The licensee's radiography team left the temporary jobsite with their SPEC 150 radiography camera on the tailgate. The camera contained a 24 Curie
Ir-192 source. The licensee drove approximately 15 miles down the road prior to remembering the
gauge was on the tailgate. It was then noticed that the camera was no longer in the truck. The licensee team is retracing their route in search of the camera and will be contacting the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department to aid in the search. The licensee is not sure if the camera had been secured properly prior to driving down the highway. The route taken was from Tinsley Lane to North Business 287 in Saginaw, TX towards Justin, TX in Tarrant County.
Notified NORTHCOM and Mexico via email.
Texas Report TX-07-43822
- UPDATE FROM TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH (JISHA) TO HOWIE CROUCH AT 0743 ON 12/04/07 ***
The SPEC 150 radiography camera was recovered at 0633 CST. A member of the public found the camera and placed it in the back of his private vehicle. Upon hearing about the lost source on the local news this morning, the citizen turned the camera over to the Fort Worth Fire Department. The camera appears intact and undamaged. Texas Department of Health is responding to the fire department to conduct a survey and inspection of the camera. No overexposures are expected.
Notified DHS (Haselton), DOE (Parsons), FEMA (Burckart), USDA (Watts), HHS (Garcia), EPA (Johnson), Mexico (via email), NORTHCOM (via email), R4DO (Hay), FSME EO (Burgess) and ILTAB (Sandler).
THIS MATERIAL EVENT CONTAINS A "CATEGORY 2" LEVEL OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL
Category 2 sources, if not safely managed or securely protected, could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them, or were otherwise in contact with them, for a short time (minutes to hours). It could possibly be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period of hours to days. These sources are typically used in practices such as industrial gamma radiography, high dose rate
brachytherapy and medium dose rate
brachytherapy.