RADIUM FROM WELLINGTON

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25082, 14 January 1947, Page 6

RADIUM FROM WELLINGTON

Use At Dominion Laboratory

EQUIPMENT ASSEMBLED IN CITY

More than 400 milligrammes of radium, the property of the Wellington Hospital Board, is now in Christchurch, at the radon extraction plant installed at the Dominion Radium and X-Ray Laboratory at Canterbury University College, The laboratory ig conducted by the New Zealand branch of the British Empire Cgneer Campaign Society. This quantity of radium from Web liqgton, which is valued at several thousands of pounds, is part of a quantity held in Wellington before the war. At that time the elaborate radon extraction plant was situated in Wellington, but when there was a prospect that the capital might be bombed it was thought desirable by the authorities to dismantle the plant an< store the radium. , This was done, not because of a fear that the radium might be lost through bombing, but to avoid any chance of its escaping, as it might have done, ip the form of a potent radioactive poison.

When the radon extraction plant was dismantled and stored, the radium was collected from it, and put into a “radium safe.” Since the end of the war this radon extraction plant has been re-estab-lished in Christchurch, and is now working at the laboratory at Canterbury University College. Originally the quantity of radium held in Wellington was 630 milligrammes. Of that amount 150 milligrammes were shipped to England to be inserted in radium needles. Another 50 milligrammes were sent, also to England, to be used In international comparison tests of radium standards throughout the world. The balance, between 400 and 450 milligrammes, has gome to Christchurch. In spite of its great value, the radium weighs less than one-fiftieth of an ounce. It is dissolved in a solution of water and hydrochloric acid.

By its disintegration, radium gives off minute beads of radon gas. which are trapped and used for treatment in a selected number o£ cancer cases.