State to Seek Penalty for Firm Over Radioactive Device : Hazards: An official says two regulations were violated in the shipping of material that fell from a truck. It was later recovered.

California Department of Health Services officials said Thursday they will seek a penalty against a Bakersfield company that they said “carelessly” allowed a radioactive device to slide out of a pickup truck on the Golden State Freeway north of Castaic.

The 60-pound, shoe-box-size case was found Wednesday after being missing since June 25, when it fell out of a truck operated by Cleveland X-ray Services of Bakersfield.

Kim Wong, a physicist and compliance officer with the department’s radiologic health branch, said the case contained iridium-192, a material used in industrial X-ray processes.

Wong said a Cleveland X-ray crew, while driving north from a Los Angeles-area job, broke two state regulations that require such material to be locked inside a bin, which is then supposed to be locked inside the vehicle.

He said the crew did neither, although the truck was equipped with a locking bin. Instead, the case was left in the bed of a pickup with its tailgate open. The case slid from the truck just north of the Hungry Valley Road exit.

“It was carelessness more than anything else,” Wong said. “They thought they had put everything away and were heading up the freeway. It slid off.”

Wong said his agency will seek sanctions against Cleveland X-ray and will ask the attorney general’s office to determine the appropriate penalty. Under state law, the company could be fined up to $5,000 and lose its license to transport radioactive material.

The company could also be charged the state’s costs of the search for the case, which Wong described as extensive and included several trips over the pickup truck’s route using a van equipped with a remote sensing device.

“There appears to have been some negligence on the part of the technician,” said Johnny Peters, manager of Cleveland X-ray. “We’re working with authorities right now to see what step they’ll take next.”

The iridium was packed in a shield of uranium inside the steel case, which is part of a camera that is used to X-ray pipe welds. When the case slipped out of the truck, it was slightly damaged, but the seal around the iridium was not broken.

“We were lucky,” Wong said.

Two California Department of Transportation workers took it to the agency’s lost and found yard in Lebec rather than to a landfill where items found on the freeways are often disposed.

“It could have been a danger because metal scavengers in the landfill might have picked it up,” Wong said. “Who knows what could have happened.”