Particle clearance in the alveolar-interstitial region of the human lungs: model validation.

New information on particle retention of inhaled insoluble material indicates that the ICRP Human Respiratory Tract Model (HRTM) significantly underestimates long-term retention in the lungs. In a previous paper, the information from three studies was reviewed, and a model developed to predict particle retention in the lungs of coal miners was adapted in order to obtain parameter values for general use to predict particle retention in the alveolar-interstitial (AI) region. The model is physiologically based and simpler than the HRTM, requiring two instead of three compartments to model the AI region. The main difference from the HRTM AI model is that a significant fraction, about 35 %, of the AI deposit of insoluble material remains sequestered in the interstitium. The new model is here applied to the analysis of two well-known contamination cases with several years of follow-up data.