Multicompartment kinetic models for lead. I. Bone diffusion models for long-term retention.

The long-term retention of lead in bone poses a number of difficulties for the usual multicompartment models. The use of diffusion models based on exchange of lead between blood in canaliculi and the crystalline bone of the osteon allows a linear compartmental approximation suitable for statistical estimation of kinetic parameters in peripheral compartments. The model is applied to lead retention by beagle dogs.