Abstract
When assessing the effective dose to workers following radio-aerosol inhalation exposures, significant reductions in dose uncertainty can be achieved through direct measurement of the particle-size distribution. The University of Washington Mark III cascade impactor is one such air sampling device that permits the user to determine aerosol mass and radioactivity concentrations as a function of particle size within eight different size intervals (each corresponding to a different impactor stage or end filter). Traditionally, dose assessments made using the LUDEP code or other internal dosimetry software utilize this air sampling information by assigning the radioactivity measured at each stage as concentrated at a single representative size central to the size interval. In this study, we explore more realistic assumptions that the measured radioactivity distributes uniformly, linearly increases, or linearly decreases across the particle size interval for each impactor stage. The concept of an effective dose scaling factor, SF(E), is thus introduced whereby (1) the former approach can be used (which requires less computational effort using the LUDEP code), and (2) the resulting values of effective dose per stage can then be rescaled to values appropriate to a linear radioactivity distribution per stage. For a majority of (238)U-series radionuclides, particle size ranges, and absorption classes, differences in these two approaches are less than 10%, and thus no corrections in effective dose per particle stage are needed. Significant corrections, however, were noted in select cases. For uniform or linearly decreasing radioactivity distributions, end-filter particles (0.03 to 0.35 microm) of type F, M, or S radionuclides were assigned values of SF(E) ranging from 1.15 to 1.44, while 3(rd) stage particles (4.5 to 12 microm) of type M and S radionuclides were assigned values of SF(E) ranging from 1.11 to 1.53. When the cascade impactor measurements indicate a linear increase of activity across a given impactor-stage size range, values of SF(E) range from a high of 1.11 (6(th) stage particles of type F radionuclides) to lows of 0.85 to 0.91 (4(th) stage and end-filter particles of type M and S radionuclides). In these cases, the inhalation dose coefficient varies non-linearly across the particle size range, and the assumption of a mono-size distribution per impactor stage either underestimates (SF(E) > 1) or overestimates (SF(E) < 1) that stage's contribution to the worker effective dose.