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Feel radioactive? Stay shy of the border
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/bell/20050802-9999-...
By Diane Bell
August 2, 2005
A group of San Diegans learned firsthand about beefed-up homeland security at the San Ysidro border crossing. As they drove back into the U.S. after a
visit to Baja, monitors detected radiation, and their vehicle was sent for a secondary inspection. Then the questions began. It turned out a passenger
had undergone a medical diagnostic scan a few days earlier. Radiation remaining in his body activated the sensors. While slightly inconvenienced,
Valerie Ewell said the episode made the group feel much safer on the anti-terror front.
The monitors are in use in all 24 lanes at the San Ysidro border (and other local border crossings), says Vince Bond of the U.S. Customs and Border
Protection agency. The equipment is so sensitive that kitty litter can set it off. Further testing pinpoints the type of radiation and its likely
source, Bond says.
Dr. Vincent Ricchiuti, senior staff radiologist with Scripps Encinitas, says a person undergoing virtually any medical scan in which radioactive
isotopes are injected is capable of setting off a sensitive monitor for days or even weeks afterward.
The good news from Bond: "We haven't found any bomb-making materials so far."
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mcgyver
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Radioactive Checkpoints
The border is not the only place these are installed. Nearly all state line truck inspection stations have detectors installed and they even take a
picture of cars on the freeway not just trucks in the inspection station. Many large cities have these sensors installed and they were fairly common
even before 9-11. Most of them are not as sensitive as those described at the border. This is how the radioactive steel was detected that came from
Mexico a few years back.
How do I know? I worked in that trade a number of years ago and there was nothing secret about it, they even advertised in trade publications. I am
sure they have improved them since then.
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MrBillM
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Radioactive Steel ?
When was that event ? The only situation that I remember involving radioactive steel was about twenty years ago and I don't remember any mention in
the news articles of any having been sold North of the border. In that event, my neighbors and best friends in Baja had some of the radioactive rebar
placed in the walls of their house. When it was removed and the walls rebuilt, the rebar was placed on the vacant lot next door for pickup by the
Mexican Officials. It laid there for months.
If the event you're talking about was only a few years back, it was obviously a different one. Odd that I missed it.
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jrbaja
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Better buy some more guns Bill
could be a devious plot!
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MrBillM
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Devious Plot ?
Nothing Devious as far as I know. You seem to be getting a little Paranoid and Manic lately. The Radioactive drama that occurred back then was
typically Mexican. A technician stole a Cobalt cannister from a hospital and sold it to a scrap dealer. It was then melted down along with other
scrap metal. It was a hoot. The L.A. Times article that covered the results some time later pointed out that the Government collected up all of the
contaminated steel and then stored it in a facility that was fenced on only three sides and scavengers were constantly roaming around in there.
Mexican Birth Control at work.
As far as buying guns, I'm always in the market for a good deal, but they have been few and far between in recent years. I'm sort of priced out of
the market. I'm also constrained by a spouse who can't understand why I need or want so many, especially since I don't fire some of them for months
at a time.
Personally, I can't understand why some people collect Stamps and other such garbage, but if that's what they want, it's OK by me.
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mcgyver
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Radio Active Steel
Well I can not fix the year exactly but it was in Juarez and El Paso and was widely reported in the news papers at the time. I could not acess the EP
paper on line so as I remember it it was this way: An old Xray machine ended up in the Mexican scrap yard were it was melted with the other scrap and
that particular batch was used to make rebar and bar stool bases. That is with the worst contaminated part, some was not contaminated as much. It was
then sold and shipped, I don't rember where but it was several places. A truck hauling barstool bases set of the radiation alarm at the Texas/Ne
Mexico state line check station just north of El Paso which started the investigation. Any way it probably started an urban legen sine then I have
heard the stoty several different ways.
One story that made the national new a few years ago was again a Xray machine in a Mexican scrap yard that had a canister of Cobalt 60 pellets
inside it which of course was supposed to have been removed. It were in bright colored capsules and the children found them and were playing with them
when they started developing burns. Radiation detectors are actually quite common in various forms including a wallet size that a lot of emergency
operations people carry and the ones that Drs. wear on their fingers like a ring to protect their hands in cancer operations.
In the oilfield country it is not uncommon for a oil well servicing company to lose a lead canister with a strong cobalt ionising radiation capsule
out of their panel trucks due to theft or just letting it fall out on the road, they are locked with a common pad lock and it always results in a big
public search for it. Some are found, some are never found. You can bet your money that large municipal garbage dumps have radiation detectors at the
gates!!
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MrBillM
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Radioactive Redux
As I said, the event I was describing occurred in the mid-80s. My neighbors started their house in Feb 83 and added on to it through 87. The area
that had the radioactive steel rebar was in one of the earlier stages. In this case, the Mexican authorities were able to identify the Technician who
sold the Cobalt unit to the scrap dealers. At one time, I had downloaded the Los Angeles Times followup article and I probably still have it
somewhere in my files, which have grown out of control. I just checked the Los Angeles Times Archives and got 318 articles with the words
"Radioactive Steel", but the current archives only go back as far as Feb 1985 and it isn't there, which tends to agree with my memory that it was
earlier.
I did find one other article of note which may agree with the incident you described, although the locations are different.
June 1997
http://www.newsteel.com/news/NW970603.htm
WCI, Kentucky Electric Steel melt radioactive scrap
Steelmakers and scrap suppliers have become adept at weeding out radioactive materials from their scrap piles. But in the past four months,
contaminated scrap slipped past the radiation detectors at WCI Steel and Kentucky Electric Steel (KES) and melted in their steelmaking furnaces.
Meanwhile, EPA is studying rules that would permit the release of low-level radioactive scrap from nuclear-power plants into the general scrap supply.
On April 28th, a rail car carrying EAF dust tripped a radiation-detection device at KES. Radiation levels at the rail car were 20 microroentgens per
hour (?R/hour), compared with background levels of about 5 ?R/hour, says John Volpe, supervisor of the radiation and toxic-agents section at the
Kentucky Public Health Dept. Officials detected a maximum radioactivity level of 360 ?R/hour at a hopper in the bag
house...........................................................
[Edited on 8-6-2005 by MrBillM]
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MrBillM
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MAS Nuclear Bombardment
My memory is still in relatively good shape. In an additional search, I found the following (apparent) reference to the event I was describing.
It's interesting to note that this article references table pedestals having been involved.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3MKT/is_v93/ai_36...
January 1985
..............................He also cited the widespread high-level contamination in Mexico where a scrap yard shold scrap contaminated with
cobalt-60 where pellets were spread across a scrap yard, causing severe physical harm to the yard workers. In addition, foundries in Juarez and
Chihuahua and vehicles, roads and residential areas were also contaminated.
Cunningham noted that from the radioactive scrap some 500 tons of reinforcing bars were distributed in the Southwest and some were used in
construction before being located.
In addition some 2,500 castings were distributed in 40 states that were utilized in table pedestals. Cunningham said, "We think we discovered all of
them and the contaminated products were returned to Mexico." He noted that clean-up and disposal efforts were still going on in Mexico
............................
More Info on the 1983 incident in Ciudad Juarez:
http://www.window.state.tx.us/border/ch09/cobalto.html
[Edited on 8-6-2005 by MrBillM]
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mcgyver
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Good research MrBillM!
Of note is a recent study is an apartment house in China that was built with cobalt contaminated rebar. The residents living in it have LESS cancer
than the sourounding residents! Who knows? It used to scare hell out of me when I was driving a panel truck for a Louisiana company that sold and
maintained radiation detectors for the various kinds of radaition, you would be driving along ,and we always kept portable unit I running in the truck
and it had an alarm setting where it would emit a loud buzz above a certain level. Several times in city traffic I had it go off and read high levels!
We also hired out to oill well servicing companys to search along hiways where they thought they had lost a canister of the bad stuff but it had to be
open to find it. Now days they sell tiny black box units that are just glued on to anything anywhere and are cheap compared to the hardwired units of
the past. I feel that the US is well protected, at least on major highways and railways. Now what did Mexico do with all that rebar???
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