The following was received from the State of Florida:
[The State of Florida Bureau of Radiation Control] received a call from [the Medical Physicist] to report the loss of a [190 microCurie] I-125 brachytherapy seed. It is believed that the seed was removed from a patient between July 25 and 26 and placed into the biohazard waste container. The lost seed was discovered missing on Aug. 7th and all attempts to locate the seed have failed.
There was no adverse outcome in patient care from this incident.
No personnel or general public exposure would have been significant based upon the low exposure rate and the nature of controlled biohazard waste. The waste was incinerated. The majority of the radioactivity would have been released through the stack with minimal residual activity. No environmental impact is expected.
Corrective actions taken include reeducation of proper documentation methods and reeducation of the proper use and checkoff of the inventory log.
Florida Incident Report #: FL18-110
THIS MATERIAL EVENT CONTAINS A "LESS THAN CAT 3" LEVEL OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL
Sources that are "Less than
IAEA Category 3 sources," are either sources that are very unlikely to cause permanent injury to individuals or contain a very small amount of radioactive material that would not cause any permanent injury. Some of these sources, such as
moisture density gauges or thickness
gauges that are Category 4, the amount of unshielded radioactive material, if not safely managed or securely protected, could possibly - although it is unlikely - temporarily injure someone who handled it or were otherwise in contact with it, or who were close to it for a period of many weeks. For additional information go to
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1227_web.pdf