Negatively Charged Aerosols

Effect on Pulmonary Clearance of Inhaled ²³⁹PuO₂ in Rats

¹ Biology Department, Battelle Memorial Institute, Pacific Northwest Laboratories, Richland, Washington

Four-month-old female albino rats received a single 15 to 20 minute "nose-only" exposure to ²³⁹PuO₂ dust (CMD 0.3µm). The animals were then randomly divided into experimental and control groups of 10, 12 and 18 rats each for three exploratory experiments. In experiments 1 and 2, the experimental rats were treated 3 hours daily with negatively charged electro-aerosol (1 percent NaCl solution dispersed by a Küster-Barthel type aerosol generator, jet potential -26 kV, MMD of aerosol particles 3.8µm) and killed after three weeks. In experiment 3, the experimental rats were treated continuously with electro-aerosol and killed in groups of six after 5, 24 and 48 hours respectively. After death the lungs were removed and analyzed for ²³⁹Pu. With the exception of the subgroup killed after 24 hours, the mean lung burden of ²³⁹Pu was from 8 percent to 34 percent lower in the animals treated with electro-aerosol than in the controls treated with uncharged aerosol and those not treated with aerosol.