The objective of this study is to properly evaluate the potential health risks of residents near the antimony smelter. The critical pathways of antimony exposure to the residents around the smelter are considered to be a vegetable intake and inhalation from our previous study. In this study, antimony concentrations in ambient air at two sites near the smelter were measured for one week to improve the value of inhalation intake. Parameter values in the metabolic model of antimony were estimated more precisely. Health risks for the residents wereevaluated by comparing the calculated concentration of organs or tissues to the epidemiological data.
The results obtained in this study can be summarized as follows;
1) Antimony concentrations in ambient air around the smelter were varied day by day. It might depend on the meteorological condition or operation of the smelter.
2) Wet digestion- ICP-MS method was considered to be effective for the measurement of antimonyconcentration in suspended particulate of ambient air.
3) Antimony concentrations in lung of residents might excess the concentration in which man will onset a lung cancer.
4) Antimony concentrations in a human body of the resident were estimated two to ten times larger than the reference Japanese.
