radioactive material taken in by ingestion
(eating)
and inhalation
(breathing),
and are discussed in the following section.
Dose Estimates of Irradiation
From Internal Sources
Like the amount of external exposure,
the probable amount of radioactive
material taken in and retained by the exposed persons was only an estimate at
best.
While the doctors and scientists studying the people could measure how
much radioactivity was being carried out from their bodies by analyzing samples
of urine and feces -- they could not check the actual amounts still remaining
in the bone and other tissues.
The only way this could be done would be to
take out samples of tissue during an autopsy and measure the actual amounts.
This was one of the limitations accepted by doctors when dealing with human
patients.
Another limitation was due to the fact that there was at that time
extremely little information concerning internal deposition of radioactive
elements in human beings.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, despite the
great death and destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only a relatively few
people in the Nishiyama area of Nagasaki received internal contamination.
The
only other studies related to the plight of the Marshallese and Americans were
those made of radium watch dial painters in the United States during the 1920's
and 1930's who received high internal contamination as a result of the practice
of wetting the tips of their brushes with their tongues during work.
Even
this information was not wholly applicable, since radium emits alpha particles,
which are about four times as strong as gamma emitters like strontium and cesium.
In fact, the doctors had very little to go on;
“Shooting in the dark."'
There was, however, one source of information which
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it was as though they were