The Vienna-based IAEA is working with the scrap-metal industry to draft more stringent rules to increase radiation monitoring, bolster reporting requirements and improve disposal. Between 350 million tons and 550 million tons of iron scrap traded hands in 2010 for about $400 a ton, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of International Recycling, a global recycling industry association.
"The general public basically isn't aware that they're living in a radioactive world," according to Ross Bartley, technical director for the recycling bureau, who said the contamination has led to lost sales. "Those tissue boxes are problematic because they're radioactive and they had to be put in radioactive disposal."
Cataracts and Cancer
Abandoned medical scanners, food-processing devices and mining equipment containing radioactive metals such as cesium-137 and cobalt-60 are picked up by scrap collectors, sold to recyclers and melted down by foundries, the IAEA says. Dangerous scrap comes from derelict hospitals and military bases, as well as defunct government agencies that have lost tools with radioactive elements.
Chronic exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cataracts, cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A 2005 study of more than 6,000 Taiwanese who lived in apartments built with radioactive reinforcing steel from 1983 to 2005 showed a statistically significant increase in leukemia and breast cancer.
Tainted Buttons
Industry and regulators are working to define an allowable limit for radiation in products that isn't hazardous to customers' health, according to the draft copy of the new IAEA rules for scrap handlers. This month's Seoul nuclear-security summit will deal for the first time with the threats posed by uncontrolled radioactive sources, said Elena Sokova, executive director of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non- Proliferation.
An October 2008 delivery of radioactive elevator buttons assembled by Mafelec, a Chimilin, France-based company that makes control and signaling gear, contained radioactive metal shipped from India. Employees who handled the buttons were exposed to three times the safe dose of radiation for non-nuclear workers, according to regulators at the Autorite de Surete Nucleaire, France's nuclear energy watchdog. Mafelec said at the time it had cut ties with the Indian supplier.
India and China were the top sources of radioactive goods shipped to the U.S. through 2008, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Bartley, a metallurgist who has tracked radioactive contamination since the early 1990s, said there's no evidence the situation has improved.
Worker Dies
"There are very few gate monitors in India," he said. "The companies there are not up to speed in general."
India's radiation-detection system can't cope with the amount of incoming scrap, said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the Centre for Science and Environment, a New Delhi-based research and lobbying group. Two years after an Indian scrap- metal worker died from radiation exposure, the world's second- most populous country hasn't installed alarms, the Ministry of Shipping said in December.
Rajendra Yadav, 35, who worked in one of the yards at the Mayapuri scrap metal site in New Delhi was breaking up an X-ray machine mistakenly thrown away by Delhi University when he fell ill, according to interviews this month with his co-workers, as they used hammers and chisels to dismantle telephones and car parts. After putting a shiny piece of the metal from the machine in his pocket he developed burn marks on his hips and thighs and died 20 days later, they said. Seven other workers were hospitalized.