Radioactive package seized

[BLHamrick@AOL.COM]

I picked this up from one of Sandy's news distributions (I hope Sandy doesn't 

mind the re-post here).  Maybe someone needs to tell the Ukraine government 

that the excepted package limit for external radiation at the surface is ten 

times the level of this package they're concerned about, and that there are 

probably thousands criss-crossing around the world everyday.



Radioactive Parcel Bound for U.S. Seized in Ukraine



KIEV (Reuters) - A radioactive package addressed to the United States 

has been seized at Ukraine's main airport in the capital Kiev, 

Ukrainian officials said Wednesday.



The regional emergencies ministry said the package, discovered 

Tuesday, was emitting radiation at a rate thousands of times higher 

than the norm in Kiev of 0.05 milliroentgens an hour.



"This material is being investigated," said Mykola Karabet, duty 

officer for the emergencies ministry in the Borispyl region of Kiev. 

"We do not know what it is.



"It was a parcel in some luggage to be sent by air transport... There 

is no threat to human health or life."



The United States has been on alert for suspect packages since 

Washington was all but shut down by letters containing anthrax powder 

in 2001.



In Ukraine, metal scrap and other objects from the Chernobyl region 

are often stopped at the borders of the former Soviet state for 

higher than normal radiation levels.



Large swathes of the country were left with high levels of 

radioactivity after Chernobyl's reactor number four exploded in 1986, 

in the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.



Health officials have blamed that accident for thousands of deaths 

from radiation-linked illnesses and an increase in thyroid cancer.