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Re: Radioactive Contamination Anecdotes

Dear Carol,

Just after I started (as a humble radiation protection technician) there occurred an incident which I don't think is nearly 
so likely today (this was 1971).  A laboratory took delivery of  a vial containing some 10's of millicuries of inorganic 
P-32 phosphate, which had been sent in a "multidose" vial from a rather well known supplier without its rubber seal.  A 
rather casual attitude had grown up in this lab to opening these, and no leakage checks were carried out until someone 
noticed the lack of rubber seal the following day!  I was too new to the game to actually take part in the monitoring 
and clean-up but my boss used it to help in my training, so I got most of the high spots (NB this was a University 
environment - I've seldom worked elsewhere in my 24 years in RP).  The packaging had been discarded to active 
waste, so aside from the little matter of measuring the activity and recording it, this gave no problems.  Early in the 
work "hot" footprint were detected down the corridor and this lead to measurement of foot-pedals in cars and even 
door-mats brought in from home.  A lot of the clean-up was a matter of shielding with acrylic until it decayed away 
(concrete floors).  Strangely enough, there was very little internal contamination, and the incident lead to only fairly low 
external doses.  It did lead to that lab group becoming model workers for a number of years, so it wasn't entirely 
wasted! :-)

By the way the lack of detail as to where this incident occured is entirely to protect the guilty

David Walland
University of Bristol (UK)
David.Walland@bristol.ac.uk

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Radsafers,
>. So if you are willing to share any personal stories of 32P on your
> shoes, scientists found wipe testing their steering wheels or similar
> incidents, I would greatly appreciate it.
> 
> Carol Lentz
> lentzc@aa.wl.com
> 
>