Removing Radium-Painted Aero Gauges From Warehouse

Federal officials have ordered a $7 million emergency clean-up of a Los Angeles (CA) warehouse full of old aircraft gauges -- the kind painted with radium so they would be readable in low-light.

Radiological tests of the warehouse show radiation at 100 times the normal for that area, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. More than a million gauges and dials were stored on 12-foot high shelves. Outside the Preservation Aviation warehouse, radiation in the storage yard was measured at about 10 times the background levels.

"We found that the material that's at the site, especially that in the yard, was posing a hazard to human health and environment at the sidewalk," said Pete Guria, chief of the EPA's emergency response office.

The EPA will begin removing the radioactive material around the middle of next month, according to the Daily News. In the meantime, government officials hope to have a aviation historian -- perhaps from the National Air and Space Museum, look at the old gauges.

The gauges, most of them from World War II vintage aircraft, have been piling up at the warehouse since the 1950s. Jeffrey Pearson bought the business in 1996, but never completed a full inventory of the parts on hand.

Radium occurs at low levels in nature. Purified, it glows in the dark. Originally hailed as a miracle cure, it was used in everything from hair tonic to toothpaste before scientists determined it causes cancer.

The dials and gauges at Preservation Aviation wouldn't be a problem for the environment if many of them weren't cracked or broken. But when the container in which the radium resides is cracked, radioactive dust can leak out, again posing a cancer risk.

Local environmental officials called in the EPA after the state's cleanup effort appeared to be getting nowhere. But Pearson apparently doesn't want to give up his antique instruments. Charles Quilter II, Pearson's friend and an aviation historian himself, said Pearson has applied for a license to keep the instruments on site.

"He wants to get his work going again," Quilter said. "His main goal is to get out the 95 percent of the stuff that doesn't have radium in it."

FMI: www.epa.gov