In a span of about one month after the inhalation of plutonium nitrate aerosol in the adult Wistar rats, the whole body retention of plutonium decreased with three different exponential terms and they had approximate half-lives of 1.5 days, 8 days and 80 days, respectively. These terms may correspond to fractional parts of plutonium deposited on the upper respiratory system, on the lower respiratory system and transferred to the other organs from the lung and then eliminated from those organs, respectively.
Plutonium once deposited in the lung remained in the deposited site for relatively long time and was transferred gradually to the skeleton. The half-time value for the retention of plutonium in the lung of the rat was 77 days.
The fractional retention of plutonium in the lung and the skeleton 80 days after inhalation were 0.65 and 0.20, respectively.
In case of the inhalation, the amount of plutonium transferred from the lung to liver was lower than in the case of the injection in vein or in muscle.
Following the inhalation exposure of soluble plutonium compounds, the concentrations of plutonium in the remained cadaver, the tail, the spleen and the gonad are steadily increasing, while those in the lung and liver are decreasing or not increased.
The concentration of plutonium in the blood was sufficiently high to be detectable at one month after inhalation, in case of intake of soluble plutonium compounds.
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