So radioactive man is feeling a little shellfish?
Ok, no laughing matter but it appears we now have a rolling recall for prawns / shrimp depending on where you come from in the world. (Shrimp are tiny things which look like woodlice with better PR in the UK but that's another topic.)
Initial reports... "it was transported alongside some radioactive caesium". (Or rather "cesium" because this was American reports who don't comply with IUPAC. But that's another topic again.)
Now we have a rolling recall with more implicated...
As caesium I believe is created through radioactive decay, is it not possible to have been contaminated sea water... In which case, could this recall spread... to become a chain reaction....
I'll get my coat. :helpplease:
Seriously though. Thoughts?
I've been mildly obsessing over this recall for the last two weeks.
I work in the seafood industry so I've been keeping a close eye in case it impacts anything we have in storage.
My only working theories are there was something in the plant that shouldn't have been there, or there was some major storage issues on the way to the US ports.
Either way - I was included on a call with some regulators and they were referring to it as a "systemic contamination" issue. I'm really just waiting for them to recall everything out of Indonesia at this point, but getting any more details has been like pulling teeth.
Oooh inside info..... Keep us posted...
'Systematic contamination', @qamaddy?! Uh oh, that info wasn't in the public domain, thanks for sharing.
Here's what I gleaned from publicly available information, including the FDA alert notice (I researched this in depth for a post I wrote about it last week (Radioactive Shrimp: The Story Behind the Recall Notices)):
The contaminant in the shrimp was caesium 137 (Cs-137), a radioactive version (‘isotope’) of the chemical caesium.
Cs-137 is a common by-product of nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons testing, and nuclear accidents. It is not naturally found in the environment but can be present as radioactive fallout from these human-made nuclear events.
In the environment, Cs-137 behaves like soluble salts, moving easily through air and water, allowing it to get into soil and plants. It emits beta particles and gamma radiation, which pose health risks, including an increased risk of cancer.
Cs-137 does not cause objects in its vicinity to become radioactive.
Cs-137 was found in shipping containers, prompting tests on food and resulting in the FDA alert for shrimp from one manufacturer in Indonesia.
Since the shipping containers and shrimp both contained Cs-137, some kind of cross-contamination must have occurred. Because four containers were affected (at four U.S. ports), but only one shipment of shrimp, the shrimp could not have contaminated the shipping containers. Rather, Cs-137 from one of the containers somehow got into the shrimp.
How exactly could any chemical, let alone a radioactive one, get into shrimp from a shipping container? Lots of ways, I guess, but none of them good. Or legal.
I went deeper in my article, discussing whether there could be a link to fukushima, or terrorism, and including links to a bunch of sources, but that's the gist of it.
Am continuing to follow closely.