FedEx Misplaces Radioactive Rods 165
Hugh Pickens writes "A shipment of radioactive rods used in medical equipment has vanished while being sent by FedEx from North Dakota to Tennessee. Based on tracking information, FedEx is focusing its search in the Tennessee area, but as a normal precaution the company alerted all of its stations 'in the event that it got waylaid and went to another station by accident.' Dr. Marc Siegel says if someone opens the container it could pose some serious health risks. 'I don't believe it has the degree of radiation that, if it were opened, your skin would suddenly slough off. But the concern would be, if this got opened inadvertently and someone didn't know what it was and then was repeatedly exposed to it over several days, it could cause a problem with radiation poisoning,' says Siegel. 'The people that use this equipment in a hospital use protective shielding with it.' The lesson is that active medical material must always be transported in a way that ensures the general public cannot get access to it. 'Medical devices should not be FedExed. They should be sent under a special service,' adds Siegel."
Well I wouldn't know anything about that... (Score:2)
But I did get this box of great door props the other day from Fedex.
Just jammed the rod right under the door at the office, works like a charm.
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idiot.
those are toothpick-blanks. whittle one down and get to work!
contradiction much .. (Score:5, Informative)
TFA clearly states that the rods were located and its radioactive container was not opened.
"The rods were incased in a metal container called a "pig" that contains their radiation. Munoz said when they were recovered at the Knoxville station Friday no one had opened that casing."
"Everything's fine, the pig itself was not opened, and we're making arrangements to deliver it to the recipient," Munoz said.
Re:contradiction much .. (Score:5, Informative)
The story was updated after the rods were found but Fox didn't mention that they had changed the story, given the story a different headline, and kept the whole story at the same URL. Normally when a story changed this substantially, the news organization publishes a new story, or at least notes that the story has been updated or corrected.
Here is the cached version of the story and the headline at the time it was submitted as a story to Slashdot.
http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=radioactive+rods+fox+news&d=1094018597270&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=d977f9e4,d2527ef2 [bingj.com]
FedEx Searching for Radioactive Shipment That Vanished Between N.D. and Tenn.
Radioactive? (Score:2)
Man, I thought it was bad when the Canada Post delivery guy was stealing my review copies of video games from Activision.
Bad summary (Score:2)
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The article linked actually says they already found them. What is with these craptastic and sensationalist titles today?
Have you considered the slight possibility that when this story was submitted to /. the rods were missing, and have been found (and TFA updated) since?
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Yes but its an editor's job to review that kind of thing before putting it on the front page - or at least appending an update to the bottom of the article (as they sometimes do for bigger stories)
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Yes but its an editor's job to review that kind of thing before putting it on the front page - or at least appending an update to the bottom of the article (as they sometimes do for bigger stories)
Slashdot has editors?
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He MUST be new here.
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More to the point: Fox News has editors? ;-)
If you'd glanced at the link in the summary, you might have noticed the .foxnews.com domain. And they did their usual trick of updating the story in place, even after the story had significantly changed by the discovery of the missing package, and not giving readers a clue that a major change had taken place.
(And, no, Fox isn't nearly the only online news source that this this sort of thing. ;-)
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In a truly shocking development on here, I did actually read TFA ;)
As an 'other side of the political spectrum' example, BBC online news regularly update stories in place too. As Tom Jones says, "It's not unusual.." :)
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Yeah; it's taking a while for the field of journalism to establish standards for such things. Updating in place wasn't possible with earlier kinds of publication, but it's easy enough with computerized reporting.
With all the criticisms of the /. editors, this is something that they usually seem to get right. The usual practice here is to label updates as such, and include the time. Maybe eventually this will be standard practice with the mass media, too.
Or not. So far, the indications haven't been encou
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I don't know what you think, but I find that the attitude of a news source to updating-in-place depends on their background. A newspaper-owned site will usually have a mindset of an article being 'published' and then staying the same (like a printed newspaper); whereas a broadcaster's site will often consider the news to be an ever-evolving narrative, and see nothing wrong with altering a web article to reflect later developments.
Personally, considering that web news is text based and archivable, I would co
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I would consider a newspaper to be the nearest offline cousin and would rather that web news was persistent as a historical record. The idea of articles changing silently seems a little Orwellian to me. It can be very useful to know what the news was, even if it later transpired to be wrong.
I think you've pinpointed the main point of the issue. Changing a "news" report as the info comes in may make sense if you're thinking only of the present. But it discards the historical value of the reporting. A record that shows who knew what when is much more useful, after the fact, than just a statement of what we (thought we) knew when it was all over.
In this particular story, all we're left with is "FedEx lost a package containing radioactive medical material, and then found it". If that's the onl
FedEx Flat-Rate RADShip (Score:5, Funny)
If it glows, it goes.
I can only imagine... (Score:2)
"Yeah, uh, boss..."
"*Yawn* Just spit it out, man."
"It's about the rods, sir."
"The rods?"
"The radioactive rods, sir."
"What %$^&ing idiot would send radioactive rods through FedEx, anyway? So, what about the radioactive rods?"
"S-sir... We lost them, sir."
"%$^&."
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They already have a procedure for accepting radioactive goods, why would they change that because of a single temporarily misplaced package? It's not like this is the first radioactive package they've hauled, and I'm sure it's not the first that they've misplaced.
Rods recovered, not opened (Score:3, Informative)
Horrible article (Score:2)
This is supposed to be "News for Nerds" - so why link to a Fox News article with almost no technical information whatsoever? For example: what nuclide was involved? How high was the activity?
After some searching on Google News, I found this article [go.com]. Apparently, it was 684 MBq of Germanium (which should mean it's 76Ge). Unfortunately, that isotope is not in any of my data sheets, so I can't tell you what that means in terms of dose rate...
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Apparently, it was 684 MBq of Germanium (which should mean it's 76Ge). Unfortunately, that isotope is not in any of my data sheets, so I can't tell you what that means in terms of dose rate...
Correction: it was 68Ge. As I stated, I couldn't find it in my data sheets, so I just looked at a list of germanium isotopes - which only listed naturally occurring ones. Silly me!
I do however have data for the next step in the decay chain, 68Ga (68Ge decays by electron capture, so let's just disregard that first decay). The first sheet I found put it at 0.103 mSv/h/MBq beta skin dose and 0.173 mSv/h/MBq gamma at 30 cm. At 684 MBq, that means a dose rate of about 70 and 120 mSv/h at 30 cm, respectively.
So n
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This is supposed to be "News for Nerds" - so why link to a Fox News article with almost no technical information whatsoever?
Because slashdot editors just don't give a damn anymore.
FedEx insanity (Score:2)
Just last week we shipped some laptops from one work location to another, and had to go through the process of getting proper package labeling due to the lithium ion batteries being contained inside. After getting everything labeled per their regulations, FedEx rejected and returned the shipment because there were two parentheses missing in the shipping label text. We added the two parentheses and it shipped fine.
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Just last week we shipped some laptops from one work location to another, and had to go through the process of getting proper package labeling due to the lithium ion batteries being contained inside. After getting everything labeled per their regulations, FedEx rejected and returned the shipment because there were two parentheses missing in the shipping label text. We added the two parentheses and it shipped fine.
What's wrong with that? They're parentheses for God's sake! They're important.
Don't you know anything about programming?
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Don't you know anything about programming?
I was talking about shipping packages, not programming. Don't you know anything about marsupials? :^P
Fox News Changed the Story at the Original URL (Score:4, Informative)
The story was updated on the Fox News Site after the rods were found but they kept the original URL.
Here is the cached version of the story at the time it was submitted as a story to Slashdot.
http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=radioactive+rods+fox+news&d=1094018597270&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=d977f9e4,d2527ef2 [bingj.com]
FedEx Searching for Radioactive Shipment That Vanished Between N.D. and Tenn.
By Diane Macedo
Published November 26, 2010
| FoxNews.com
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - FedEx reports that a shipment of radioactive rods used in medical equipment has vanished while being sent from North Dakota to Tennessee.
FedEx spokeswoman Sandra Munoz says the rods, which are used for quality control in CT scans, were being returned to their manufacturer in Knoxville, Tenn., from a hospital in Fargo, N.D. Three shipments left the hospital earlier this week, but only two arrived at their destination.
"We're looking for that third one," Munoz told FoxNews.com.
Based on tracking information, FedEx is focusing its search in the Tennessee area, Munoz said, but as a normal precaution the company alerted all of its stations "in the event that it got way late and went to another station by accident."
The rods are incased in a metal container called a pig that Munoz says is roughly 10 inches tall and weighs about 20 pounds.
"As long as people do not try to open the metal container they will not be exposed to any remaining radiation," she said.
But Fox News Medical Contributor Dr. Marc Siegel says if someone does open the container it could pose some serious health risks.
"I don't believe it has the degree of radiation that, if it were opened, your skin would suddenly slop off. But the concern would be, if this got opened inadvertently and someone didn't know what it was and then was repeatedly exposed to it over several days, it could cause a problem with radiation poisoning," Siegel said. "The people that use this equipment in a hospital use protective shielding with it."
The lesson here, he says, is that active medical material must always be transported in a way that ensures that the general public cannot get access to it.
"Medical devices should not be FedEx'ed. They should be sent under a special service," Siegel said. "There are courier services and several other ways to do that without getting into the general pool. I think that was a mistake that's not generally the way medical supplies are sent.
"If FedEx wants to be involved in transporting medical materials, it should be completely separate and with all kinds of checks and balances so this can't happen," he added.
Munoz says FedEx follows a series of regulations when transporting objects like the rods in this shipment. This was no exception.
"There are regulations on how this type of equipment has to be packaged, the quantities that can be shipped, and we were all within the regulatory requirements," she said.
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... the company alerted all of its stations "in the event that it got way late and went to another station by accident."
The rods are incased in a metal container ... ...your skin would suddenly slop off. ... ... must always be transported in a way that ensures that the general public cannot get access to it.
Okay, who did the frigging editing on this article?
It's not "way late", it's "waylaid"...which can, in some cases, make things 'way late', but that's not the point...
Things cannot be "incased", only "encased"...
Since when does radiation cause skin to "slop" off? Slough off, perhaps...
With all this, it's a minor miracle that they actually used the right spelling for "ensures"...
Seriously, doesn't anybody proof-read articles before sending them out any more? I'm not usually a spelling/grammar nazi, but slo
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While it's amusing to poke fun at fox, have you ever seen the AIAA daily briefing? The grammar is horrible, double words or missing words are common, and usually about once a week they get "their" and "there" wrong. And this is from a supposedly professional organization. Somehow proper English and grammar has become the exception rather than the rule.
And yes, I'm sure there's something wrong with my post as well, however I don't hold myself out to be a professional news or technical organization.
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I know you are just posting a quote, but for the record CT scanners are not calibrated with these radioactive pins, PET scanners are.
smartpost? (Score:2)
Break Moments in De-evolution (Score:2)
Simple solution. (Score:2)
I am the Grand Prince of Nigeria ... (Score:4, Funny)
... some dumbasses from FedEx delivered me radioactive rods, instead of blood diamonds. The Princess was not amused, and said that a necklace of radioactive rods would not get her a place on Dancing with the Stars!
The royal physician snooped around with his Geiger counter, before screaming "Holy fucking shit! Jesus fucking Christ!" He then proceeded to get his hairy ass out of the Royal Quarters.
If anyone is interested in buying radioactive bars, please send me your bank account IDs, passwords, and anything else that you shouldn't send to strangers.
This could be quite more serious (Score:2)
As anyone searching for "Goiania 1986 Cesium" can note, one of the more serious radioactive accidents ever to take place in the World was due to Cesium used for medical purposes from an X-ray machine
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The accidentein Goiania was cesium 137 - and it was quite real. It happened in my contry and made the headlines for about 2 months while great parts of the city were closed for search of contaminated people.
It may be it was not an simple x-ray machinne - possibliy it as some other equipment - but medical equipment nonetheless. (And rememebr we are talinmg of a machinne out of use by 1986 here).
Pernicious nonsense! (Score:2)
Ra-di-a-tion! Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too.
I've got ... (Score:2)
Better than UPS (Score:3, Funny)
I've sent hazardous materials, some radioactive via a variety of carriers. LET ME TELL YOU that FedEx is much worse. They go blabbing all over the news making an embarrassing lot of fuss and generally alarming the public when they lose something like this. UPS however they just don't care. Lose a pound of plutonium, no big deal, happens all the time just fill in the insurance claim and go on your way and we certainly won't tell anyone.
So yes it is not sensible at all to use FedEx for these sorts of things. Way too much hassle.
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Yeah, but UPS will cheerfully accept 5 gallon plastic containers of concentrated neurotoxins.
And lose them.
here's where they should look... (Score:2)
old news (Score:2, Funny)
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count on it (Score:5, Informative)
I had a nuclear scan scheduled for a week after the 9/11 attack. I suddenly started getting one or two calls a day from the medical center... it's off, it might be a week out, it might be two weeks out, we don't know... hey, come in your scheduled time, we just got a trickle of material, and we can do 8 or 9 tests.
the issue is, of course, the planes weren't flying. the special courier services weren't allowed to operate. the FedEx and UPS planes weren't allowed to operate. it's too far to drive the material. they finally found two containers of material at a distributor ten miles away that was to go out of activity tolerance in a day and a half.
a shipping container for, let's say for the sake of not spilling the beans, under a dozen doses, has three layers of radioactive protection. there are two layers of spillproof/shatterproof for both the short-lived nucleotide and the source that creates it from another short-lived nucleotide.
so, just as drunken truck drivers can move classified "special weaponry" across the country routinely, as we read earlier this week, certain amounts of radiostuff packed to standard X can be shipped per courier flight. not enough to wipe out a city, a little more than you are allowed without a higher-tier inspection system.
but do be advised it's not good stuff to keep around as a curiousity.
not drunk drivers (Score:2)
so, just as drunken truck drivers can move classified "special weaponry" across the country routinely, as we read earlier this week,
The agents in question were never driving drunk, with or without the nuclear materials. There were two incidents (in the agency's entire history, reportedly) where *some* agents got completely hammered and the cops were called on them. They were not drunk while transporting the materials.
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Right. Of course!
Brown would have been a much better choice.
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Re:FedEx? (Score:4, Informative)
FedEx (and other carriers) handle materials like this all the time. Also, if you had bothered to do a little more research you would have found this article:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-26/fedex-seeks-missing-shipment-of-radioactive-rods-used-in-ct-scan.html [bloomberg.com]
quoute:
"The recovered cylinder, which was about 10 inches long and weighed 20 pounds, contained four rods of germanium-68, used in medical-imaging cameras. Their total radioactivity is 684 megaBecquerels, the equivalent of about 18 microcuries, said David McIntyre, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The rods are among the least significant sources of radioactivity from health and security perspectives, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
If someone had opened the canister, “it would take like 1,000 hours of exposure to get a skin blister,” Munoz said."
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"This is why you run a technical interview before hiring or appointing a spokesperson."
But then again, I don't believe everything I read on the internet, either. This "story" is just another anecdote. For all I know, said "spokesman" actually is the guy who works at Denny's.
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Yea, nevermind the fact that said spokesperson listed the actual radioactivity in two separate valid units, and only added that last bit for the layperson.
You're not a people person are you?
Re:FedEx? (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm... a few points:
1) FedEx is, as far as I know, the only major carrier that handles radioactive material. It doesn't go in their regular package delivery system; they have a separate division that handles it (and biohazards, poisons, explosives, and things like that). See: http://www.fedex.com/us/services/customcritical/specialty/hazardous/index.html [fedex.com]
2) No delivery service is going to be 100% mistake free. Negative outcomes will happen in life. Get over it.
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Plus, while this stuff is apparently relatively harmless, it is quite useful if you're wanting to scare the crap out of people with a radiation scare.
I'd hazard a guess that the reason why they h
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we had to switch from UPS (they are cheaper) to Fedex because of unreliable delivery. When we're constantly shipping packages to customers and 1 in 100 gets lost, that's a big deal.
It's somewhat telling that UPS doesn't even touch radioactive stuff.
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1 in 100? You sure? That's terrible.
Maybe should outsource to a bunch of Indians:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala#Supply_Chain [wikipedia.org]
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-24-2002-20997.asp [buzzle.com]
"Forbes awarded the humble dabba-wallahs a 6 Sigma performance rating, a term used in quality assurance if the percentage of correctness is 99.9999999 or more. In other words, for every six million tiffins delivered, only one fails to arrive. This error rate means in effect that a tiffin goes astray only once every two months.
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Man you really hit the nail on the head with that one. You've expressed what I see as the major problem with today's world as succinctly as I've ever seen it put before. I should make that my sig.
Everyone buys into the mainstream media/government scaremongering so badly that they have totally lost perspective of what they are giving up to mitigate what is really a tiny risk - we are so scared of things like terrorism, germs, ki
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erm, not quite. The link you pointed to is for the Custom Critical services, which is a separate division from FedEx Ground and FedEx Express. FedEx Express also accepts "dangerous goods". Certain classes of DG is loaded into special containers and placed in a crew accessible position and hooked up to a fire extinguisher in case of in-flight fire. Radioactives are generally loaded further aft in the load to protect the crew from errant radiation. there are limits on the amount of Radioactive material,
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Also, the overwhelming majority of our radioactive shipments were radioactive medicines. If a package misses sort, FedEx will actually charter a flight to ship rads out at times, that's how important the rads are. They usually have a very short lifespan and a delay of a day means the medicine is worthless). I hated to see rads left behind because someone's life could be depending on that medicine. Same with organs, etc. I can't speak for the other ramp agents/DG specialists, but I took it as a point of
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I can't believe that fedex accepts shipment of radioactive material. they have restrictions on explosives, corrosives, compressed gasses, etc.
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It looks like they have a separate division for all sorts of stuff: http://www.fedex.com/us/services/customcritical/specialty/hazardous/index.html [fedex.com]
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Looks like they do "White Glove [fedex.com]" service for radioactive materials.
With a name like that it's hard to imagine them losing something they're "white-gloving"
TFA: FedEx Custom Critical White Glove Services feature specially trained drivers and specialty equipment for the safe transport of your most sensitive shipments. These services include a full range of temperature-control offerings as well as a complete suite of Secure Transportation Solutions.
Sounds like total FAIL on their part. They claim to have th
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The article implies though it doesn't explicitly state that the package was sent via a normal fedex service rtather than one of thier special ones. There isn't much a carrier can do if an idiot sends something by an unsutiable service and fails to make them aware of the packages true contents until after the package is lost!
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Maybe because explosives, corrosives, compressed gasses, etc all have the potential take down a cargo plane if the material explodes, leaks, etc. However, low level radio active materials cannot.
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Which is why all that stuff goes through a special part of fedex which uses fedex ground for much of it.
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They ship all that stuff, just costs extra.
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Why? FedEx apparently allows certain radioactive material if packed correctly:
Look on Page 6 here (may be other pages of interest):
http://images.fedex.com/us/services/pdf/HazmatShippingGuide.pdf [fedex.com]
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I can, people do unapproved things all the time either because they are ignorant of the potential consequences or because they thing (rightly or wrongly) that the probability is low enough that they can get away with it.
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I was reading an article in a journal (Science I think?) back in the 90s, about the 1918 flu virus. The researches drew some conclusions about the old virus by applying more modern techniques, including sequencing. They obtained the virus from US military tissue samples (apparently the US military preserved tissue samples from dead soldiers back then - in paraffin I think).
They mentioned that they shipped the samples by FedEx. So, samples of tissue containing a plague that killed a substantial portion of
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So?
You think people open random fedex boxes and eat whatever they find inside?
It seems if it was sealed/preserved well enough to not rot it was pretty safe.
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True enough, it is very unlikely that anything bad would have happened to the box. However, consider that if something bad DID happen, what the consequences would be.
Talk about a black swan...
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Additionally, much less of the work that people do requires people to actually leave the home, and we now know th
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I do agree with your arguments. Additionally, if you figure that we're the descendants of the survivors of that plague it stands to reason that we'd have a larger level of genetic resistance against it as well. Who can say for sure though...
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Re:FedEx? (Score:5, Informative)
I cannot believe someone thought it was a good idea to FedEx radioactive material. Someone needs to be fired.
Why would it be wrong to hire a shipping company - in this case, FedEx - which has extensive experience in handling moderately hazardous materials and is properly licensed to do so?
FedEx Ground will handle Class 7 Radioactive Material I materials (bearing the 'radioactive white I' placards and labels) only [fedex.com]; that's the lowest class.
Material meets the White I threshold if the measured radioactivity at the surface of the shipping package does not exceed 0.5 millirem per hour; most White I packages actually fall far below that level. The legal maximum exposure for civilians in the U.S. is 500 millirem per year, and 'radiation workers' are permitted ten times that. Even if we assume that the package is right at the edge of what's permissible, you would have to strap the box directly to your ass for more than a month to get close to the civilian limit.
Could one get a higher dose if you opened the package and removed the radioactive material from its inner container(s)? Sure -- but that takes a special kind of stupid. All of the packaging is going to be emblazoned with the 'radiation' trefoil symbol; you've got to assume that even if the package were routed to the wrong destination, the receiver is going to hand it right back to the FedEx guy. (Unless, of course, it's a recipient who regularly handles radioactives, in which case, still no worries.)
This isn't a case where someone decided to cut corners and put radioactive material in an unmarked box to save a few bucks on shipping. It was properly packaged, properly labelled material, accompanied by all the appropriate paperwork and handed over to an approved, accredited, regulated shipper. Yes, someone at FedEx screwed up, but it looks like their procedures for handling lost packages seem to have worked as they should. This is a non-story which is being blown out of proportion by people who don't understand and can't appropriately weigh the risks of handling radioactive materials. ~~~~
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We ship radioactive material via FedEx all the time. It's properly packaged, labeled, and there's nothing particularly exciting about it. In fact, the dry ice that it is packed in is generally considered to be more dangerous than the radioactivity itself. (In this case, I'm talking about 250Ci of 32P ATP, which is laughably small, but I believe you can send milicurie amounts through FedEx when properly packaged.)
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While it's unreasonable to assume that 100% of packages will get where they need to go, that's not the same thing as letting a carrier off the hook for making decisions primarily upon co
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Re:FedEx? (Score:4, Insightful)
This thread is retarded. There's nothing in this story has to do with big government vs small government, or public vs private.
Something got screwed up in this instance. In a complex system with high volume and lots of humans involved, that's going to happen. 100% perfection is impossible. It's impossible for government, and it's impossible for corporations.
What we CAN fix is buffoons who take a totally unrelated story and try to twist it to fit whatever ideology they want to push.
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I agree with you, 100%.
I apologise if this didn't come across in my posts, but my ire was directed entirely at the guy who started banging on about 'market forces' etc based on a parcel company temporarily misplacing a parcel within their own building.
As you say, shit happens, and the amount of shit that can happen is proportional to the size or the complexity of the system in which happenings can occur. If people can make mistakes, then it follows that collections of people will also make mistakes, whether
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We can fix that? We're going to be billionaires!
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Nope they just charge extra.
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What a Dick! (Score:3, Funny)
" 'Medical devices should not be FedExed. They should be sent under a special service,' adds Siegel."
What a chickensh*t dick! He wants us to pay a HUGE price supplement for any shipment of anything marked 'medical equipment'. After all, he's not paying for it.
So instead of a shipment of a case of wooden tongue depressers being sent for $25 it will cost $350 because it is marked 'medical equipment'. You know this will happen.
If something is delicate or harmful_i
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Sorry dude, I have to disagree.
Radioactive material is allowed to be shipped by plane and special precautions are usually required. FedEx is right to bitch here. They have violated quite a few regs by inadvertently moving a radioactive package by air.
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Unless you want every single medical/industrial radioactive source(it isn't talked about much; but this is a lot of hardware, those things have all kinds of uses) to travel under military guard, the low-profile option of just slapping the source inside a suitable container and fedexing it as though it were just another boring package is probably a great deal
Shipping pigs via Memphis? (Score:2)
Probably somebody planned to BBQ them...
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I'm not sure if you're aware, but having done some work at the local FedEx facility, the people on the shipping floor make around $8/hour with no benefits.
More pay and strict discipline are in order.
Spare the rod, spoil the child
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Most medical devices are not dangerous if you only open the box, and most are not as sensitive to shipping constraints as radio-isotopes.
I don't know, my thermal transfer paper for my EKG gives people heart attacks and rhythm problems all the time... and all I have to do is push a button. Dangerous stuff, man, keep away from it.
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Re:What a ____ (Score:2)
Caution! Dangerous Chemicals!
Cuidado! Caramelo que es delicioso!
I do not speak Spanish, but your comment still did not look right, so off to Google Translate. ... I fell on the floor laughing.
Sure enough,
Dare I say mod-parent-funny.
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Spanish- Atención! Productos químicos peligrosos!
French- Attention! Produits chimiques dangereux!
German- Achtung! Gefährliche Chemikalien!
I like Achtung, it's a fun word to say.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you have a problem with me using Fedex to ship somebody across the country some radioactive fiesta-ware they bought from me on eBay?
"Radioactive" doesn't automatically signify "dangerous".
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you have a problem with me using Fedex to ship somebody across the country some radioactive fiesta-ware they bought from me on eBay?
"Radioactive" doesn't automatically signify "dangerous".
In trained and informed hands, not dangerous at all. However I would consider Fiestaware dangerous to someone ignorant of its radioactive properties.
Should such devices be properly labeled? Probably. Should they be banned from postal services if properly packaged? Probably not.
Re: (Score:2)
Fiestaware is completely safe, the only real danger it could possibly present is heavy metal poisoning and even that is not terribly credible.
Let me guess, you think only trained and certified people should be allowed to change the batteries in smoke detectors too. Or did you not know they contained radioactive materials? Hell, even analogue wristwatches commonly contain radioactive materials. Do you think we should start sticking great big "DANGER: RADIOACTIVE" stickers on those too? ...wait a second.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As a former resident of Memphis who knew a number of Fedex employees there at the Fedex corporate office, there are a number of very bright Fedex employes in tennessee, and even the delivery drivers claim that they have greater oversight there since they are so close to the main office.
A single misplaced package doesn't imply incompetence given the millions of packages delivered daily. I've sent hundreds of packages (including when I lived in TN) through Fedex and only had one get completely lost. I've had
Re: (Score:2)