Abstract
Most of the lung cancers of former uranium miners developed in the large central airways.
Current computational fluid dynamics calculations indicate high primary deposition in this region. However, the cellular burden of the radon progenies deposited in the deep
regions of the lung and clears up by the mucus layer may contribute to the health effects found in airway generations 2–5.
In this work, the deposition distribution of inhaled radon progenies was computed by a developed version of the stochastic lung model. A clearance model was constructed
to simulate the up clearing fractions of attached and non-attached radon progenies in each bronchial airway generations. Finally, the ratio of the primarily deposited and the up cleared fraction has been calculated in airway generation level at different breathing patterns and mucus velocities. The characteristic input data of the clearance model are the deposition pattern, the velocity of the mucus per generation, the length of the airways and the half life of radon progenies. Based on the results, in the central airways, the radiation burden of the up clearing,
more deeply deposited, radon progenies can significantly be higher than the burden of the primarily deposited fraction in these central airways
