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Recycled radiation shows up at home | The Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Recycled radiation shows up at homeLow levels revealed in consumer goods

journalgazette.net 7 june 09 Isaac Wolf

Scripps Howard News Service

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

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 and steel used in construction………………………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.

Recycled radiation shows up at home | The Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne, Ind.

June 8, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive, wastes