Big recycling oops (radioactive)
Big recycling oops: Products tainted with radioactive materials
Thousands of consumer products made from recycled materials confirmed radioactive.
The risk of radiation poisoning is the furthest thing from our minds as we shop for everyday items like handbags, furniture, buttons, chain link fences and cheese graters. Unfortunately, it turns out that our trust is misplaced thanks to sketchy government oversight of recycled materials.
The discovery of a radioactive cheese grater led to an investigation that found thousands of additional consumer products to be contaminated. The source is recycled metals tainted with Cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope that can cause cancer with prolonged exposure.
Thousands of consumer products made from recycled materials confirmed radioactive.
The risk of radiation poisoning is the furthest thing from our minds as we shop for everyday items like handbags, furniture, buttons, chain link fences and cheese graters. Unfortunately, it turns out that our trust is misplaced thanks to sketchy government oversight of recycled materials.
The discovery of a radioactive cheese grater led to an investigation that found thousands of additional consumer products to be contaminated. The source is recycled metals tainted with Cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope that can cause cancer with prolonged exposure.
In fact, the cheese grater in question contained as much Cobalt-60 over 36 hours of use as a chest x-ray. Even worse, a 430,000-pound shipment of tainted metal was used to create brackets for 1,000 La-Z-Boy recliners, giving off a chest x-ray’s worth of radiation every 1,000 hours.
The rest of this article in full context can be read by going here.
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Ionactive Comment
This is not a new story - indeed Co-60 in steel is a big issue at the moment. Some of the terms used in the above article such as radiation poisoning are not helpful because they might imply that the material causing the radiation (Co-60) can enter the body. This is not the case - whilst you can be exposed the gamma rays from the article it is not reasonable to suppose you will be poisoned by the Co-60 itself (unless you are into eating ground up cheese graters?!).
For some additional information and comment on Co-60 steel contamination - have a look at a recent Ionactive Blog entry: Cobalt 60 (Co-60) Contaminated Stainless Steel.
This is not a new story - indeed Co-60 in steel is a big issue at the moment. Some of the terms used in the above article such as radiation poisoning are not helpful because they might imply that the material causing the radiation (Co-60) can enter the body. This is not the case - whilst you can be exposed the gamma rays from the article it is not reasonable to suppose you will be poisoned by the Co-60 itself (unless you are into eating ground up cheese graters?!).
For some additional information and comment on Co-60 steel contamination - have a look at a recent Ionactive Blog entry: Cobalt 60 (Co-60) Contaminated Stainless Steel.
