LUNG DEPOSITION AND BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF INHALED RADON PROGENIES

Inhaled radon progenies provide more than half of the natural radiation burden. One of our objectives was the characterisation of the distribution of cellular exposure of radon. At first, total and regional deposition and deposition density distributions of inhaled radon progenies in the human respiratory system were computed by the stochastic lung deposition model. Histological studies of former uranium miners presented neoplastic lesions along the carinal regions of the large bronchial airways. Thus, secondly, computational fluid dynamics approaches have been applied to simulate deposition and cellular dose distributions of inhaled radon progenies in the central human airways.