Abstract
DURING recent years there has been considerable interest in the use of chelating agents to remove certain radioelements deposited in the body. Ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid has been investigated extensively, and more recently there have been reports that diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid is more effective than ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid for the removal of deposited plutonium1, and that it also increases the excretion of thorium from the body2. We have studied the effect of these two chelating agents on the removal of americium-241 from the rat. Preliminary experiments showed that both reagents significantly increased the excretion of this nuclide and that diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid was approximately twice as effective as ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid.
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References
Smith, V. H., Nature, 181, 1792 (1958).
Schubert, J., and Fried, J. F., Nature, 185, 551 (1960).
Turner, R. C., Radley, J. M., and Mayneord, W. V., Brit. J. Radiol., 31, 397 (1958).
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SOWBY, F., TAYLOR, D. Removal of Internally Deposited Americium by Chelating Agents. Nature 187, 612 (1960). https://doi.org/10.1038/187612a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/187612a0
