Chilean officials said Monday they found traces of radioactivity in tests on about 20 used cars on a ship from South Korea that had been in the vicinity of Japan's damaged Fukushima atomic plant. According to a report in Chilean daily El Mercurio, a customs director in Iquique, a port city in northern Chile, said the radioactivity did not appear to pose a threat.
He said the vehicles were showing a level of one to five on a radioactive index, below the level of nine needed for an alert.
The ship sailed from South Korea and then docked at the Japanese ports of Osaka and Yokohama, located 300 miles (500 kilometers) from the reactor in Fukushima, which saw several explosions after an earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11.
Nonetheless, workers at the Chilean port about 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) north of Santiago were concerned and asked for testing, according to reports.
The 83 workers who had contact with the vehicles "were tested by customs at their request," a Chilean official said, adding that none of them showed any ill effects.
The cars were part of a shipment of 2,500 vehicles arriving in Chile. Officials said the cars were all to be cleaned by the shipping company before going on sale. Source
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