Assessment of intakes of mixtures of radionuclides

Australia has several uranium mines and a large number of mineral sand mines, with associated processing facilities. Exposures resulting from these mining and processing operations usually involve intakes of mixtures of radionuclides. This work describes the development of a suite of first order, linear compartment models, based on the ICRP Publication 66 respiratory tract model, and an analytical solution to the decay equations, for assessing the consequences of such intakes. The computer programs based on these models directly compute excretion, organ retention and organ and whole-body doses for intakes of either single radionuclides or any mixture of radionuclides belonging to the same radioactive decay chain. The intake can be via inhalation, ingestion or injection, and can be acute, chronic or of limited duration. The starting concentration and degree of secular (dis)equilibrium can be specified for each radionuclide. No assumptions need to be made about the relative magnitudes of the radioactive half-lives of the different nuclides.