Abstract
BENGTSSON et al.1 reported a patient with a shorter biological half-time for caesium during pregnancy than afterward. Prompted by this finding, and by the marked individual variation in body burden2 and biological half-time3 seen in our own studies, we evaluated the equivalent biological half-times in twenty-four pregnant women while the environmental levels of fall-out caesium-137 were still sufficiently high that artificial administration of radioactivity was not required. The equivalent biological half-time is defined as 0.693 times (observed body content/observed excretion rate). Our technique has been described previously4.
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References
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ZUNDEL, W., TYLER, F., MAYS, C. et al. Short Half-times of Caesium-137 in Pregnant Women. Nature 221, 89–90 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1038/221089b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/221089b0
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