Abstract
The physiology of the essential trace element zinc has been studied extensively in human subjects using kinetic analysis of time-dependent measurements of administered zinc tracers. A number of biokinetic models describing zinc exchange between plasma and tissues and loss of systemic zinc in excreta have been developed from the derived data. More rudimentary biokinetic models for zinc have been developed to estimate radiation doses from internally deposited radioisotopes of zinc. The latter models are designed to provide broadly accurate estimates of cumulative decays of zinc radioisotopes in tissues and are not intended as realistic descriptions of the directions of movement of zinc in the body. This paper reviews biokinetic data for zinc and proposes a physiologically meaningful biokinetic model for systemic zinc for use in radiation protection. The proposed model bears some resemblance to zinc models developed in physiological studies but depicts a finer division of systemic zinc and is based on a broader spectrum of data than previous models. The proposed model and current radiation protection model for zinc yield broadly similar estimates of effective dose from internally deposited radioisotopes of zinc but substantially different dose estimates for several individual tissues, particularly the liver.
