Helen Merkell reported this story on Wednesday, April 18, 2012 12:43:00

KIM LANDERS: There's been a radiation scare for workers on the Pacific Highway upgrade in northern New South Wales.



Chemical experts have inspected the roadworks site where workers have come into contact with a suspicious orange substance.



Some of them felt sick and vomited.



The site, north of Port Macquarie, is near where a truck carrying containers of radioactive isotopes was involved in an accident in 1980.



The state department responsible for roads says it takes today's chemical warning very seriously and work has stopped in the area.



Helen Merkell is in the ABC's Mid-North Coast bureau and she joins me now.



Helen how did these workers actually come into contact with this material which could very well be radioactive?



HELEN MERKELL: Yes, look, there are some questions being asked at the moment whether it is indeed radioactive. It certainly could be very toxic. And it would appear to be just during the normal roadworks.



The Pacific Highway, as you know, is being upgraded. According to the project manager, as they started cutting through the face of the cliff, I guess, or where the road is going to go, they exposed a clay material that, when it was exposed to the air, he said, got an orange streak through it as you mentioned. And a number of workers there apparently started throwing up.



KIM LANDERS: So what sort of treatment have those workers received?



HELEN MERKELL: They've been taken off for blood tests. And they were taken for checks. And I assume it's one of those terrible wait and see things. This was fairly recent and it's really not yet known what the substance was or how they're going to be.



KIM LANDERS: So what's being done to test this mystery substance?



HELEN MERKELL: Well according to the Roads and Maritime Service there's independent chemical specialists there on site, and I gather from three different laboratories; they're collecting samples for testing. And the RMS says there hasn't been any determination made about the potential source of the suspected contamination.



They do say that an area of known contamination was identified earlier during the planning for the project. And certainly some of the reports that are there, you know, online on the website for the Pacific Highway upgrade note this truck accident and that there were contaminants and it's not exactly sure where they are. But it would appear, from what we're hearing, that they've found them.



KIM LANDERS: So if authorities knew that a truck carrying radioactive isotopes had actually been involved in an accident back in 1980, I guess the next question is, why wasn't the site properly cleaned up back then?



HELEN MERKELL: I'm not too sure I'm the expert to answer that. But I think we're dealing again with the 1980s in country New South Wales; the Pacific Highway was, you know, as it is still there, this is why it's being upgraded, just two lanes running through bush. I think the accident happened, I mean this truck was driving from Sydney to Brisbane because there was a strike on, the wharfies were on strike and refusing to handle radioactive material; it had other chemicals on it as well.



It was simply involved in another accident that was fatal. And I think when the chemicals spilled, this is what I'm hearing, they were buried. The advice was then to bury them.



And so now the roadworks are digging them up. Not necessarily the radioactive chemicals.



KIM LANDERS: So you've spoken to a doctor who recalls that 1980 accident. What does he say?



HELEN MERKELL: Well he said he treated police, this is Dr John McKay, who became ill at the 1980 truck site. He says he's convinced they suffered radiation poisoning.



He says they were instructed by Lucas Heights to approach the radioactive containers, he says there were several of them, in particular there was Caesium 137, and they were told to open them - put the containers in the shade and then open them; reach inside to check if the radio isotopes had been broken.



And he says within minutes the men were intensely sick and I think he said within an hour one had a blister on his leg.



And here's some more of what Dr McKay had to say:



JOHN MCKAY: It wasn't just the radioactive materials, there was several tonnes of Hexachlorobenzene, there were tonnes of DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane). I know that they wanted to bury the DDT and the Hexachlorobenzene, but I'm absolutely gobsmacked that they did the same with the radioactive canisters. That is just unacceptable.



KIM LANDERS: Dr John McKay.