A radiation protection initiative to map old radium sources

Due to a legacy of past events, the Technology and Health Department of the Instituto Superiore di Sanita (ISS) has preserved an old, large archive of the allocation of radium sources in public hospitals. These sources were purchased by the Ministry of Interior first, then by the Ministry of Health, and provided to hospitals for cancer brachytherapy. After a retrieval initiative - organised in the 1980's, but discontinued some years later owing to the saturation of the temporary storage site - a considerable number of these sources remained in the hospitals. As a result of an incomplete transfer of the retrieval data, some events connected with the second world war, and the decision of some hospitals to dispose directly of their sources without informing the ISS, the archive was not completed and a series of initiatives were undertaken by the ISS to update it. On the other hand, following the concerns that arose after September 11th, 2001 about the possible criminal use of radioactive sources, the Carabinieri Environmental Care Command (CCTA) were required by the Minister of Environment to carry out a thorough investigation into all possible nuclear sources and waste in the country. Special attention was devoted to radium sources because of the high risk their loss or theft entails. For this reason, in 2004, the CCTA made an agreement with the ISS to acquire a final, updated picture of the distribution of these radium sources. In March 2007 a comprehensive report on this collaborative action and its conclusions was officially sent to both the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of the Environment. The paper describes the involvement of these two bodies in the issue, their collaborative action and the most relevant results. (author)