The potential laboratory health hazard of 210Pb and a simple procedure for separation of 210Pb from the daughters 210Bi and 210Po

Lead 210 (Radium D) is a naturally occurring radionuclide which is frequently used in toxicological studies due to its long half-life. The use of ²¹⁰Pb in tracer studies poses two problems. First, ²¹⁰Pb, along with its daughters ²¹⁰Bi and ²¹⁰Po, presents a significant health hazard to laboratory personnel. Second, the presence of the daughter products may interfere with the detection of ²¹⁰Pb, particularly by techniques which discriminate poorly between different radioactive emissions, e.g., autoradiography. The potential laboratory health hazards of ²¹⁰Pb and its daughters are briefly reviewed and a simple dithiozone extraction procedure which allows quantitative separation of ²¹⁰Pb from the daughters ²¹⁰Po and ²¹⁰Bi is described. The purified ²¹⁰Pb may then be utilized to reduce the health hazard from the daughter products and to construct calibration curves for the quantitation of ²¹⁰Pb in the presence of ²¹⁰Bi and ²¹⁰Po by liquid scintillation counting.