Mexicans roped in to find stolen material
Print Edition
AUTHORITIES have appealed for help among Mexico’s population to locate stolen radioactive material, as the fourth such theft in less than two years prompted officials to mull new security measures.
The interior ministry issued an alert in five southern and eastern states late on Wednesday, two days after a toolbox-sized container carrying the Iridium-192 source was snatched from a truck in a residential parking lot in Cardenas, Tabasco state.
Officials suspect that, like in three other cases since 2013, the thieves were not aware that they were stealing a potentially deadly radioactive source.
“Each time that one of these units has disappeared from the hands of companies in charge of them, we have recovered them with the help of the population,” Luis Felipe Puente, the national civil protection coordinator, told Milenio television.
Puente urged ordinary Mexicans to notify the authorities right away if they find the material, which is used for industrial radiography to check welding seams, and stay away from it.
The metallic container has a tri-foil radiation symbol printed in red on a yellow plate with the warning “caution radioactive material.”
The man-made radioactive element can cause burns, radiation sickness and permanent injuries if somebody comes in contact with it for minutes or hours. It is fatal if exposure lasts hours or days.
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