Between 1986 and 1991 approximately 6500 Latvian inhabitants were recruited for clean-up work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Their absorbed doses are usually unknown, because less than half of them had their external exposure officially documented. Clinical investigations show a high morbidity rate for these clean-up workers when compared with that of the general population. In order to understand the causes of their diseases and the impact of ionising radiation, electron spin resonance (ESR) has been used to measure the absorbed doses in human tooth enamel. The doses estimated by ESR were between two and three times higher than previously documented and are in accord with the results of immunological and biological tests. The results may be explained by considering the effects of irradiation caused by long-lived incorporated radionuclides.

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In the present work we report results of investigations of human blood before and after radioisotopeTc99mdiagnosis by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopies. It is shown that EPR can detect the concentration of methaemoglobin and transferrin ions more accurately than any other technique. FTIR spectra indicated that radiation caused conformational and concentration changes of proteins. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) was created as time-saving tool for discrimination of initial and irradiatedin vivohuman blood samples.

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