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Radioactive Waste Ending Up In Indian/Chinese Consumer Products
Posted by Pile
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French authorities made headlines last month when they said as many as 500 sets of radioactive buttons had been installed in elevators around the country. It wasn't an isolated case.
Improper disposal of industrial equipment and medical scanners containing radioactive materials is letting nuclear waste trickle into scrap smelters, contaminating consumer goods, threatening the $140 billion trade in recycled metal and spurring the United Nations to call for increased screening. |
Last year, U.S. Customs rejected 64 shipments of radioactive goods at the nation's ports, including purses, cutlery, sinks and hand tools, according to data released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. India was the largest source, followed by China.
``The world is waking up very late to this,'' said Paul de Bruin, radiation safety chief for Jewometaal Stainless Processing BV in Rotterdam, the world's biggest stainless-steel scrap yard. ``There will be more of this because a lot of the scrap coming to us right now is from the 1970s and 1980s, when there were a lot of uncontrolled radioactive sources distributed to industry.''
On Oct. 21, the French nuclear regulator said elevator buttons assembled by Mafelec, a Chimilin, France-based company, contained radioactive metal shipped from India. Employees who handled the buttons received three times the safe dose of radiation for non-nuclear workers, according to the agency.
Operations at the factory are now back to normal and the company has cut ties with the ``source'' of the radiation, Mafelec said in a statement. ``In the worst-case scenario the exposure would have been under that of a medical scan,'' Chief Executive Officer Gilles Heinrich said. |
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