Highly Radioactive Cars Being Sold Illegally in Japan
If you thought the risk of buying a flood car after Hurricane Katrina was serious, imagine having your health threatened just from being near the car. That’s exactly what’s been happening in Japan, where unsuspecting consumers are being sold dangerously radioactive cars that belonged to people living in Fukushima and the surrounding area after the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the prefecture’s nuclear power plant in March.
According to harbor authorities, 660 cars have been banned thus far for export because of unsafe radion levels. Rather than destroy the hazardous merchandise, some Japanese car dealers are simply swapping license plates to cover their stock’s origin according to The Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
One re-registered van was found to be emitting 110 microsieverts of radiation an hour— for perspective, the national limit for export to other countries is is 0.3 microsieverts an hour.
An unnamed dealer from the western city of Osaka bought the notorious vehicle at auction and decided to sell it despite the risk because he said he couldn’t afford to take the loss.
“I decontaminated repeatedly after the test and retested the filter of the air conditioner, the wipers and tires, replacing them thoroughly, but the radiation level dropped only to 30 microsieverts per hour,” he said.
[Source: FoxNews.com Autos]
Luke is an energetic automotive journalist who spends his time covering industry news and crawling the internet for the latest breaking story. When he isn't in the office, Luke can be found obsessively browsing used car listings, drinking scotch at his favorite bar and dreaming of what to drive next, though the list grows a lot faster than his bank account. He's always on <A title="@lukevandezande on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/lukevandezande">Twitter</A> looking for a good car conversation. Find Luke on <A title="@lukevandezande on Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/lukevandezande">Twitter</A> and <A title="Luke on Google+" href="http://plus.google.com/112531385961538774338?rel=author">Google+</A>.
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