Fetal organ dosimetry for the Techa River and Ozyorsk Offspring Cohorts, part 2: radionuclide S values for fetal self-dose and maternal cross-dose

One of the many objectives of the European Union’s SOLO (Epidemiological Studies of Exposed Southern Urals Populations) project is to quantify the radiation dose–response following chronic in utero exposures to ionizing radiation. The project is presently conducting a pooled analysis of two cohorts of individuals born to exposed mothers—the Techa River Offspring Cohort (TROC) and the Ozyorsk Offspring Cohort (OOC). The TROC includes the offspring of mothers with external exposures to contaminated riverbanks and internal ingestions of ⁸⁹Sr, ⁹⁰Sr/⁹⁰Y, and ¹³⁷Cs/^137mBa, while the OOC includes the offspring of mothers with external exposures seen within the Mayak plutonium production facilities and internal inhalation of ²³⁹Pu and possibly ¹³¹I. In the present study, a newly created Urals-based series of fetal and maternal models is employed to assess S values for all seven radionuclides. Among all fetal ages, S values ranged in magnitude from 10⁻¹⁴ to 10⁻¹⁰ Gy per Bq-s for fetal source organs and from 10⁻¹⁸ to 10⁻¹⁴ Gy per Bq-s from maternal source organs, depending upon particle type, particle energy, and fetal age. For a given radionuclide and fetal age, S values for fetal source organs were approximately two orders of magnitude higher than for maternal source organs. Little variation in S values was observed among fetal source organs, while variations of over 100 % with respect to the mean were observed for maternal source organs near the fetus. S value variations from maternal cross-fire were highly dependent on fetal position and separation distance from the maternal source organ. These radionuclide S values have been coupled with biokinetic models for use in cohort dose assessment within the SOLO project.