'Dirty Bomb' Attack In NYC? Not On These Hospitals' Watch

UPPER EAST SIDE — Any terrorist hoping to build a radioactive weapon won't have luck finding components in these New York City hospitals. A dozen medical institutions across the city have pledged to get rid of machines containing a radioactive chemical that could be used to build a "dirty bomb," officials announced Wednesday.

By 2023, the 12 hospitals and research institutions will replace machines containing the dangerous chemical cesium-137 with X-ray devices that do the same job, the city's Department of Health said. The machines are used to prepare blood for transfusions and for medical research.

While there's never been a dirty-bomb attack in the U.S., this first-of-its-kind effort will prevent machines meant to help save lives from "becoming objects of terror," Dr. Mary T. Bassett, the city health commissioner, said.

"There's this product, there's this material, and we could just not have it in our city," Bassett said at a news conference at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai on the Upper East Side.

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A cesium-137 bomb could cause "mass disruption" that would cost billions of dollars to clean up, said Dr. Jacob Kamen, a Mt. Sinai Health System professor who helped spearhead the push to rid it from the city.

The chemical can be deadly, Bassett said — a dirty bomb would likely kill many people and cause lasting health effects to thousands more.

"If you carry the stuff around, it will kill you in a couple of days," Bassett said.

Two of the city's 30 machines have already been removed, with two more set to be gone by the end of this year, officials said. The U.S. Department of Energy is putting more than $10 million into the effort by covering half the cost of new machines and all disposal costs.

The plan to remove of the irradiation machines has been in the works for about two years and is now a model for other big cities to follow, Bassett said. Each new machine costs up to $250,000, as does taking the radioactive material to a safe disposal site, Kamen said.

Norway, France and Japan have replaced most or all of their machines with X-ray devices, according to the Nuclear Threat Institute, a nonprofit that helped with the effort to remove them in New York.

Kamen had been working to get rid of Mt. Sinai's machines since 2010, ahead of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he said. Replacing them with equally effective X-ray machines will cost hospitals less than keeping them secure, he said.

"I think all the other hospitals, they should not have to go through seven years of what we've done," Kamen said.

(Lead image: Dr. Mary T. Bassett, the city health commissioner, holds a bottle mimicking the radioactive material used in blood irradiation machines. Photo by Noah Manskar)