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Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products
Submitted by SHNS on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 13:38. By ISAAC WOLF, Scripps Howard News Service national
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.

What is known now is that -- despite the shared belief of officials in six state and federal agencies that tainted metal is potentially dangerous, should be prevented from coming in unnecessary contact with people and the environment, and should be barred from entering the United States -- there is no one in charge of making sure that happens.

In fact, the Scripps investigation found:

-- Reports are mounting that manufacturers and dealers from China, India, former Soviet bloc nations and some African countries are exporting contaminated material and goods, taking advantage of the fact that the United States has no regulations specifying what level of radioactive contamination is too much in raw materials and finished goods.Compounding the problem is the inability of U.S. agents to fully screen every one of the 24 million cargo containers arriving in the United States each year.

-- U.S. metal recyclers and scrap yards are not required by any state or federal law to check for radiation in the castoff material they collect or report it when they find some.

-- No federal agency is responsible for determining how much tainted material exists in how many consumer and other goods. No one is in charge of reporting, tracking or analyzing cases once they occur. In fact, the recent discovery of a radioactive cheese grater triggered a bureaucratic game of hot potato, with no agency taking responsibility.

-- It can be far cheaper and easier for a facility stuck with "hot" items to sell them to an unwitting manufacturer or dump them surreptitiously than to pay for proper disposal and cleaning, which can cost a plant as much as $50 million.

-- For facilities in 36 states that want to do the right thing, there is nowhere they can legally dump the contaminated stuff since the shutdown last year of a site in South Carolina, the only U.S. facility available to them for the disposal.

-- A U.S. government program to collect the worst of the castoff radioactive items has a two-year waiting list and a 9,000-item backlog -- and is fielding requests to collect an additional 2,000 newly detected items a year.

Experts say you needn't empty your home of metal implements for fear of radiation. The peril from most individual items is generally not considered great, although some could be hazardous on their own.

In fact, everyone is exposed every day to the "background" radiation found in nature. For instance, some ceramic pots emanate low levels of radiation that occurs in clay. Granite countertops often contain measurable, but individually insignificant, amounts of naturally occurring uranium.

Other exposures come from small and contained amounts of radiation used in smoke detectors and medical devices.

The potential danger comes, however, from the cumulative effect of proximity to radiation, particularly over time and in relation to other contaminants. The precise degree of that danger has not yet been definitively determined for low-level radiation, such as that contained in commonplace goods and materials.

One scientific school of thought, which has been losing favor in recent years, holds that low levels of radiation mean low-level threats. An opposite camp contends that exposure to any level of radiation -- especially if it is chronic -- carries health risks. The U.S. government has so far sidestepped the issue of how little radiation is too much.

According to a 2006 report by a National Academy of Sciences panel, there is a direct relationship between radiation and an increased risk of cancer. Prolonged exposure can also lead to birth defects and cataracts, studies have shown.

Because the amount of tainted metals in circulation is unknown, the cumulative overall health effect -- now and over time -- is impossible to calculate. Whatever it is, there is little debate that unnecessary exposure to radiation is best avoided.

"There is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial," said Richard Monson, chairman of the Committee to Assess Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation, at the release of the National Academy report.

There are no reports of anyone dying or being hurt in the United States after contact with the contaminated metal goods and materials. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency leaves no doubt that tainted metal poses a particular threat.

"Radioactively contaminated scrap threatens both human health and the environment," reads a cautionary statement on the EPA's Web site.

The Scripps investigation used the federal Freedom of Information Act to gain access to a previously un-mined NRC database, the only official assemblage of reports of radiologically contaminated items that have turned up in scrap yards, trash dumps and manufactured goods since 1990.

But because such reporting is neither required nor consistent, neither state nor federal environmental officials -- nor many in the scrap-metal industry -- consider the NRC accounts an accurate reflection of the problem's true dimensions. (The only mandatory rule is that anyone knowingly transporting radioactive material must notify the U.S. Department of Transportation.)

"Typically, these go unreported," said Carolyn Mac Kenzie (cq), a U.S. Department of Energy physicist who is a world expert in radioactive metals. "Whatever number you come up with would not reflect reality."

One of the most conservative estimates comes from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which put the number of radioactively contaminated metal objects unaccounted for in the United States in 2005 at 500,000. Others suggest the amount is far higher. The most recent NRC estimate -- made a decade ago -- is 20 million pounds of contaminated waste.

What is known is that the NRC's national Nuclear Material Events Database has documented 18,740 cases involving radioactive material in consumer products, metal intended for their manufacture and other inadvertent exposures to the public, the vast majority since 1990. State environmental reports -- obtained under state freedom of information requests -- also reveal dozens of others.

A recent example emerged last summer, when a Flint, Mich., scrap plant discovered a beat-up kitchen cheese grater that was radioactive. The China-made grater bearing the well-known EKCO brand name was laced with the isotope Cobalt-60. Tests showed the gadget to be giving off the equivalent of a chest X-ray over 36 hours of use, according to NRC documents.

Estimated to have been in circulation for as long as a decade, the grater likely was four to five times more radioactive when it was new. EKCO's parent company, World Kitchen, of Rosemont, Ill., described the incident as isolated and found no need to issue a recall, spokesman Bryan Glancy said.

It was not the only cheese grater found. NRC documents show that another Cobalt-60-tainted grater had turned up in Jacksonville, Fla., in 2006. The reports do not indicate what brand of grater it was or if it was related to the one that surfaced in Michigan.

Cobalt-60 also tainted a 430,000-pound shipment of metal from Brazil in 1998. Part of that load found its way to Michigan and then Indiana, where it was used to make brackets for 1,000 La-Z-Boy recliners.

The contamination was detected by a radiation monitor when scrap leftover from the brackets job was shipped to the Butler, Ind., steel recycler Steel Dynamics, according to NRC documents.

The Cobalt-60 tainted Reclina-Rocker chairs, which would have given off a chest X-ray's worth of radiation every 1,000 hours, were still in warehouses when the contamination was discovered, and never made it to stores or living rooms, according to Rex Bowser, director of the Indoor Air and Radiological Health Emergency Response Program of the Indiana State Department of Health.

The recliners' radiation levels were "enough above background to be a concern for people sitting in La-Z-Boy chairs," Bowser said.

In many instances where contamination is identified -- generally by companies that have invested in costly detection equipment -- the contamination comes from the inadvertent blending of radioactive sources with piles of other scrap that metal recyclers reprocess and later sell.

Often, when a factory shuts down or a plant relocates, industrial smoke detectors, measuring gauges and other machines and parts that contain small amounts of radioactive material are left behind. Because they commonly are encased in a protective shell, the devices pose little risk when the plant is operating.

But when a facility closes, the devices frequently are trashed as scrap. If those radioactive parts are later heated during reprocessing, the radiation can escape and blend with the finished recycled product.

Many large scrap outfits invest in radiation detectors -- which can cost $50,000 each -- that provide a measure of protection. Steel company Gerdau Ameristeel, based in Toronto and Tampa, Fla., installs as many as six levels of detection at its scrap mills, at a cost of as much as $1 million for each facility, said Jim Turner, corporate environmental director.

But even scrap and recycling operations that are diligent in scanning incoming and outgoing loads can unknowingly wind up with tainted material.

One reason is that monitoring devices are not all strong enough to penetrate a full truckload of scrap and may miss the radioactive sources. And even the weather can foul things up, as Gerdau Ameristeel learned when a 2001 thunderstorm disturbed detectors at its Jacksonville, Fla., recycling operation, permitting radioactive Cesium-137 to slip through. The plant's cleanup cost was $10 million, according to an NRC report.

Sometimes the devices containing radiation simply disappear. In January, for instance, Wal-Mart admitted that it could not account for about 15,000 illuminated exit signs, which each contain tritium, a radioactive isotope, according to the NRC.

And other times, they are purposely masked in an attempt to dump the hot items on someone else, often to avoid the cost of proper disposal. Those fees have mushroomed in the past three decades from $1 per cubic foot to more than $400, with forecasts for them to more than double in coming years, according to a 2004 estimate by Robin Nazzaro, the audit agency GAO's natural-resources and environment director.

Recycler Doug Kramer, owner of Los Angeles-based Kramer Metals, recounted how workers once found a radioactive object wrapped in lead and hidden in a beer keg -- presumably to keep the radiation from being detected.

The global dimension of the recycling of radiation problem is large, and growing, experts say.

Between 2006 and 2007, for instance, authorities in the Netherlands found about 900 women's handbags that had originated in India and were decorated with metal rings laced with Cobalt-60 on each bag's shoulder strap. Once discovered, they were sent to a radioactive waste site in the Netherlands.

Last fall, radioactive metal also from India was used by a Connecticut company to make 500 sets of buttons for Otis elevators in France and Sweden. No one realized the elevator buttons -- which had been installed -- were radioactive until a similar shipment tripped radiation alarms at the U.S. border with Mexico, according to Otis Elevator spokesman Dilip Rangnekar.

Otis scrambled to remove the tainted buttons from the elevator cabs, Rangnekar said. But an international authority on rogue radiation said it is likely even more of the buttons remain in circulation.

"Thousands and thousands were produced," said Abel Gonzalez, a former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency's division of radiation and waste safety. "I doubt they have found all of them."

U.S. officials and metal experts say evidence is mounting that radioactive metal from abroad is increasingly --- and intentionally -- being sent to the United States, sometimes decades after the contaminated material was first detected and returned to its source.

In 1991, an Indian supplier sent to the United States more than 50 shipments of chain-link fencing, some of which was tainted. Investigators found the fencing scattered around the country, including in Florida, Tennessee, New York and Washington state.

"The NRC told them not to ship more material to the U.S., but it allowed them to keep what was here, here," said Paul Frame, a radiation expert at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

But a decade later, another shipment of tainted Indian fencing reached the United States, Frame said.

"My guess was that it was the same stuff," he said. "You suspect that in some cases they know the material is radioactive but they're going to ship it out anyway because it's money."

John Williamson, administrator of Florida's radiation control bureau, agrees and predicts that tainted steel from China and products from India will continue to surface, at the borders and on the plant floors.

One reason is that, after U.S. customs rejects a load of contaminated material, no one knows what happens once it is sent back to its overseas producer because no tracking system exists, he and other front-line experts said.

"In China and India, who knows what happens?" Williamson said. "My belief is it goes back into the hopper."

NRC reports give weight to his belief. Construction reinforcement materials from Mexico laced with Cobalt-60 that were detected at the border in 2006 were traced back to metal from a contaminated batch produced and exported more than 20 years before by two Juarez, Mexico, foundries.

Some experts say the United States bears some blame for the infiltration of tainted metal and products. Even though there is little debate that radiation-laced material is unwelcome, neither Congress nor federal agencies have established a "safe" level of contamination, despite two decades of wrestling with the issue.

That has created a loophole that overseas metal dealers and product manufacturers can exploit, critics say. But forbidding all radioactive material in metal would throw a damaging and costly wrench into the recycling industry, according to John Gilstrap, safety director for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries trade group.

"If we set the thresholds unrealistically low, we're inflicting pain on businesses for no necessary reason," Gilstrap said.

But Gerdau Ameristeel's Turner disagrees. Asked what the allowable level of radiation in metal should be, Turner replied via e-mail: "ZERO."

To officials in several states, it is the absence of federal oversight and indistinct rules about materials and goods tainted with low-level radiation that is causing undue pain. After the South Carolina waste site closed last summer, six states called on Congress to act. So far, it has not.

"There is no one federal agency responsible for regulating all ionizing radiation, and therefore regulations are fragmented or non-existent in some areas," said Michael Mobley, head of a commission formed last summer by officials from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia.

"If we address all radioactive materials across the board and the waste that is generated from them, we will protect public health and the environment to a greater extent than we do now," he said.

E-mail Isaac Wolf at wolfi(at)shns.com.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

Recycled Radiation

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throwing out my recliner
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 15:44.
This is a very intriguing and thought provoking article. I appreciate how in depth the article is, and how this writer obviously spent a long time trying to find good sources. News articles are usually very vague, so I apprecite the amount of detail in this article. I look forward to learning more and I hope that the US government steps it up. In the meantime though, I think I'm going to get rid of my recliner and maybe my cheese grater too...

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Equivalent of an x-ray every 36hrs?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 16:56.
The general lack of awareness about radiation could easily be attributed to the fact that this seems to impact the population either over an extended period (as you noted) or minimally- and because nobody really cares either way. Indeed, travelers who fly more than 75k miles on commercial airlines per year (450,000 in the US do so) are exposed to more than the maximum legal annual radiation dose for people working in industrial or medical facilities. Though your insightful article is a start, there is still little here that would shock the conscience of the average consumer enough to motivate the political action needed to end this latent threat.

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Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products
Submitted by Robert Cherry (not verified) on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 20:04.
My employer was the prime contractor for the Texas emergency response in 2006 mentioned in your article. I was the radiation safety officer for the response.

The weight of the Cs-137 contaminated steel was not quite 500,000 pounds as you wrote. Actually, it was very close zero pound (or 0 kilogram, if you prefer). Cesium-137 does not bond very well in steel. Instead, it is volatilized and goes into the emission control dust (ECD) that is virtually 100%-captured in the baghouse. Indeed, the contamination was discovered first at a site that recycles ECD for zinc, cadmium and other useful and valuable metals when the ECD shipment from the steel mill triggered portal alarms. The recycling site then notified the steel mill.

Nevertheless, outgoing steel was monitored for radioactivity after the ECD contamination was discovered. No radioactivity was detected above normal background concentrations in this steel. The entire event is described public records, which you may obtain (and should have obtained before you published your article) from the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Or did you mistake the contaminated ECD for steel? The contaminated ECD was properly disposed at a licensed disposal site and never entered commerce for recycling or for anything else.

Interestingly, the chemistry tests of the steel that are normally performed detected a noticeable increase of lead (Pb) in the steel shortly before the Cs-137 contamination in the ECD was discovered. This may have been due to lead from the shielded container that contained the cesium-137.

Since we studied the Florida incident and coordinated with Florida regulators as we worked through our own incident in Texas, we learned that the Florida company also had no problem with cesium-137 contaminated steel.

It is the steel mill that becomes contaminated by cesium-137, not the steel product. And more than 99% of the contamination remains in the ECD. The ECD is already an EPA-controlled hazardous waste and none escapes from well-designed plants, such as the Texas and Florida steel mills

Cobalt-60, as you should know and as the rest of your article shows, presents a quite different problem because cobalt is chemically similar to iron. It thoroughly contaminates steel products if it is introduced into the steel-making process. It is cobalt-60 that produces contaminated steel, not cesium-137.

It is irresponsible of you to publish the information about the Texas incident without properly determining facts that are readily available. Such wrong information can have strong adverse economic impacts on the steelmaker and its employees. The steelmaker was victimized once by whoever improperly disposed of the cesium-137 source in scrap metal scheduled for recycling. Your articles victimized them a second time.

Robert Cherry, PhD, CHP

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Michigan source info published 11/2008
Submitted by Michelle K. Gross (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 05:49.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2126970/posts

This is a link to a transcript of a local Michigan news station reporting on the cheese grater in Nov 2008. Note that the hosting site declares itself to be a conservative web=site

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Not a bad article in
Submitted by Charles Grant (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 14:02.
Not a bad article in comparision with some of the other reporting on the subject I have seen. You are correct that the U.S. has failed time and again to promulgate a regulation that declares what level is the regulatory threshold. Each time, the effort was beaten back by "public interest groups" that erroneously state that "no level is safe." If that is the case, then don't fly anywhere, don't have a dental x-ray, don't have a smoke detector in your house, etc. etc. In fact, Am-241 is licensed by the USNRC for use in these devices and it is allowable to place them in the municipal trash when they are spent. The answer is for the USNRC to specify a regulatory limit for radioactivity, such as in their Regulatory Guide 1.86. Radioactive materials play a vital and productive role in our daily lives. Its time the USNRC stepped up and either adopted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards or promulgated their own. It's time we "moved on" with it and ignore reactionist agendas of special interests.

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Bad Author, No Cookie
Submitted by RandomTroll (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 14:47.
It doesn't take much googling to figure out your facts are skewed and there are already complaints about how this is being reported. There is another article on this site that contradicts some portions of this story. I can't possibly attest to the validity of the statements by Dr. Cherry, but thanks for providing more insight into the issue Sir.

http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/news/stories/2009/06/05/06052009_letourneau_nuke.html

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Jm0ZW0-dNmMJ:www.scrippsnews.com/node/43586+recycling+facility+texas+radioactive+cesium&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

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Radioactive returns:
Submitted by Aldred (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 16:10.
Hmmmmmm remember the World Trade steel that they shipped to China as fast as they could hack it up and shove it on a ship?

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Geiger counters
Submitted by odyssey (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 20:13.
Should the average homeowner at least buy a cheap geiger counter to test their household?

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Radioactive goods
Submitted by Craig (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 20:43.
The best solution is simply to manufacture and recycle all consumer goods and raw materials including scrap right here within our own economy. Goods manufactured in this country could be more easily monitored through all stages of procurement and every stage of the productive cycle and all manufacturers and suppliers would be subject to uniform domestic legal sanctions, which is a lot less expensive than litigating these matters through international trade or legal agencies.

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From China
Submitted by Fed Up (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 21:26.
I am always very suspicious of anything made in China, most importantly food or personal cosmetics, inclusive of soaps, shampoos, deodorants, toothpaste, mouthwash and body wash. I read every ingredient and where the product on food boxes was made and don't eat Chinese food anymore. I just do NOT trust them with anything that goes in my body or on it. They have a new game. Instead of Made in China labels we now see Made in PRC, which is the People's Republic of China. Now I'm on the lookout for appliance and am eyeballing a few things that will be trashed tonight. I don't mind paying more for products, especially if they're made in the good ol' USA!

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Radioactive materials & detection
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 23:00.
I'm surprised there was no mention of DU (Depleted Uranium)in this article, potentially much more dangerous to populations around the world. It comes from spent fuel rods used in nuclear reactors, but still retains 40% of it's radioactive content, so the term 'depleted' is very deceptive. It is then given, or sold very cheaply, to the military who convert it into shells used in tanks, artillary shells, bunker buster bombs, and smaller ordinance.

It is still so 'hot' that when the shell flies through the air it burns, and upon hitting something solid emits a vaporized aerosol of fine particles throughout the area. If even one small particle is inhaled the liklihood of lung cancer, and other internal cancers, is a very high probability. The jagged edges of these ceramic like particles assure they are difficult for the body to eliminate. Although low level radioactivity the particle contaminates cells surrounding it...and can also pass through semen to the unwitting wives & girlfriends of returning GI's, causing birth defects in embryos & fetuses.

Of course the military denies it is harmful, but the hundreds of thousands returning from the Gulf Wars, afflicted with the multi-symptom ailment known as Gulf War Syndrome, by their sheer numbers tell a different tale. Oddly, DU & Agent Orange sprang from the same weapons program. It must also be noted with a 4.5 billion year lifetime it never goes away, and the Navy stopped allowing DU weaponry on their ships 2 or three years ago...why?

Google DU, or depleted uranium for thousands of articles about this deadly substance.

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Scrap metal covered with DU
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 23:36.
I forgot to mention the most important question relating to metal contaminated with radioactive material...Where do the thousands (or millions) of tons of scrap metal we have created by shooting DU all over the middle east go...China, India, elsewhere?

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The Navy stopped using DU 2
Submitted by bilderberger (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 00:05.
The Navy stopped using DU 2 years ago because they ran out after dropping it in Iraq & Afghanistan!

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RE: the post about DU &
Submitted by LC in West Texas (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 00:20.
RE: the post about DU & Agent Orange. In the late 60's & early 70's I worked for an aerial spraying service in West Texas, the target of which was mesquite tree / bush eradication on ranch properties. I would hold the flag high, get sprayed by the plane, then scoot over 15 feet and get drenched again. I was either a freshmen or sophomore in high school at the time. Our foreman would brag at the time "this is the same sh*t they use in Vietnam". The owner/pilot died very young, in his early 40's, of lung cancer. I spent one long summer at that job and when asked to come back the next few years I politely declined. 40 years later I have growths in my lungs that have my doctors baffled. Without oxygen 24/7 my saturation level will stay in the mid to upper 80's. I submit to a PET/CT scan every 90 days to mark any growth if any. When I mentioned Agent Orange the oncologist just said "..hmmmm".

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You're absolutely incorrect, my friend
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 02:59.
There's plenty of nuclear waste material that could be converted to DU. After a couple decades & tens of billions of dollars spent Yucca Mountain has yet to open, and if it does it will already be at full capacity.

A couple things I didn't mention before are:

1) Incidents of cancer among the mid-east population have risen dramatically, as well as serious birth defects,

2) DU can be picked up in the frequent huge dust storms in the middle east, and distributed as far away as the east coast of the US,

3) And worst of all, it has the potential to kill EVERY living thing on earth down to the microbial level.

Yet our military is still in complete denial about the danger it poses, and has roadblocked testing of our returning soldiers...WTF!

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RECYCLED RADIOACTIVE METAL
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 03:54.
Don't you just love globalisation? Oh, how our neighbors just love us to death.

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radiation is the least of your problems
Submitted by jenchen (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 11:21.
Get used to it-the human race is not evolving-it is regressing backwards-not protecting and supporting life-humans want only to control-destroy and degrade all life. They do not want love truth and to develop souls-they want lies and fear and to have giant egos. You will never trust, you need to control out of fear-because you project your own sadism onto nature. You will never stop being violent and you will never respect that "everyone" has the right to free will (no one's free will ever denies another their free will. You will never love each other as equals-you crave inequity and a class system-You will never stop being hypocrites who punish ("inferiors" you proudly do not love as you should-as equals) and you will never comprehend the law-the only law of reality-you get back what you give. You are destroyers of life-you are not creative lovers and supporters of life. You want the ignorance-poverty and prisons and torture of lessors to make your egos feel superior-if you were allowed in Heaven-heaven would become a Hell by your presence. You would never make as your number one priority-the abolition of all suffering on Earth-you would rather make life Hell for others-because your jealousy and greed for power would never include creating a heaven on earth for all equally. The crop circles-are the mark of the beast-where what I have said is true they have marked you and various UFO's who have marked you (and have been watching and judging you) will each arrive at these marks and you will be turned into robots or worse because what I have said about you is true: you refuse to evolve-and yes after 2012 your alloted time to do so "out of your own free will" is up-then they will begin collecting you who have not evolved and so have no souls.

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Recycled radioactive metal contaminates consumer products
Submitted by Dr Alok K Bhattacharyya (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 13:41.
This is a very interesting article. The author tried to establish that often imported articles from places like China and India contain radioactive elements like CO60. Though I think the Chinese and Indians may have inadvertently shipped items laced with radioactive materials, but they did not intentionally did so in order to cause cancer in the USA or other places.

On the other hand in their quest to export democracy worldwide, USA and its allies have used bunker buster bombs laced with depleted Uranium in ex-Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. USA has used at least 1000 tons of depleted Uranium in those wars. USA Senate actually increased the quota for use of depleted Uranium. I do not think USA authorities can claim ignorance about the risk of DU. They knowlingly used DU to contamintate Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been significant rise of cancer and birth defects in both countries. Some reports suggest that DU was used for genocide over generations.

Now DU does not just stay in one place. A portion of that after the bomb blasts of shock and awe becomes airborne. If the particles get to the Jet Stream they can be carried any where as the Jet Stream circles the Globe. India and China are downwind from both Iraq and Afghanistan. Hence at least a portion of DU might have reached those places. So next time if consumers in USA or other places find imported goods radioactive, please check if the radiation is beta type (comes from cobalt 60) or alpha type (comes from DU). If it's alpha, please understand that that the chicken has come home to roost.

Also there were various reports that after 9-11 the ground below where the Twin Towers stood showed molten steel. There were some suggestions that nuclear bombs were used to bring the Towers down. At least the mushroom clouds emanating from the top of the Towers as they collapsed bore a striking resemblance to nuclear bomb blast pictures. The USA authorities quickly shipped all those enormous amount of steel and other junk to reportedly China and South Korea. Nobody knows for sure their final destinations. There is no report of that those were tested for safety before shipment. What has happened or will happen with all that steel nobody knows. May be they have been melted to make pots and pans and came back to the USA.

I hope the ScrippsNews will do an investigation on DU from bunker buster bombs and 9-11 steel, all made in the good ol US of A.

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RECYCLED RADIOACTIVE METAL
Submitted by Dr Alok K Bhattacharyya (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 13:56.
Anonymous, your neighbours do not love you to death. They just want you to have long and healthy life so that you can carry on buying real stuff from them at cheap prices and be able to pay for those the sooner the better.

On the contrary USA in her quest to export democracy worldwide used bunker buster mombs with depleted Uranium, about 1000 tons of that in Iraq, Afghanistan and ex-Yugoslavia. By the way, the people in those countries never wanted your DU-laced democracy.

Get real. Pot calling kettle black!

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Need to list all brands, dates
Submitted by George LoBuono (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 14:11.
For now, we need a list of all brands and dates of manufacture so that the public can dump such products quickly. Toss those EKCO graters and have an agency test other cheap import products to identify which are suspect.

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Genocide
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 16:40.
With the possible exception of radioactive steel parts on furniture or bed springs, the far greater threat is indeed the gradual contamination of the global environment by "hot particles". These can be injested as dust or in foodstuffs and once in the body act as cancer seeds by irradiating nearby healthy cells. A group called the Low Level Radiation Campaign (website at llrc.org) has shown that radioactive waste from nuclear plants dumping into the Irish Sea is then thrown back onto the coastline by surf where it dries and becomes airborne in the wind. Coastal counties now have elevated cancer rates. This illustrates the basic flaw of nuclear technology - it is incompatible with biology and cannot be 100% contained. We are creating a cancer lottery in which the chances of random death by invisible forces are rising year by year. To purposely release huge amounts of these particles by shooting off DU laced weapons is suicidal - its nuclear waste in the most damaging form just sprayed into the air. It is most certainly a war crime called genocide.

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DU don't mix radioactivity issues with Uranium toxicity
Submitted by GregR (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 17:41.
To Paul Magill Smith, you seem to be confusing the chemical toxicity of Uranium and the (insignificant) dangers of it's radioactivity. They are not the same.

What your posting here is the typical "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" tripe we see on many sites. I don't mean to minimize the toxicity of uranium. It is as most other heavy metals - toxic/poisonous. But this has NOTHING to do with radioactivity that is a separate issue.

Speaking of separate issues, DU's ability to burn under certain conditions is not associated with it's radioactivity it's a function of the element itself.

Finally thank you Mr. Cherry for your informed input.

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Depleted Uranium - the real story
Submitted by Mark H (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 17:43.
The radioactivity of uranium has nothing to do with how it explodes - uranium is pyrophoric, which means that a fine enough dust of the metal will spontaneously oxidize at ambient temperatures. Totally depleted uranium does the same thing, as does titanium. Furthermore DU isn't used in penetrator shells because it's radioactive - it's used because it's dense and also very malleable. It tranfers all its kinetic energy to the target very effeciently when it splats.

Where are all these journals from established medical journals that show that cancer is a "high probability" from breathing in one little particle? Oh right. There aren't any. Lord knows nobody misses a chance to demonize the US Armed Forces these days, so if data existed, it would be front page news.

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crimes against humanity
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 20:36.
Using any radio active materials as a weapon is a crime against humanity.think American citizens have any control over the political,military,industrial complex?I once commented that DU is like a gun that shoots from both ends of the barrel .It kills the so called enemy immediately,then eventually kills the shooter, slowly infects his wife and unborn children etc.Then keeps on killing those who remain in its presents for hundreds of years .Only an enemy of both sides of a war would create such a weapon.one has to wonder how who ever did create a weapon like this can live with themselves.

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WTF? GregR
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 02:26.
I've been researching, writing, & posting on this subject for several years now so your, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" doesn't qualify. How much research have YOU done on this issue? Come back to me with proof everything I stated about DU is fallacious, but you'd better have better references than government sources, or those biased by the money they stand to make from disseminating this WMD...and even the UN agrees it IS a WMD.

By the way, my brothers invented a device called the Nukalert. Google it. I've helped assemble 20,000 of them, and carry one on my keychain. How will you know which way to go when the same people in OUR government, who did 911, set off a nuke in a US city?

Here's a big unanswered question for you. Since 15 of the 19 (supposed) terrorists on the planes on 911 were Saudis, why didn't we invade them instead of Iraq?

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And you don't believe
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 02:34.
a complicit MSM would do anything to suppress information that they were complicit in leading us into an unnecessary war of 'choice'? La La land must be a nice place to live, but there isn't room enough for sane rational informed logical people, I guess.

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How many people in this country realize
Submitted by Paul Magill Smith (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 02:44.
Henry Kissenger, in the early 1970's, stated to the NSC the #1 priority for US national security would be to depopulate the world by 2 BILLION people, beginning in the middle east because of vital resources (meaning oil of course) there to the US. What better way to do this than 'salt the earth' there with DU? And they gave this psycho a Nobel Peace Prize? WTF?

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nuked
Submitted by Pirate News (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 04:27.
These are the same mafia scrapyards, chop chops, garbage collectors and towtruckers who stole my 2 cars, and who run cartheft rackets worldwide. Kosher Nostra at the top, Italian mob in the middle, rednecks at the bottom.

This mafia cartel run all "cleanup" at nuke plants in USA, such as BURNING millions of tons of radiactive waste in my town. BTW burning can't change a radiactive halflife of 3-billion years.

geocities.com/knoxville_tn_epa
archive.org/details/IndependentInvestigationOfTheEastTennesseeTechnologyPark
piratenews.org/newslinks.html

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uranium nano particles
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 06:25.
when the uranium is converted to nano particles it can pass through to any part of the body! once there it can sit right next to your dna. it can then emmit 'low level radiation' but because it is so close to the dna and other cellular mechanisms it can cause damage even with beta radiation...former student of radiation biology

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You don't want live on top of a potential Uranium mine, it's bad
Submitted by Al (not verified) on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 20:59.
Please note that radioactivity is a natural process, below is a reference to a report that has been sitting on the shelf, since 1988, The Commonwealth of Virginia, the DEPARTMENT OF MINES, MINERALS AND ENERGY. VIRGINIA DIVISION OF MINERAL RESOURCES. You will will Not, be happy to find out that, shopping malls, high schools, residential areas are built on very radioactive ground, now this ground in some cases has an excess of 15,000 counts per second (cps), while the background at sea level is about 30 cps. This area has potential for a Uranium mines, and Not for home building. It is the job, of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Mineral Resources Division to protect the public from the geological hazards that exist, including the analysis and the identification of potential development areas for human habitation. It has not done it's job, the people who live and the children that go to these schools that where built on these areas, need to be informed of the potential hazards, it's just criminal. This is an open file report No.78 , that has 9 maps and a description of the potential Thorium and Uranium in the area, allot of money was spent to write this report, private exploration companies were looking for Uranium in the mid 1980's, but the could not secure a land position because the ownership of the land was so fragmented so nothing was done, except to develop the land for suburbia, and so Uranium went to the West, like Utah. The point of this story, is that what you don't know can hurt you both financially and ruin your health. If you have a house on one of these areas around the USA, don't tell anybody, because you will be liable that you did not inform a potential buyer about the hazard. This is just a small part of the bigger problem, like very radioactive granite from New Jersey, that is put on the out side of a multistory bank in Dallas, radioactive granite sold in home improvement stores for counter tops, building stones in the West that are made of pitchblende (mineral), radioactive well water, it's not checked for Thorium usually and so on and on.. etc..
It's, You the public that has to make the demands of the Government, after all they work for us ?

VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF MINES, MINERALS AND ENERGY VIRGINIA DIVISION OF MINERAL RESOURCES CATALOG OF PUBLICATIONS AND MAPS.

"Geochemistry and radioactivity in the Powhatan area, Virginia, by Jan Krason, S.S. Johnson, P.D. Finley, and J.D. Marr, Jr., 60 p., 9 plates, 29 figs., 16 tables, 1988" Publication 78.

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