An ‘extraordinarily severe’ emergency: the radioactive leak at Harborview

Here, the night of May 2nd, crews from the Seattle Fire Department rushed to the scene to try to make sense of a rare incident that involved more than 50 people from at least six different agencies, including the department’s HAZMAT team, the Washington State Department of Health, the FBI, University of Washington, and a clean up crew with over 40 officials from the US Department of Energy. An irradiator, a medical device containing radioactive material used in research on the connections between bone marrow cells and immune response in a lab at the R&T building, would be decommissioned and moved to a safe disposal site with the help of International Isotopes, a contractor hired by the US Department of Energy. This irradiator at the R&T building was, like many others, for years filled with research samples to be sterilized with the help of the radioactive isotope cesium-137, which kills HIV, Hepatitis and other viruses, bacteria, and pathogens.

Source: www.capitolhillseattle.com