A senior manager at a Newfoundland pathology lab told a public inquiry on Tuesday that he had been very upset to be blamed for faulty cancer test results which later became the focus of a provincial scandal.

Barry Dyer, regional manager of the pathology lab at Eastern Health, the province's largest health authority, broke down in tears on Tuesday as he testified for a second day at the Commission of Inquiry on Hormone Receptor Testing in St. John's.

The inquiry, headed by Justice Margaret Cameron, is investigating how hundreds of breast cancer patients received faulty hormone receptor test results, which help determine cancer treatment.

Dyer was responsible for the day-to-day operations at the lab at St. Clare's Hospital and the Health Sciences Centre, both in St. John's. He was also in charge of overseeing the merger of the two labs in 2005.

On Tuesday, he told the inquiry about how he was called to a meeting with pathologists and health authority managers, after it had been discovered that mistakes might have been made in the lab.

In that meeting, Dyer said, one of the oncologists present pointed at him and blamed him for the faulty test results.

"She pointed her finger at me and said, 'This was your fault.' And that was very upsetting," Dyer said, and reached for a tissue.

The inquiry then took a five-minute break, and Dyer left the room in tears.