Assessment of beta particle dose for radioactive contamination on skin

The effect of percutaneous absorption on skin dose equivalents for several beta particle emitting compounds has been investigated. Various kinds of contaminations, i.e. aqueous acids and aqueous bases, have been studied. Assuming an exponential function for the activity distribution of contaminations over the depth into the skin, the shallow dose equivalent at various skin depths have been estimated based on Loevinger's formula. The estimated results are in general smaller than those calculated without the percutaneous absorption.