An independent inquiry has been demanded after radioactive waste was wrongly disposed of at Ninewells Hospital.

Two weeks ago, a sharps bin containing radioactive waste was wrongly placed in a yellow clinical waste container. The radioactive material, which officials have stressed was not dangerous, was then sent out with the other clinical waste, against the conditions of the hospital’s site licence for the use of radioactive material.

The sharps bin containing radioactive waste was placed for uplift by janitors at stairwell 6, level 7 near the small lift in the laboratory block. This stairwell area temporarily holds all of the laboratory waste containers for level 7 until work on the freight lift is completed. An unknown person placed this waste in one of the yellow clinical waste containers, despite the waste being clearly labelled as radioactive.

[Stairwell?  A temporary holding site for wastes?  What about the fire regs?]

This resulted in the waste being sent out via the clinical waste route, which contravenes our site licence for the use and disposal of radioactive isotopes. “Prompt” action by staff meant the waste was subsequently recovered.

A spokesman for Dundee University said: “In March a small sharps bin containing a total of 0.68MBq of iodine-125 left over from cell labelling work in the university medical school was mistakenly placed in the clinical waste stream and not the radioactive waste stream.

Contingency procedures were followed and the sharps bin was quickly located and segregated from the clinical waste before being properly disposed of.

This is a small activity of iodine-125 that would not have posed any risk to persons or the environment.

As usual, the spokesperson plays down the impact and even goes so far as to praise staff who managed the situation through contingency plans. So, that’s alright then. Pats on the back for all.

It’s a quite typical response but one that glosses over the root causes and potential impact of processes such as this. Let’s hope that the regulators see through the reassurances and deal properly with some real improvement in waste management processes at the Ninewells site.