Re: Radioactive Contamination Anecdotes

["Dale E. Boyce" <dale@radpro.uchicago.edu>]

Several years ago we were following up on an individual who had not
come in for bioassay.  He told us that he was not the person who used
the material.  On further questioning he told us that the material had been 
used by another group.  That group was not authorized for the material and
so were not on our bioassay list.  We asked six people from that group
to come in for thyroid counts and every one of them had an uptake.  The
highest was about 50 nCi.  Their P.I. was out of town, but when he returned
he was also at about 50 nCi.

Our investigation found contamination in several labs, but one in particular
sent our crystal counters off scale.  Switching to GM's we located the
worst contamination.  A laboratory logbook!  Someone had taped a gel or
chromatography plate ( I forget which) inside the notebook.

-----

Late one Thursday afternoon (again several years ago) we received a phone
call that there had been a serious contamination event in one of our buildings.
I grabbed my response kit and headed across campus.  Several of our techs
were told to get equipment together in case they were needed and one of them
was to come as soon as he could get his gear from our hospital office.

I arrived at the building and people were streaming out the front door.
Several of them were checking people with survey instruments.  I grabbed
my survey instrument and checked the person that had been identified as
the most contaminated aand he read  several mrem/ hour.  The first thing I
asked was have you had any nuclear medicine scans recently?  He responded that
he had not.  I started to check the P.I. who had called and was getting a
high reading, but soon realized the first individual was looking over my
shoulder.  I made him stand back and found some contamination on the P.I.

I started to talk to several faculty members to enlist their help in crowd
control, when the fire trucks arrived.  The P.I. had pulled a fire alarm
to evacuate the area when he thought there was wide spread contamination.
I still had no clue as to what was happening.  I asked the firemen to let
me investigate.  They were more than happy not to enter the building, but
called their hazardous materials response team anyway.

I was finally able to start questioning the people about what had happened.
I learned that the first guy had enterd a lab and started to perform some 
work.  He turned on a survey instrument and every where he surveyed he
found contamination.  He then notified the P.I. who grabbed another 
survey instrument and began to survey.  He too found contamination 
everywhere.  So he pulled the alarm and called us.

There were showers in the basement so I sent the two contaminated 
people to the showers and I headed up to the 5th floor of the 10 story
building. I began scanning the floor, which was eerily deserted.
I was getting no readings. I walked through much of the floor and jumped
when I ran into my tech who had entered the building through a tunnel
and so had missed the commotion outside.  I left him to continue
surveying.  After checking on our two subjects who were now drenched
and standing clad only in labcoats. I found that the P.I. was no
longer hot, but noted little change in the other persons activity.

By now several interested people had been contacted and arrived.
We had an M.D. from our radiation safety committee, a dean or two,
the Director of our News and Information office, the Hazmat Chief,
and probably a couple of other people present.  I explained what we
had found so far, and that we were puzzled that there was no longer
any activity in the area where the contamination was first found.

It was about this time that another one of my techs came up to me
and said that the hot guy had just admitted to having been a
volunteer for a PET scan and wondered if that might be important!
I let out an expletive since that was the first thing I had asked.
He was apparently afraid that he would get in trouble since he
had had the scan during work hours.  He claimed to not be aware
that he would remain hot for awhile even though he was a scientist,
had had the procedure verbally explained, and had signed a written
consent form that explained that he would be radioactive for awhile.

The P.I. had apparently been slightly contaminated handling the 
contaminated survey instrument.  In scanning the floor he had not
realized that the culprit was always behind him and that he was the
source of the activity. 

Have a good chuckle, and maybe next time I'll tell you about the
emergency call I got one evening about a radioactive body that
had been found in a home near here....

Dale Boyce
dale@radpro.uchicago.edu