cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34796179
More packages of frozen shrimp potentially affected by radioactive contamination have been recalled, federal officials said Thursday.
California-based Southwind Foods recalled frozen shrimp sold under the brands Sand Bar, Arctic Shores, Best Yet, Great American and First Street. The bagged products were distributed between July 17 and Aug. 8 to stores and wholesalers in nine states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Washington state.
The products have the potential to be contaminated with Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope that is a byproduct of nuclear reactions.
Cs-137 is used in industrial density gauges. You want to measure the density of a liquid in a pipe? A radioactive source on one side, a detector on the other, easy-peasy.
Now how the fuck a controlled substance escapes from its highly encapsulated and supposedly-well-tested-and-regularly-inspected compartment and gets into your food, well that’s something else to ponder.
Not in the shrimp, it was detected in the shipping container.
That’s better, but it’s still a mystery. Cs-137 sources should be rigorously stored, even in density gauges they are permanently inside a capsule with a shutter that turns the beam “on and off”. It’s not like you have a chunk of Cs-137 rattling around in a drawer somewhere (or worse, somehow in powered form that gets all over the inside of a shipping container) but that sounds like that’s been the case here.
It’s not the first time one of these sources has come loose though - there was a capsule lost on 1400km of highway in Western Australia a little while ago.