Indian university investigates radioactive waste death

[Marlin]

Authorities at Delhi University in India say they are investigating how radioactive waste which this week killed a man was sold as scrap.

On Wednesday, police said cobalt-60 had leaked from an irradiation machine sold by the university earlier this month.

A scrap metal worker who was exposed to the radiation died on Monday of multiple organ failure. Several of his colleagues are still in hospital.

They were exposed to radiation after dismantling the machine, police say.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8651010.stm

[Adam Grundleger]

Seems to keep happening there.  The scrap gets reprocessed into commercial steel and sometimes makes it all the way to the consumers in a finished form.  Everybody from the scrap workers through to the end user get exposed, sometimes to high dose rates for extended periods.  I've seen documentation regarding elevator parts, bulk sheet steel, and some others.

The way that material changes hands, it's hard to tell where stock comes from unless the PO requires documentation.  I've seen material with paper trails all over the globe.

What the heck is a university doing selling that sort of machine as scrap with a source still in it, anyway?  They must not have licensing like the US, but to think that they don't even control those things?!

Could you imagine what would happen if someone deliberately misused one of those sources?   

[Marlin]

   A number of years back a similar thing happened in Mexico and was not discovered until a truck set off a US DOE monitor alongside a road. The truck was carrying metal table legs that had been smelted from a batch of metal that included a Co60 source from a medical gamma scalpel. The investigation led from the US all the way back to Mexico. The 6000 curie source was made up of 3000 irradiated seeds (BB's) that scattered all over as the device was disassembled in the back of the truck on the way to the scrap yard. BB's from the source were found 200 miles away were they had been carried in the tire of a car or truck. This machine was released by a hospital as scrap. If I find a link to this I will post it.

[Marlin]

 Not what I was looking for but it is a start.

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/43575

[Marlin]

OK, here we go, some of my numbers were off but this is it.

http://www.window.state.tx.us/border/ch09/cobalto.html