Joe White told the Cameron inquiry Wednesday what became of lab testing equipment involved in hormone receptor tests. (CBC)

An easy-going technician has solved a mystery for Newfoundland and Labrador's breast cancer inquiry, and led the probe to data thought to have been buried at a dump.

The inquiry was told that old laboratory testing equipment manufactured by DAKO had been sold years ago and was likely in the Caribbean, and that its records were likely sent to the St. John's landfill.

But Joe White, a St. John's service technician, testified Wednesday that he picked up the DAKO equipment for free, and that he refurbished it before selling it to a U.S. broker.

"If I didn't ask for it, it was going to the landfill. And basically, everything that comes out of that institution goes to the landfill, whether it's working or not," White told Justice Margaret Cameron.

White said he got the equipment from lab manager Terry Gulliver, who told the inquiry he believed the computer records from the machine wound up at the Robin Hood Bay landfill years ago.

The issue of the equipment has been a critical one at the inquiry. Even though external reviews found a number of problems led to hundreds of lab mistakes — from poor preparation of samples to woeful training for lab staff — the DAKO equipment itself had never been examined because it had been replaced before Eastern Health launched a retesting program in 2005.

'I don't think anybody asked me those questions, but if they had been important, why wouldn't they ask me?" —Technician Joe White, on missing records

Dr. Nash Denic, the chief pathologist at Eastern Health, told the inquiry that he still suspects something was wrong with the old equipment, which could be tied to problems with hormone receptor tests.

Cameron is in the final days of testimony on what went wrong with the tests — which help determine whether a breast cancer patient can benefit from powerful antihormonal drugs, primarily Tamoxifen — between 1997 and 2005.

No trouble to find machine, inquiry told

White, however, testified that it was no trouble to track down the machine, and that the computer inside is not only still intact, but able to produce records.

White said all Eastern Health had to do was ask him.

"I don't think anybody asked me those questions, but if they had been important, why wouldn't they ask me?" White said.

After hearing the inquiry was looking for it, White easily traced the DAKO autostainer to the University of Western Virginia.

"I sent off an e-mail and within an hour, he responded to my e-mail and he said, 'Yup,' they did have the autostainer, and they had the original computer that was sent with it," White said.

The University of Western Virginia sent a copy of the medical records to the inquiry.

The package arrived Wednesday.

Logical to assume computer went to dump

Meanwhile, White testified that he had no interest in the fact the equipment contained a computer, and in fact told commission co-counsel Sandra Chaytor that he didn't know the machine that he had collected even had one.

"It may have been physically plugged into it, but I still don't remember to this day having the computer with it," he said.

White further explained that Gulliver's assumption about the dump was logical, given how old pathology equipment is often disposed of.

"When they determine that their new instrument is working properly, the other instrument basically just becomes — it's in the way," White testified.

"If the lab tech program at the college doesn't take it, it goes directly to the dump, and Mr. Gulliver would have just made the logical assumption that the computer would have went to the landfill as well, because everything else does."

Eastern Health has not commented on White's testimony.