Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
Canada is the latest country to have detected radioactivity in a shipment of kitchenware made in India.
The products delivered to the Port of Montreal were found to be contaminated with cobalt 60, which is used in radiotherapy for treating cancer.
The scare comes just weeks after radioactivity from cobalt 60 was found to be emanating from a container-load of stainless steel and aluminium kitchenware shipped from India to Sri Lanka, as reported on HousewaresLive.net on September 25. And such incidents are becoming increasingly common worldwide.
Authorities in both Sri Lanka and Canada have ordered that the dangerous products now be sent back to their country of manufacture.
India has a huge metal recycling industry, but its safety standards are known to be poor. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says the country could be improperly recycling medical devices and melting them down with other metals. Cobalt 60 could then persist and find its way into new manufactured goods such as the kitchenware.
The Commission has told Indian officials that there may be a problem with the control of radioactivity and contamination in household products. India says it is investigating the matter.
However, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility says that although the shipment will be returned to India it believes it could then be sent to a different customer somewhere else in the world.
