Swiss
weeklies Le Matin Dimanche and SonntagsZeitung reported that federal, regional
and local officials decided not to reveal the fact that they had found radium
deposits in an old dump in the town of Bienne so as not to scare the 50,000
local inhabitants.
"120
kilogrammes of radioactive waste was obtained after sorting. We measured doses
of several hundred microsieverts at the source," Daniel Dauwalder, a
spokesman for the Swiss federal office for public health (OFSP), told Le Matin
Dimanche.
In certain
places, measurements of 300 microsieverts per hour were taken, more than 100
times the permitted amount for an old dump, the newspapers reported.
Exposure
for three hours to that level of radiation would be equivalent to the tolerable
level over a whole year.
The waste
came from a paint used by the watch-making industry to illuminate the numbers
on watch faces.
The
substance, which has been banned since 1963 due to its radioactive nature, was
discovered when roadworks were started at the site.
The OFSP
judged the risk to public health "weak", although SonntagsZeitung
said that tests on the water table would begin next month.
Public
health authorities have shifted the blame back and forth, with local officials
saying the OFSP should have informed the public about the incident, and the
OFSP saying the responsibility lay with municipal authorities.
The
president of the federal commission in charge of monitoring radiation (CPR),
which was not informed of the incident, said the various authorities had made a
"mistake".
"This
will all come back to bite us and it is much more difficult to stay credible
and win back the public's trust," Francois Bochud told Le Matin Dimanche.
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