Throughout the episode, Mr. Hoyt emphasizes that the pellets are radioactive and potentially fatal if encountered. However, when they finally track down the device . . . and the pellets have been encountered by a pregnant woman, Mr. Hoyt contradicts himself and says they are harmless and that he handles them frequently.
Despite the massive radio publicity of the case and the public assistance sought by the Highway Patrol, as well as the handling of the radioactive pellets by a pregnant woman, Mathews and Hoyt don't ask the woman and her husband a single question about their identities, how they'd acquired the pellets, or who else might have handled them. In real life, an exhaustive trace investigation would have been conducted, and the pregnant woman would have been medically checked for any after-effects of radioactive exposure.
On Mr. Hoyt's blackboard, the chemical element beryllium is misspelled "berilium".