The Human Plutonium Injection Experiments

None of the patients who had died had

bone- or liver-related malignancies as

the listed (or even the contributing)

cause of death on their death certifi-

cates, unless that was the diagnosed

disease at the time of the injection.

And those patients who were still living

also did not show any plutonium-

related effects.  

Eight of the 18 cases had survived at

least twice as long as the four-year pe-

riod established as the shortest induc-

tion interval for a radium-induced bone

tumor.  Using known cases of bone tu-

mors from radium, Rowland and

Durbin estimated that “the lowest aver-

age endosteal [bone surface] dose at

which plutonium might induce bone tu-

mors in man to be of the order of 600

rad.”  Four of the patients injected with

plutonium had considerably higher en-

dosteal doses (7420, 1280, 1790, and

973 rad); the other four had significant

fractions of that dose (141 to 448 rad).

Although, one to three cases of bone

cancer were possible in the group, none

had appeared (which might indicate a

higher threshold dose for bone cancer

or simply be a result of the smallness

of the group).  In regard to doses to the

liver, all but one of the cases had esti-

mated doses that were smaller than

what appeared necessary, in comparison

to radium, to cause liver cancer.  Thus,

it was not surprising that no liver tu-

mors had appeared.

A Recent Analysis of the 

Excretion Data

One outcome of the openness inititative

pledged by the Department of Energy

and the subsequent review of docu-

ments was a re-analysis of the plutoni-

um injection data by one of the authors

(Moss) and Gary Tietjen.  A careful re-

view of the original notebooks at Los

Alamos has revealed some errors in the

urinary excretion data for the Rochester

patients.  Some of those errors were

mistakes, others were simply needed

adjustments for chemical recovery and

elapsed collection time.  For example,

failure in the Rochester metabolic ward

to properly time the urine sampling

from the time of injection led to uncer-

tainties in the initial excretion rates.

Likewise, some of the data were not

corrected for the analytically measured

per cent recovery of plutonium, includ-

ing an 88-per-cent recovery rate of plu-

tonium for all the Rochester urine data.

When there was insufficient information

to check the values, Moss and Tietjen

discarded the data.  In many cases,

however, careful documention allowed

the original data to be corrected and in-

cluded in the subsequent analysis.

(After 1956, a different urinalysis pro-

cedure, based on a nuclear-track

method developed at Hanford, was im-

plemented at Los Alamos, and data

from that time onward are much more

accurate and consistent.  Today’s ana-

lytical methods routinely detect body

burdens at the 0.1-microgram level.)

As a result of the re-examination of

original data, it is apparent that the in-

crease in excretion rate noted by Rundo

was, in fact, only an artifact, the result

of urine assays that were not corrected

for chemical yield or for alpha-counting

instrument calibration bias.

Also included in the re-analysis were

several consecutive daily samples that

had been collected from each of HP-3,

HP-4, HP-6, and HP-9 about a year

after their injections.  Although these

data were recorded at Los Alamos, for

some unknown reason Langham may

not have been aware of them; they were

not used in his analysis even though

they were consistent with the data he

did use (the 500-day data obtained from

HP-6). 

In addition to corrections, new data

have become available from a recent

study.  Talbot, Newton, and Warner in

England injected plutonium-237 into

two healthy male volunteers and ana-

lyzed the excreta using modern analyti-

cal methods.  Plutonium-237 has only a

45.3-day half-life and decays by the rel-

atively benign electron-capture mode,

which made this isotope a negligible

health concern compared to plutonium-

239.  Moreover, x rays emitted in the

decay enabled patterns of organ uptake

to be studied during the experiment.

This approach was not used earlier be-

cause it has been too difficult to elimi-

nate other plutonium isotopes with long

half-lives.  In this case, the researchers

were able to use a variable-energy cy-

clotron at Harwell and adjust the condi-

tions of the irradiation of uranium-235

with helium ions to make relatively

pure plutonium-237.

Moss and Tietjen used the new excre-

tion data together with the corrections

to the original plutonium-239 data to do

another analysis of plutonium urinary

excretion.  Based solely on empirical

grounds, they expanded Langham’s

original power function by adding a

second term.  The urine data for the

two plutonium-237 subjects from day 5

through day 15 are remarkably linear

on a log-log plot, whereas the data for

days 1 through 4 are more variable.

Thus, only the data for days 5 through

14 were used to obtain the first power-

function term.  When they compared

the slope for that term to the slopes for

ten of the Rochester patients (HP-1

through HP-10), the comparison, for the

most part, was very close.

Moss and Tietjen next used the sparse

The Human Plutonium Injection Experiments

Number 23  1995  Los Alamos Science  

219

Bill Moss and Eileen Welsome

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