ADDITIONAL AREAS OF MAGILL POLLUTED

More radioactive contamination has been discovered at Southeast Missouri State University's Magill Hall, school officials said Friday.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors detected the contamination in a second-floor room of the science building that formerly was used for experiments with radioactive chemicals. An area of the floor against a wall and underneath a pipe was found to be contaminated.

Dr. Chris McGowan, dean of the College of Science and Technology, said the contamination likely is from americium-241, a radioactive substance that also has contaminated the building's basement.

More contamination also has been found in the building's basement, including an area used by a hazardous-waste contractor as a staging area for cleanup work last week.

The entire basement and the second-floor room have been sealed off, officials said. A temporary wall has been installed at the top of the stairwell leading to the basement. Only individuals wearing protective gloves and coverings on their shoes will be allowed in the basement, and then they will be checked for radiation once they exit, McGowan said.

"We will be treating the whole area as contaminated until we get a contractor on site," the dean said.

McGowan said the second-floor room at one time was used by a faculty chemist. The chemist died in 1979, and it hasn't been used as a radioactive chemistry lab since that time.

Dr. Ken Dobbins, Southeast's president, said there's no evidence of airborne contamination in the building. Dobbins said the university doesn't plan to close the first and second floors of Magill Hall to students, faculty and staff at this time.

He said there is no evidence that the other rooms in the building have been contaminated or pose a health threat.

The university is working to hire a hazardous-waste contractor that is licensed by the NRC and is qualified to handle the decontamination work. School officials said they don't know how much it will cost.

School officials said they are having difficulty finding a disposal facility that will take the americium.

Meanwhile, the university has hired Helgeson Scientific Service of Pleasanton, Calif., to test about 70 people who may have been exposed to americium since 1994, including faculty and custodians.

The testing will cost the university $35,000 to $40,000, Dobbins said.

A tractor-trailer carrying the mobile, full-body scanner is slated to be on campus Sunday. It will be set up on the north side of the Show Me Center. Testing is scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. Monday and continue throughout the week. It takes about an hour for the machine to test one person.

Dobbins said the test results won't be known for about three weeks.

The americium-241 was found in a safe in a basement storage room. One americium vial contained a powder. The other originally contained a liquid, which had spilled within the safe.

It was one of three radioactive materials found in the safe in February. The university isn't licensed to have any of those three substances, NRC officials in the Chicago regional office said.

Besides americium, the substances are cobalt-60 and cesium-137. McGowan said he doesn't know when any of the materials were put in the safe or who put them there.

Those substances are still in the safe. The cobalt-60 and cesium-137 pose little of a health threat, he said

An NRC inspector visited Magill Hall on Feb. 16. The inspector voiced concern about the storage of radioactive materials and the lack at that time of a trained radiation safety officer.

The inspector would have checked the safe, but officials of the college couldn't immediately find the key. The key was found the next day in the office that had been used by the school's previous radiation safety officer.

Southeast's former radiation safety officer left the school at the end of last July. The university designated a new safety officer, but that science faculty member didn't undergo training until March.

McGowan said university officials weren't aware that the NRC required safety officers to undergo training.

Since the February inspection, two university scientists have gone through radiation safety training and a third will soon be trained.

Dobbins and McGowan said the university has taken steps to improve its internal procedures in regards to the use of radioactive materials.

Dobbins said university officials didn't publicly disclose the radiation problem in February because they thought the contamination was confined to the basement storage room and didn't want to "create panic." It was only after a hazardous-cleanup contractor was brought in last week that the extent of the problem became known, he said.

Roy Caniano, a deputy director of the NRC's regional office, said his agency hasn't suspended the university's license. But university officials said the school was told by an NRC inspector in February to cease using or buying any radioactive materials.

Southeast officials said they complied. No radioactive materials have been used in science experiments since that time, school officials said.

NRC spokeswoman Pam Alloway-Mueller said license violations can lead to fines or even license revocations. But she said the agency hasn't assessed any penalty against Southeast at this time.

"Our priority first and foremost is protecting public health and safety," she said.

McGowan said the university took an inventory of other hazardous but non-radiation chemicals in March and April. A hazardous-waste contractor has since hauled off those chemicals that the school no longer uses.