Indian University Was Source of Radiation Exposure Incident

New York Times - NEW DELHI — Police have traced the source of a major radiation exposure incident that killed one person and hospitalized six others here to a piece of outdated machinery auctioned off earlier this year by the chemistry department of one of India’s most prestigious universities.

The new disclosure significantly alters the initial explanation of the case. Authorities had previously said the radioactive materials appeared to have entered the country in a container of imported scrap metal. Officials at the country’s atomic regulatory agency discounted the likelihood that the source was domestic, and a government minister, speaking in Parliament, promised to tighten monitoring at ports that receive shipments of scrap materials.

But Joint Commissioner of Police Ajay Kashyap said on Thursday that investigators have now confirmed that the radiation source was a “gamma irradiator” that had been kept in storage for roughly 25 years at the chemistry department of Delhi University. Commissioner Kashyap said the machine, which had been imported from Canada in 1968, was sold to a scrap dealer in February as part of an auction of unused equipment and other materials.

Commissioner Kashyap said the buyer carried the machine to the industrial area of Mayapuri, home to hundreds of tiny scrap shops, and dismantled it into smaller pieces, much of which was sold to another dealer named Deepak Jain. None of the workers or dealers in the scrap metal shops was aware that the machine contained Cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope used in food irradiation or radiotherapy in cancer treatment.

Mr. Jain and five others remain hospitalized, while one of his employees died this week of multiple organ failure. The employee, named Rajender, often slept in a shop office and suffered the most exposure to the radiation, Commissioner Kashyap said. In early April, police temporarily cordoned off part of Mayapuri as scientists removed radioactive materials.

Commissioner Kashyap said investigators are still probing the details of the auction. Machinery using radioactive materials is supposed to be registered with India’s atomic regulatory agency, which has strict controls over domestically produced Cobalt-60. But many experts have warned that older medical equipment, purchased in the 1970s and 1980s, often predates regulatory controls and can pose major public health risks if not properly disposed of.

“Somewhere down the line, they should have realized this machine contained toxic materials,” Commissioner Kashyap said in a telephone interview. He added: “At the time of disposal, perhaps this type of due diligence was not carried out.”

On Monday night, Delhi University Vice Chancellor Deepak Pental told Indian media that the university would conduct an investigation of why the machine was sold in a scrap auction.

“We have to go into it and inquire into this — in a very systematic method to find out where was the negligence,” Mr. Pental told NDTV, a news channel. He added that the university would investigate “with whose permission the source was bought and who was using it.”