A bucket of possibly — but not very — radioactive kitty litter was the culprit in a hazardous material response Tuesday night outside a Capitol Hill apartment building.
Seattle Fire responded to the report of a suspicious bucket marked as containing hazardous material outside the E Harrison building around 6:15 PM. According to SFD, responding crew members were “investigating an unknown substance located in a small container/bucket.”
It took about 30 minutes but SFD was able to conduct tests and observations to determine the contents of the bucket were unlikely to be harmful. “HAZMAT crews determined the substance to be cat litter from a pet receiving radiation treatment,” SFD reported from the scene.
According to this municipal information page from New York’s Westchester County, some treatments require pet owners to store their pet’s litter like toxic waste. “After your cat has received Radioactive Iodine Therapy (RIT), your pet will emit a very small amount of radiation for a short time,” it reads. “The radioactive iodine is useful in treating the condition that your veterinarian has diagnosed in your cat. However, caution should be taken in disposal of products that may contain trace amounts of this radioactive substance.”
According to the page, “soiled litter and excrement” could possibly contain “trace amounts of radiation” and should be returned to the animal hospital or veterinary clinic where the pet received therapy treatment, not dumped in the trash.
Radioactive iodine treatment is typically prescribed to eliminate hypothyroidism hyperthyroidism in cats. Sources indicate the treatment is around 97% effective.
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That’s hyperthyroidism, not hypothyroidism.. hyper too, much hypo not enough.. if you destroyed part of the thyroid in someone or something that already did not produce enough thyroid hormone, you’d only make their problem worse.. (which is what radioactive iodine does).
After all, did Ishirō Honda teach us nothing?
Professor Yamane, I’ll be blunt. We want to know if there is a way to kill Catzilla.
I just went through this with my cat and in King county/Seattle you can dispose of the litter after 80 days. Typically you collect it and let the isotope break down. And Nandor is correct, it’s for hyperthyroidism, not Hypo.
So it’s too dangerous to put in a dumpster, but it’s fine to keep in your apartment for 80 days?
Technically it is bc it can trigger the Radioactive Material alarms on trash trucks and at collections stations. My vet said the amount is so small there isn’t an issue, they aren’t concerned about human or other animal exposure. But the city/state requires they give those instructions as the fines for setting off the alarms are quite expensive. So into a bucket mine went and stored outside my place for 80 days.