A former teacher sent SIX emergency vehicles racing to his house at midnight when he mistook a headache for radioactive poisoning.
Ex-chemistry master Justin Scarlett was testing rock samples in his kitchen to see if any had traces of radioactivity when he fell ill with nausea and head pain.
He called NHS Direct fearing he had breathed in toxic fumes and told them he had been using a geiger counter to check on radioactivity.
That triggered a reaction from a chemical response unit of three police cars, two fire engines and an ambulance which were scrambled to his home in Herne Bay, Kent.
Mr. Scarlett, 44, was rushed to hospital for a check-up where doctors found his nausea wasn’t from his homemade lab but a bang to his head earlier in the day.
He said: “When I rang NHS Direct they asked if I had ingested anything.
“I said that before I touch anything I use a geiger counter on samples so there is no chance anything is radioactive.
“As soon as I said the word radioactive, before you could say plutonium, everyone was running round with their hands in the air.”
Mr Scarlett was previously the head of chemistry at St Anselm’s School in Canterbury, Kent.
