Thousands of old hospital X-rays recycled into silver for Welsh jewellery

Thousands of old X-rays taken in a Swansea hospital where patients were treated for cancer are set to get a new lease of life in the form of Welsh jewellery.

Staff at the South West Wales Cancer Centre in the city’s Singleton Hospital teamed up with a specialist company to recover silver from the X-rays before they were destroyed.

That generated a one-off cash payment for the radiotherapy department. Not only that, but the extracted silver will be sold on to the Royal Mint in Llantrisant and potentially used to make jewellery.

Anna Iles, interim head of service for radiotherapy, explained: “Historically, for radiotherapy treatment we would produce hard copy X-ray films to verify treatment. Now it’s all done electronically.

“These X-rays were originally stored in the radiotherapy department but as we expanded we needed to utilise the space.

“So a number of years ago they were taken to an external storage company in Cardiff. But that came at a cost.”

Swansea Bay subsequently acquired its own storage facility in Llansamlet. This meant space became available at Singleton for the X-rays stored in Cardiff to be repatriated. That in itself was a considerable cost saving.

“We had more than 16,000 X-rays in storage, around half of which were beyond their retention period and could be destroyed,” said Anna.

“Those X-ray films contained silver. So we linked in with a company called Betts, which specialises in metal extraction.

“We worked closely with colleagues in information governance to get sign off that we could send the X-rays to Betts, where they extracted the silver and we then got a rebate of more than £1,000.”

But the story does not end there. While Betts is based in England, the silver from X-rays taken in Swansea could now return to Wales.

“Betts works in partnership with the Royal Mint, selling the recovered silver, which is then used in the creation of jewellery,” said Anna.

“It is quite nice that there is the potential for the silver to come full circle back to Wales.”