model with the unknowns X1, X2 …, Xn, but the authors rightly chose to be descriptive, to provide the user interpretive concepts, and provide future researchers a basis for comparison and verification.
One weakness noted by this reviewer is that the chapter titled “Skin Biology” seems inappropriately named; it covers much more. The chapter is also poorly organized. In addition, although the report provides very useful information on wound assessment and dosimetry, no procedure for this process is described. Instead, an approach to assessment and dosimetry is presented. A single procedure for wound assessment is not possible because there are many possible ways of wounding and many locations for wounds. Further, because the human data are sparse, and the animal data are weak and contradictory, there are too many caveats to describe a reliable procedure that would produce consistently accurate results.
This report is an important reference for the bookshelf of any health physicist or medical researcher, but it is far from the last word. The authors have provided an excellent beginning and are to be congratulated for their efforts; however, there is much research that must be done on wounding with material contaminating the wound.
