Apologies but I forgot to add that, I would only like people who actually know/heard about this to post. And for those who never heard, a simple google search will yield mulitple reports of contaminated steel from all of the countries I listed (There could be more, but I didn't do a thorough research yet).
However if anyone finds out anything more before I do, thank you!
Anyway here goes:
(Edited to add: Holy crap, after reading all of the lack of safety below if feel like throwing up.)
Radioisotope Brief: Cobalt-60 (Co-60)
Half-life: 5.27 years
Mode of decay: Beta particles and
gamma radiation
What is it used for?
Co-60 is used medically for radiation therapy as implants and as an external source of radiation exposure. It is used industrially in leveling gauges and to x-ray welding seams and other structural elements to detect flaws. Co-60 also is used for
food irradiation, a sterilization process.
What does it look like?
Co-60 is a hard, gray-blue metal. It resembles iron or nickel.
How can it hurt me?
Because it decays by gamma radiation,
external exposure to large sources of Co-60 can cause skin burns,
acute radiation sickness, or death. Most Co-60 that is ingested is excreted in the feces; however, a small amount is absorbed by the liver, kidneys, and bones. Co-60 absorbed by the liver, kidneys, or bone tissue can cause cancer because of exposure to the gamma radiation.
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/isotopes/cobalt.asp
Cobalt from radiotherapy machines has been a serious hazard when not disposed of properly, and one of the worst radiation contamination accidents in North America occurred in 1984, after a discarded cobalt-60 containing radiotherapy unit was mistakenly disassembled in a junkyard in Juarez, Mexico.
[14]
Cobalt-60 as weapon
Nuclear weapon designs could intentionally incorporate 59Co, some of which would be activated in a
nuclear explosion to produce 60Co. The 60Co, dispersed as
nuclear fallout, creates what is sometimes called a
dirty bomb or
cobalt bomb.
[16]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt
Safety
After entering a living mammal (such as a human), most of the 60Co gets excreted in
feces. A small amount is absorbed by
liver,
kidneys, and
bones, where the prolonged exposure to gamma radiation can cause cancer.
Cobalt is an element of steel-alloys. Uncontrolled disposal of Co60 in scrap is responsible for the radioactivity found in several iron-based products.
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt-60
In some cases the products are made up primarily of the tainted materials, and in other cases it's a small component that contaminated the products. Goods that have been found tainted with radioactive materials include:
* A China-made kitchen grater, found in a Flint, Mich., scrap plant, that was laced with the isotope Cobalt-60, giving off the equivalent of a chest X-ray over 36 hours of use.
* A 430,000-pound shipment of metal, tainted with Cobalt-60, that came from Brazil in 1998 and was used to make brackets for 1,000 La-Z-Boy recliners, giving off a chest X-ray's worth of radiation every 1,000 hours.
* About 900 women's handbags made in India and found in the Netherlands that had metal rings laced with Cobalt-60 on each bag's shoulder strap.
* 500 sets of buttons made for Otis elevators in France and Sweden, using radioactive metal from India.
* Shipments of chain link fencing from India in 1991, and another shipment of tainted fencing from India a decade later.
The report also points out that the U.S. does not have enough regulation or oversight of the matter. Some of the findings from investigation:
-- 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.
And when U.S. customs do find and reject radioactive shipments, no one tracks what happens to that load, so it could end up coming back to the U.S. another day.
In many cases, the contamination comes about through the recycling process, when radioactive metals get blended in with other materials. Some items in factories like industrial smoke detectors and measuring gauges contain small amounts of radioactive materials. If the items and other materials are scrapped (especially in the case of a factory shutting down and being demolished or gutted), that radiation can escape and contaminate recycled products.
Some recent examples of accidental contamination, from the report:
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.
http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2009/06/08/radioactive-metals-recliners-handbags-recycling
"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.
http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/43577
Wide range of Chinese imports found to contain radioactive metals
http://proliberty.com/observer/20090608.htm
The radioactive recycling also occurs internationally. In 1998, a Brazil recycler shipped 430,000 pounds of Cobalt-60 tainted steel to the U.S. The steel was used in brackets for Reclina-Rocker chairs, but contamination was discovered before the chairs were shipped to stores.
Scripps claims that contaminated metal is also being exported to the U.S. from China, India and even Africa, while the U.S. has no radiation screening process for scrap metal. The same is true of scrap metal recyclers that accept material from consumers and businesses, although many invest in radiation detectors.
Just how much of this radioactive metal has been used in consumer products is unknown. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has documented 18,740 different cases and estimates there are 20 million pounds of contaminated waste. Texas is the state with the
majority of those reported incidents.
http://www.livescience.com/environment/090608-radioactive-metal.html
Other misc links:
http://www.wxyz.com/mostpopular/story/The-Mysterious-Radioactive-Cheese-Grater/rulyl2KAAEyASu9m4SxJFA.cspx
http://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks@minder.net/msg24609.html
On several occasions, these things had almost been melted down at other plants, though at the time [supposedly] none contained radioactive material. That fact that these things could make it into the 'recycle stream' (as the terminology went at the time) was very scary.
Maybe PracTac?