Uranium in Humans

Abstract

Measurements of the environmental and metabolic behaviour of the naturally occurring radionuclides have provided necessary information on the behaviour of stable elements and have been useful analogues in the study of man-made radionuclides. Uranium has been studied primarily because of its role in the nuclear industry and its possible effects as a heavy metal in occupational exposure cases. There is abundant literature dealing with uranium studies in animals, and some literature on human studies with chronically ill patients. Relatively few data are available which document the uranium concentrations in humans under chronic, low level environmental conditions. Some recent bone measurements performed at the US Department of Energy, Environmental Measurements Laboratory are presented. For comparison, a summary of published information on uranium concentrations in blood, soft tissues and bones of humans is also presented. These data are selected to eliminate results from areas of known elevated natural radionuclide levels and occupational or controlled experimental exposure cases. From the measurements of the uranium concentration in bone from 12 countries, it is possible to derive a cumulative frequency distribution for the sampled populations.

Concentration of uranium in human cancerous tissues of Southern Iraqi patients using fission track analysis

“…From Table 2, it was found that observed uranium concentrations in kidney were widely scattered and the average uranium concentration (6.51 lg kg -1 ) for abnormal tissues and (4.11 lg kg -1 ) for normal tissues was higher than those in the other abnormal and normal soft tissues, because the kidney is one of the principle sites of uranium deposition in the body [34]. This finding is in agreement with those of other researchers [32,35]. The degrees of accumulation of uranium in the tissues (kidney, breast, stomach, and uterus) are ranked as follows: kidney [ stomach [ breast [ uterus for normal and abnormal tissues.…”

Uptake of Uranium by Lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) in Natural Uranium Contaminated Soils in Order to Assess Chemical Risk for Consumers

“…The human body contains approximately 56 μg of U; 32 μg (56%) in the skeleton, 11 μg in muscle tissue, 9 μg in fat, 2 μg in blood and less than 1 μg in the lungs, liver and kidneys (Fisenne et al 1988). Kidneys are considered to be the most sensitive target organ for chemical toxicity of U and long-term ingestion of the element by humans leads to progressive kidney injury.…”

Uran und Human-Biomonitoring

“…Die wei te re Bi lan zie rung er gibt für Muskel ge we be 20, Fett ge we be 15, Blut 4 und für Lun ge, Le ber und Nie re etwa 1-2 [23].…”