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Groups of rats were allowed to inhale one of three levels of mercury vapor for 5 hr/day, 5 days/week for 8 weeks. The body burden, determined by whole-body counting, showed daily and weekly fluctuations related to the exposure regime in each experiment. For the first 3 weeks, the body burden increased, but thereafter a steady-state was attained in which the deposition during the exposure periods was balanced by the excretion plus radioactive decay. After exposure was terminated, the body burden decreased with an exponential decay half time of 15 days). This data could be mimicked by a model based on ventilation rates, the deposition of inhaled mercury vapor, and on excretion patterns previously established by studies of single exposures to inhalation.
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Rothstein et al. (1964) studied this question.
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