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The article discusses a study on the application of chelation therapy on three cases of finger wounds contaminated by 239Pu at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The injections contain one gram of either trisodium calcium diethylenetriaminepentaacetate of trisodium zinc diethylenetriaminepentaacetate. The tissue and urine samples including wound measurement are taken from each of the subjects to assess the efficacy of the treatment.

Internal dose caused by exposure to 239Pu/240Pu is calculated for a group of 210 former Los Alamos workers who participated in the urine bioassay programme during the years 1944-45. An iterative Bayesian procedure is employed, where the distribution of intake amounts resulting from an initial calculation is used to define a prior probability distribution of inhalation intakes for an iterated second calculation. The urine bioassay data from this time period were not of high quality, and the more accurate intake prior tempers the effect of spurious high samples, which were probably caused by sample contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the Bayesian method for hypothesis testing as applied to internal plutonium and americium dosimetry cases at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico. The authors compare the Bayesian method where the interpretation of the measurements builds on and depends upon the prior probability distribution with classical statistical approaches. They argue that all the data should always be taken into account. They conclude that if there are many cases available, then the difference between Bayesian and classical statistics is slight, but when data are limited, the distinction becomes important.