It's important to remember how vital scrap metal is to Georgia's balance of trade when you read such comments as Rustavi 2 put out, that "the experts assert is not dangerous for health". In fact, it can be lethal if it enters the body in a large enough dose, and any amount is probably not going to do you any good.
"Caesium-137 can cause burns, acute radiation sickness and even death at high doses. It can contaminate food and water and, if ingested, gets distributed around the body, where it builds up in soft tissues, such as muscles. It has a half-life of about 30 years, meaning it takes that long for its radioactivity to fall by half. Over time, it is expelled from the body in urine."
The Rustavi 2 report says that they've evacuated the port and closed the harbour - and at the same time say that it doesn't pose a health risk. I wonder how clean they will come about the source of this material, where it's been before it reached Batumi, and find out who may have come into direct contact with it. As you know Georgia safety standards are so low that there probably wasn't a risk analysis carried out before this shipment was moved - it will have been driven purely by profit, and you can bet that someone in a high place would have their finger in the scrap metal heap.
The public needs to know - and quickly - where this material came from, where it has been and for how long (and not just in Georgia - in case it is just being trans-shipped) and why there are no checks made to prevent this from happening. In western countries all radioactive material is tightly controlled - but here they don't identify it until it's smack in the middle of one of Georgia's two ports - which has now been shut down (and at what cost to the local/national economy?). Someone should be made responsible for that - and the buck should stop on the desk of whoever has put personal profit over public safety and national interests.
Read all about harmless to health Caesium-137 really ISN'T here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137
If it was harmless why can't humans live near Chernobyl anymore? The best guest is that something else was first transported in rail cars - as dirty bomb material. Just wonder how that stuff made it to Batumi.
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Whatever came out of the Batumi story? Has the spin been completed on that?
ReplyDeleteI was looking for more information the other day - seems to have been well swept under the carpet. Wonder where the radioactive substance went (it said to Tbilisi) and how it was disposed of.