Authorities scrambled to corral radioactive La-Z-Boy recliners

An Indiana manufacturer unknowingly used metal blended with a dangerous radioactive isotope to make parts for 1,000 La-Z-Boy recliners more than a decade ago.
The discovery of that contamination -- which received virtually no publicity at the time -- triggered a federal and state effort to keep the popular chairs out of American living rooms, a Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found.
The isotope -- Cobalt-60 -- used by No-Sag Products Co. of Kendallville, Ind., had been blended in Brazil into metal No-Sag used in 1998 to make brackets for the chairs, according to Rex Bowser, director of the Indoor Air and Radiological Health Emergency Response Program of the Indiana State Department of Health.
The tainted material was discovered when No-Sag sent the metal leftovers from the bracket job to a scrap yard, Steel Dynamics of Butler, Ind. That company detected the contamination and refused to accept the load, Indiana health department documents show.
The June 1998 discovery set in motion a coordinated effort to identify and stop the distribution of the Reclina-Rocker chairs, which retail today for as much as $2,600.
To track them down, Bowser worked with officials in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and authorities in Tennessee, Missouri, Michigan, Mississippi and Utah.
Scott Douglas, vice president for law of No-Sag Products' parent company, Leggett & Platt Inc., said No-Sag decided to voluntarily recall the chairs quickly, even though the company considered any health threat minimal.
"Even though it wasn't a scientifically based solution, we just thought, 'Let's not go there,' " Douglas said. "The consumer doesn't want radiation in their products. We recognized that."
In the end, none of the 1,000 tainted chairs had yet left warehouses, and Monroe, Mich.-based La-Z-Boy recalled all of them, Bowser said.
A La-Z-Boy spokeswoman declined to comment.
Experts said that the amount of radioactivity in the recliners, though relatively low, could have posed a health threat over time.
Tests of the metal brackets showed their radiation level at about 0.02 millirems per hour. Americans receive about 300 millirems a year from naturally occurring radiation sources. At that level, the brackets would emit the equivalent of a chest X-ray -- about 20 millirems -- every 1,000 hours.
"It was enough above background to be a concern for people sitting in La-Z-Boy chairs," Bowser said.
The La-Z-Boy case was one of 333 incidents in Indiana in which radioactive metals have turned up in scrap yards, trash dumps and manufactured goods, according to NRC reports analyzed by Scripps Howard News Service. The cases are compiled in the national Nuclear Material Events Database, a little-known library of 18,740 radioactive incidents, the vast majority since 1990.
"Every year we find stuff," Bowser said.
But in Indiana and across the United States -- even though scrap yards and recycling operations are the primary line of defense against rogue radiation -- neither the federal government nor any state requires those businesses to screen metal goods for radiation or report it when found.
And no federal agency is responsible for identifying tainted material or overseeing its disposal. As a result, a true accounting of the magnitude of the problem is unknown.
The radioactive material causing the problem is common in measuring gauges used by factories, specialized medical equipment, smoke detectors and even lighted exit signs -- all of which use small amounts of radiation to operate. The radioactive parts are shielded by protective barriers.
But as factories close or medical facilities discard old equipment, these items are frequently forgotten or purposely left behind. That's when the material can be freed from its protective shielding and become blended with recycled metal, creating potential health and environmental hazards -- and metal products containing radioactive materials.
Complicating the matter, there is now nowhere for an Indiana metal company to dispose of the contaminated material it finds.
That is because, in July 2008, a site in Barnwell, S.C., closed its doors to the low-level radioactive waste it had accepted for 37 years.
As a result, neither Indiana nor 35 other states have anywhere to dump the waste they find. Some metal dealers try to send it back from where it came, but that can be a dead end, too.
Bowser said he doesn't know where that material detected in Indiana goes now.
"I'm not always privy to the final resting place," he said.
When a scrap dealer finds material and contacts Bowser, he said he tries to enlist support from the federal Energy Department and the EPA to help pay for and oversee cleanup, which can costs thousands of dollars.
But getting that help is difficult. The Energy Department's assistance program is bogged down by a two-year waiting list and a 9,000-item backlog, and is fielding requests to collect an additional 2,000 newly detected items a year.
"Most companies want to do the right thing," Bowser said. "There are some unscrupulous businesses out there. But most want to do right."
If federal authorities can't help, Bowser has a list of "radiation brokers" who will help find a burial site for a fee. But, in the wake of the shutdown of the Barnwell facility, those brokers face the same disposal dilemma.
Bowser said more Indiana scrap yards and processing outfits are voluntarily installing detectors and, as a result, catching more radioactive items that in the past would have entered the metal manufacturing stream.
Those detectors -- with price tags ranging from several thousand dollars to $100,000 or more -- can be too expensive for many scrap dealers. "The guys that take in the neighborhood (scrap) can't afford that," he said.
That is particularly true in rural areas, where tainted scrap is more likely to be indiscriminately dumped.
"If you go to a mom-and-pop operation in southern Indiana, they basically operate for the neighborhood farmer," Bowser said. "A lot of things end up in remote areas."
In the La-Z-Boy case, the radioactive metal that would end up in the brackets used for the chairs' spring supports came from Brazil in a 430,000-pound shipment of steel sent to sea in January 1998, according to EPA and Indiana state documents.
From there, the metal passed through New Orleans and Chicago, though none of it stayed there, then from Michigan to Indiana, according a 1998 EPA report.
By the time the Steel Dynamics scrap yard in Butler, Ind., noticed that the metal was radioactive, the recliner-chair parts had been shipped around the country.
During the two-week period that No-Sag used the tainted metal, it shipped 46,560 rocker spring assemblies to La-Z-Boy factories in Dayton, Tenn.; Neosho, Mo.; Newton, Miss.; and Tremonton, Utah, according to Indiana state documents.
Despite the spread of radioactive metal through Indiana, Bowser does not want to mandate radiation detectors because he thinks businesses are responding to the economic incentives to not be stuck with the metal. "I'd rather see self-regulation than laws," he said.
But Leggett & Platt vice president Douglas said the industry would benefit if the government sets an allowable level of radiation in consumer products, similar to how a certain amount of lead is acceptable in drinking water.
"To the extent that the government would come out with risk-based standards, that would be helpful to industry," Douglas said.
E-mail Isaac Wolf at wolfi(at)shns.com

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
Recycled Radiation