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.

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    13 hours ago

    Has no one else read the story?! The Cs was detected in the shipping container, not the shrimp.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    21 hours ago

    To quote Ron Burgundy:

    I’m not even mad, that’s amazing

    Like, there’s a good chance that this leads to us discovering a “secret” nuke test, it would almost be worst case scenario if this “just happened”.

    C-137 doesn’t just fucking happen, it and S-90 are fission byproducts.

    Either someone tested a nuke in the ocean, or there’s somehow fission happening somewhere in the ocean without human involvement.

    • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      edit-2
      21 hours ago

      Traces of Cesium-137 are widespread in the environment including food, soil and air.

      Couldn’t this contamination just be the result of old nuclear tests or accidents rather than something recent? Fukushima dumped a lot of Cs-137 and other contaminants into the Pacific.

      This other article really had me scratching my head, though. Emphasis mine.

      Testing hasn’t turned up contamination in any product that made it to shelves, the FDA said — the shrimp “appears to have been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with Cs-137 and may pose a safety concern.”

      The shrimp came out of the water fine, but it was stored someplace where it just picked up 68 becquerels per kilogram of Cs-137? How does that even make sense?

    • Dave.@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      21 hours ago

      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.

        • Dave.@aussie.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 hours ago

          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.

  • Diddlydee@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    16 hours ago

    They look cheap and nasty based on the packaging alone. Looks like my kid made it in school.