All your base are belong to us!
Posted on 06/07/2009 4:14:30 PM PDT by EBH
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at scrippsnews.com ...
As far as their remarks regarding lack of regulations or oversight...not sure they really looked at the RCRA/NRC regulations and State permits.
Cheese grater/melter.
I now NEVER buy anything that would come into contact with my food, candles, anything that comes in contact with my body( shampoos, etc) that comes from china!
If it says China...I run!
Great Little Village song;
“Do You Want My Job?”
Little Village
LOL...read all the way down through the comments...
Free Republic is mentioned.
Anybody know the half life of Cobalt 60 and know how to estimate how much radiation was emmitted when the grater was new?
On the plus side, they’re inexpensive radioactive consumer products. A penny saved, and all.
When our average life span stops increasing I will consider these negative arguments, until then, whatever makes a turd.
And not only that, but its a cheese grater that can x-ray your chest. Talk about health care savings.
Good heavens!! I was the one who posted that thread! I’m famous! (...’scuse me while I stop laughing)
Dont know the half life, but do know that Cobalt 60 is a popular isotope used in the medical industry for hospital and office xray machines. More than likely, old xray machinery was melted down and someone neglected to remove the radioactive fuel.
China, huh? Seems logical. They buy our toxic debt. We buy their toxic goods.
...Or at the very least, whatever pushes one out...
Apparently this now applies to Brazil as well.
Stuwpid Western Capitalist Pwigs...China pull another fast one on you and get your money! Hahaha! vewy soon, China will be number won entire world...China number won!
</sarc>
LOL...I KNEW recycling was a bad idea from the start, knew it!!
Oh grate... um great.
All your base are belong to us!
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