Radioactive Pellet Found After Caller Alerts Firm

An anonymous caller Friday led searchers to a small steel box containing a potentially lethal radioactive pellet that had been aboard a pickup truck stolen nearly a week ago from an industrial X-ray firm here.

Officials with United States Testing said they got a telephone call telling them that the stainless steel box containing the deadly iridium 192 could be found in bushes behind the firm’s office.

Robert Mallory, manager of the Oceanside lab, went outside and found the intact box after searching for a few minutes.

Mallory said he checked the container with a Geiger counter and found no radiation was leaking.

Discovery of the material delighted United States Testing officials, who were concerned the box might have been tampered with, releasing radioactivity that could have posed a health threat.

About the size of a lunch pail, the box is sealed and would be difficult to penetrate, but experts with the company were worried that someone with the right tools and enough persistence could pry the pill-sized radioactive pellet out.

The incident began Tuesday when company employees discovered that one of their trucks had been stolen from a parking lot outside the office. Locked inside a white, windowless camper shell atop the 4-wheel-drive 1985 GMC was the box containing the iridium 192.

On Thursday, police issued an alert to law enforcement agencies in five Western states to be on the lookout for the truck. On Friday morning, sheriff’s deputies recovered the truck in a vacant lot on Shubin Lane just south of busy California 78 in San Marcos, but the steel box containing the radioactive pellet was missing.

Mallory said the pickup had been ransacked, its cab spray-painted black and the instrument panel ripped out. The camper shell was several hundred yards away, lying upright about six feet down a gently sloping hillside but otherwise intact.

The box containing the pellet and a portable generator stored in the camper, which serves as an on-site darkroom, were missing.

For most of the day, deputies and experts from the county’s hazardous-materials unit scoured the area within about a mile of the truck for the box and pellet. During their investigation deputies found the generator in a nearby house.

Mallory spent the day searching with authorities but decided to return to his Oceanside office late Friday afternoon. About 4:30, one of the secretaries answered a call from an unidentified person who said where the box could be found.

The secretary was unable to distinguish who the caller was and could not detect any dialect or other characteristic in the voice, Mallory said. He speculated that whoever stole the truck had seen news accounts of the danger posed by the pellet and returned it.

If the pellet comes within about an inch of a person’s skin for more than 30 seconds, the individual would probably absorb a lethal dose of radiation, according to Tom Cuthbertson, radiation safety director for United States Testing.

At greater distances, the pellet loses much of its strength but can still deliver a deadly punch. Frank Bold, a senior health physicist with the San Diego County Department of Health Services, said a fatal dose could be absorbed in about 90 minutes if the pellet was about one yard from a person.

Bold said the steel container that holds the pellet is virtually indestructible. The box, which weighs about 50 pounds and has a handle, contains lead and other materials that shield the pellet’s rays.

The pellet is used while taking X-rays of welds, pipe joints and industrial equipment, said officials with United States Testing, which is based in New Jersey but has offices throughout the country. By turning a screw on the box, the pellet is pushed out of the container, releasing radioactivity that can expose X-ray film.

Cuthbertson said the steel box bears two yellow stickers reading: CAUTION: RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL. But while tucked in the container, the pellet poses no health risk, Bold said.