ROME (AFP) — An Italian court has ordered the recall of 10,000 tonnes of wood fuel pellets imported from Lithuania over fears that they could have dangerous levels of radioactivity, newspapers reported on Sunday.
The alarm was raised after someone in the northern Aosta Valley region, who had bought the pellets, sent them for analysis because they did not burn well.
The results showed that they contained caesium 137, a highly toxic radioactive substance normally produced by a nuclear explosion or from the combustion of a nuclear reactor.
The contaminated pellets themselves are not dangerous to humans, said Salvatore Aprile of the Aosta Valley court: the dangers comes from the ashes and the smoke produced when they are burned. The court ordered their recall on Saturday.
The pellets at the centre of the alert were imported from Lithuania last autumn and were sold in 11 regions in the north and south of Italy.
From Wikipedia:
Caesium-137 is water-soluble and extremely toxic in minute amounts. Once released into the environment, it remains present for many years as its radiological half-life is 30.07 years. It can cause cancer 10, 20 or 30 years from the time of ingestion, inhalation or absorption provided sufficient material enters the body.
6 comments:
Chernobyl? Depending on how the winds carried the rain etc it may have gotten into the trees before they became wood pellets.
By the way that is complete uneducated speculation.
Yes, I was wondering if it could have been Chernobyl.
Thing is, one would think that question would be prominent in the story.
I guess the journalist mailed this one in.
Probably a staff writer who wasn't yet born when Chernobyl happened :)
You know, i'll bet you're right.
Still, the question should have been posed. How do wood pellets get contaminated with Caesium?
that's bizarre.
By the way, I don't think you'll find this story anywhere other than IBA.
The way I found it is I left the newspaper, which I only read for the sports page, in the bathroom, and my wife opened the front page section and left it open on a page that included this story on the bottom right corner.
the LA Times buried this story about twenty pages in.
But, I saw it, and decided to post it.
I'm going to send it to Paul Williams and ask his opinion on it. He has done a bit of studying about the black market for these types of materials.
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