Radiation Poisoning Probed at National Health Center

Federal authorities are investigating two apparent acts of radioactive sabotage in which a pregnant scientist and 25 co-workers unwittingly consumed contaminated food and water at the National Institutes of Health, officials said Monday.

Officials at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md., said they found traces of a radioactive phosphorus isotope near a lunchroom refrigerator and in a nearby water cooler. The isotope is used in tests performed at the laboratory.

“It is under investigation, but the nature of what we know suggests that it was not accidental,” said Anne Thomas, an NIH spokeswoman.

The scientist, who is about four months’ pregnant, received 200 to 300 microcuries, about half of the yearly allowable dose of radiation under federal guidelines, which is the equivalent of about 10 chest X-rays. Thomas said those levels were not believed to pose a significant health risk, although doctors routinely recommend that pregnant women avoid exposure to radiation.

Investigators believe she might have eaten contaminated food from a lunchroom refrigerator on June 28.

Friday, investigators determined that 25 other workers had been exposed to similar radiation by drinking water from a cooler. Officials said they received one-tenth or less of the yearly exposure limit.

An investigation is being conducted by NIH security officials, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the FBI. Special agent Larry K. Foust, a spokesman for the FBI’s Baltimore Division, confirmed that agents from his office had traveled to the site to confer with security investigators.

The rare contamination caused widespread concern at the NIH campus, particularly in the offices along the fifth-floor west corridor of Building 37, where the incidents occurred. The area mostly houses researchers from the National Cancer Institute.

NIH officials have been urging building workers to bring their own water and drinks to work until the investigation is concluded, and some anxious employees were scanning food and drinks with Geiger counters Monday as word about the latest contamination spread.

NIH officials met with about 100 scientists Monday to try to provide information and allay fears.

“We’re all upset, and we don’t know what’s going on,” said a worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We don’t know who did it or why, and nobody wants to work in an environment where somebody’s trying to poison you. Anybody could have come in contact with this.”

The pregnant scientist discovered that she had been contaminated June 28 when her husband, also an NIH scientist, was sweeping the laboratory with a Geiger counter as part of a routine safety procedure, Thomas said. When the man ran the probe near his wife, the radiation counter jumped, and the woman was taken to a nearby medical facility for treatment.