"The first sign of trouble surfaced thousands of miles from Indonesia. Inspectors in the US are used to seeing containers of frozen shrimp and sneakers pass through their ports. Some 600,000 metric tons of the seafood and more than two billion pairs of shoes arrive each year from various countries, usually without incident. But in July, inspectors in Los Angeles then other ports on either side of the US discovered something strange: shipments of prawns, and Nike branded sneakers, emitting faint traces of man-made radiation."
"Radioactive Cesium-137 had been released it's unclear if by accident or deliberately into the air from a small smelter processing scrap metal. Minuscule particles of the isotope found their way into more than 20 factories, including shrimp being packed into refrigerated containers by one of Indonesia's largest seafood exporters and at a big factory producing shoes for brands including Nike and Adidas."
Port inspectors in multiple countries detected faint traces of man-made radiation on shipments of prawns and branded sneakers in July. A container bound for Switzerland was flagged in Rotterdam, and investigations traced the contamination to the Modern Cikande Industrial Estate near Jakarta. Officials found cesium-137 released from a small scrap-metal smelter, with microscopic particles reaching more than 20 nearby factories. Contaminated products included shrimp packed for refrigerated export and shoes made for major brands. Retail recalls followed, shrimp exports from western Indonesia temporarily stopped, containers were stranded, and authorities increased port inspections and interceptions.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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