Variability of radiation doses reconstructed by EPR in teeth of former United States nuclear workers

Published

June 3, 2025

Author(s)

Alexander Romanyukha, Keith Consani, Sergey Tolmachev

Abstract

The United States Transuranium and Uranium Registries (USTUR) is a research program that studies actinide biokinetics in occupationally exposed individuals (registrants) who have voluntarily donated their bodies to research. A majority of the USTUR registrants have documented radiation doses from internal and external exposures. Radiation doses in tooth enamel measured by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) were compared with doses reported by worksites for the same individuals. Our prior results showed that in the most cases, the measured EPR doses significantly exceeded the reported worksite. Since they should have been similar, we carried out EPR dose measurements on additional tooth samples collected from the same registrants as in the previous study to see if reconstructed doses were reproduceable. Additionally, roots of teeth used to prepare EPR samples were counted using gamma spectrometry. We found some variability in EPR measurements among the different and conclude that in some cases there was nonuniform exposure of the head of the teeth' donors which may explain the discrepancy between site reported and EPR reconstructed doses. Within the constraints of the counting time, gamma spectroscopy counting was not able to detect any Cs-137 in tooth roots which suggested that exposure of the enamel from Cs-137 in the roots was not a factor in the observed discrepancy.

Citation

International Journal of Radiation Biology

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

EPR, teeth, retrospective dosimetry, gamma spectra: AFFRI

Citation

Romanyukha, A. , Consani, K. and Tolmachev, S. (2025), Variability of radiation doses reconstructed by EPR in teeth of former United States nuclear workers, International Journal of Radiation Biology (Accessed October 10, 2025)