A mathematical simulation of body burden with inhaled mercury vapor.

In the previous study, a significant difference of body burden due to high concentrationshort term exposure, HS and due to low concentration-long term exposure to intermittent mercury vapor, LL has been experimentally studied1). Mercury concentration of the lungs was higher in the HS group than in the LL group after the 2 and 4 weeks exposure to mercury vapor and those of the remaining 10 viscera such as kidney and brain were higher, on the contrary, in the LL group than in the HS group. Possible factors causing such results were also discussed in the paper and the most significant was speculated to be the comparatively smaller rate constant for mercury transfer from lungs to the remaining organs than that for mercury uptake by the lungs from the inhaled air. In the present study, the authors intended to simulate the mercury transfer system with mathematical models2) to estimate several rate constants and succeedingly to simulate the difference of body burden in the HS and LL group with the model using a hybrid computer. This information could assist in establishing threshold limit values for mercury vapor.