MIT's Bates lab under investigation for nuclear radiation complaint

The Public Health officials of Massachusetts are looking into allegations that workers at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology laboratory may have been exposed to radioactive materials. The state Department of Public Health said in a letter earlier in October that it has opened an investigation into "radiation safety and compliance" at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Bates Research and Engineering Center in Middleton.

A letter on October 17, from John Priest, the director of the department’s Radiation Control Program was provided to an international daily by former MIT researcher Babak Babakinejad, who has been a critic of the university's Open Agricultural Initiative which is run out of Bates lab.

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OpenAg was stopped in October

"OpenAg," as the project is nicknamed, was stopped earlier this month after the investigations by MIT and the state for possible academic and environmental violations were underway.

"I am particularly concerned about possible exposure of employees to the radioactively contaminated equipment that are still stored at the Bates Lab, many years after the shutdown of the accelerator," Babakinejad wrote in his correspondence to the state. However, it is not clear as to what are the levels of radiation produced by the accelerator or what are the health risks that were caused by the radiation.

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Agency taking the matter seriously

Priest said in the letter that the agency is taking the matter seriously and has planned to review the situation, by conducting interviews and on-site inspections. State public health department spokeswoman Ann Scales has declined to comment amid the ongoing investigation. MIT confirmed that state officials visited the site on Tuesday in response to the allegations.

Spread on the 80 acres plot, the Bates lab was built in the late 1960s with support from the U.S. Department of Energy. MIT took ownership of the site in 2005. It has a linear accelerator, which is used to generate beams of electrons for scientific experiments, particularly in the areas of nuclear and particle physics. After MIT took ownership of the site, the process of decontaminating and decommissioning the accelerator began, as per the university report at the time.

(With inputs from AP)

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