A Baldwin County man had a scare Friday evening after he said he lost a piece of uranium mineral rock in his yard.
According to Chief Deputy Phillip Adams with Baldwin County Fire Rescue, just before 6 p.m., 911 dispatch was called to a home on Carrs Station Road where a man who described himself as a rock collector said he got a shipment of depleted uranium the size of a piece of gravel and believed he lost it in his yard.
Fire rescue called CHEMTREC, a call center for hazmat emergency response coordination, as well as the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Environmental Protection Division. They told the man to turn the rock over to authorities. Crews also reached out to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the ATF to help.
Adams says they are reaching out to a state agency that has more precise equipment capable of detecting a radiological signature around the man's house.
No one was hurt. Adams says such small quantities most likely wouldn’t hurt anyone. They are researching the things he thought he ordered.