Plutonium in Autopsy Tissue Samples

Rapid method for plutonium-241 determination in soil samples

A simple and rapid procedure for the determination of plutonium isotopes in the environment is presented. The procedure combines alpha spectrometry, solvent extraction and liquid scintillation measurements to ensure that both alpha- and beta-emitting isotopes are determined. Of five tested extractants, bis-(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid was found to be the best choice. The procedure was applied...

Concentration of organochlorines in human brain, liver, and adipose tissue autopsy samples from Greenland.

Organochlorines are persistent lipophilic compounds that accumulate in Inuit people living in circumpolar countries. Organochlorines accumulate as a result of the Inuits' large consumption of sea mammal fat; however, available data are limited to blood lipids, milk fat, and adipose tissue. We report results of organochlorine determination in liver, brain, omental fat, and subcutaneous abdominal...

Transcriptional profiling of degraded RNA in cryopreserved and fixed tissue samples obtained at autopsy

BACKGROUND Traditional multiplexed gene expression methods require well preserved, intact RNA. Such specimens are difficult to acquire in clinical practice where formalin fixation is the standard procedure for processing tissue. Even when special handling methods are used to obtain frozen tissue, there may be RNA degradation; for example autopsy samples where degradation occurs both pre-mortem ...

Comparison of systemic plutonium deposition estimates from urinalysis and autopsy data in five whole-body donors.

The systemic deposition of (239 + 240)Pu was determined by postmortem radiochemical analysis of the tissues from five whole-body donors to the United States Transuranium Registry (USTR). All were males with intakes typically occurring many years prior to death. The postmortem radiochemical results were compared with estimates of systemic deposition made with 13 different biokinetic models using...

Detection of Hhv-8 in Autopsy Samples from Aids Patients