RECYCLED RADIOACTIVE METAL CONTAMINATES CONSUMER PRODUCTS - Isaac Wolf, SHNS. 5 June 2009

Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactive metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world.

Common kitchen cheese graters, reclining chairs, women's handbags and tableware manufactured with contaminated metals have been identified, some after having been in circulation for as long as a decade. So have fencing wire and fence posts, shovel blades, elevator buttons, airline parts and steel used in construction.

A Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found that -- because of haphazard screening, an absence of oversight and substantial disincentives for businesses to report contamination -- no one knows how many tainted goods are in circulation in the United States.

But thousands of consumer goods and millions of pounds of unfinished metal and its byproducts have been found to contain low levels of radiation, and experts think the true amount could be much higher, perhaps by a factor of 10.

Government records of cases of contamination, obtained through state and federal Freedom of Information Act requests, illustrate the problem.

In 2006 in Texas, for example, a recycling facility inadvertently created 500,000 pounds of radioactive steel byproducts after melting metal contaminated with Cesium-137, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records. In Florida in 2001, another recycler unintentionally did the same, and wound up with 1.4 million pounds of radioactive material. And in 1998, 430,000 pounds of steel laced with Cobalt-60 made it to the U.S. heartland from Brazil.

But an accounting of the magnitude of the problem is unknown because U.S. and state governments do not require scrap yards, recyclers and other businesses -- a primary line of defense against rogue radiation -- to screen metal goods and materials for radiation or report it when found. And no federal agency is responsible for oversight.

"Nobody's going to know -- nobody -- how much has been melted into consumer goods," said Ray Turner, an international expert on radiation with Fort Mitchell, Ky.-based River Metals Recycling. He has helped decontaminate seven metal-recycling facilities that unwittingly melted scrap containing radioactive isotopes.

"It's your worst nightmare," Turner said.

It is also one that has only barely begun to register as a potential threat to health and safety.

LOST CHINA RADIOACTIVE DEVICE FOUND IN SMELTER - Reuters . 28 March 2009

BEIJING (Reuters) - Investigators in the northwest Chinese province of Shaanxi have found a radioactive device that was lost earlier this week when a cement plant was dismantled, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The lead ball containing Caesium-137, part of a nuclear scale used to make precise measurements, was lost on Monday as workers disassembled the Qinling Cement Co in Tongchuan, Shaanxi province, Xinhua said.

Investigators, suspecting the ball had been mistakenly sold as scrap metal, found on Friday that it had indeed been melted in a smelter at a local steel plant, Xinhua said. Technicians were now cleaning the contaminated smelter, it said.

Caesium-137 is an extremely toxic radioactive isotope formed through nuclear fission. It can cause cancer years after it is inhaled, eaten or absorbed into the body.

Previous cases of radioactive caesium-137 entering the scrap metal supply from improperly recycled sensors have occurred in Brazil and Spain.

Qinling Cement's 53-year-old production facilities were dismantled after the plant failed to meet environmental protection standards, Xinhua said.

(Reporting by Jason Subler; Editing by Paul Tait)

GERMANY DISCOVERS RADIOACTIVE METAL FROM INDIA- news magazine Der Spiegel.  15 February 2009

** Overwatch located radioactive Indian stainless steel pipe flanges 5 years earlier in Cambridge Ontario Canada **

German authorities have discovered more than 150 tonnes of radioactive metal imported from foundries in India in 12 federal states, according to a report by news magazine Der Spiegel.

Citing an internal memo from the federal environment ministry, the magazine reported that some five tonnes of high-grade steel shavings exceeded the legally allowed contamination limits so greatly that they had to be handed over to the Association of Nuclear Service (GNS) which is responsible for the disposal of waste from nuclear power plants.

The magazine quoted unnamed experts from the environment ministry saying the affair had a “huge dimension.”

A spokeswoman from the German environment ministry on Saturday confirmed the report but played down the severity of the incidents.

“You can’t really speak of a dramatic situation. But we’re taking the problem very seriously also because it has significant economic ramifications for the affected companies.”

The ministry said the material posed no environmental or health threat and added that no consumer products in Germany were affected. “Most of the steel deliveries contain contamination levels below the legally allowed limits,” it said in a statement on Sunday.

Representatives from the companies that imported the contaminated metal from India are to meet with ministry officials in the coming week.

According to the newsweekly, the material bearing traces of Cobalt-60 came from three Indian foundries and ended up in 12 of Germany's 16 federal states. The magazine said authorities were aware of contamination in high-grade steel wires, machinery, scrap metal sheets, valves and castings.

The report said the first contaminated delivery was discovered in 2008 in a container full of high-grade steel bars at the Hamburg port.

Radioactive products from India were also discovered last year in France, Netherlands and Sweden.