During an accidental release of tritium, mechanisms of hydrogen transfer
from air to man are very numerous, dependent on multiple climate,
physiological and biological parameters, and the kinetic is highly
variable from one environmental compartment to another. To evaluate
the impact of an acute tritium release requires either an overall
assessment of the state of the environment during the release and the
following hours from a number of restricted data, or the establishment
of a significant data bank, a complex model and a system of data
acquisition in real time whose potential for daily purposes is very
hypothetical. To facilitate the first approach, this paper discusses
the key elements of the mechanisms to guide the choice of parameters
for a rapid assessment of the situation, and to clarify the types
of measurements to carry out and their interpretation.