At Least 20 Factories Receive Cargoes with Radioactive Cesium-137

Although there’s still roughly a month to go, 2025 has produced so many bizarre headlines that strange news can be quickly forgotten.

Containers of goods, including shrimp and sneakers, had started “emitting faint traces of man-made radiation.”

For example, on Aug. 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an urgent notice concerning radioactive shrimp potentially contaminated with cesium-137, Kim LaCapria reported for The Cool Down (TCD).

Recently, Bloomberg News revisited that incident, worryingly finding more questions than answers. The cesium-137 problem was initially discovered by port inspectors in Los Angeles.

Containers of goods, including shrimp and sneakers, had started “emitting faint traces of man-made radiation.”

Meanwhile, a “single container” of Adidas-branded sneakers headed for Swiss markets tripped radiation detectors in Rotterdam, yielding “faint traces” of the same radiation.

In the U.S., the news sparked post-recall memes — and while the story was buried amid a busy news cycle, investigators worked to determine exactly what caused it.

What they discovered was a public health and environmental disaster-in-progress: a chain reaction of potentially deadly contamination with only vague leads as to how it originated and how to ensure the risk had been eliminated.

Authorities traced the cesium-137 release to a small scrap-metal smelter at an industrial park outside Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta; Bloomberg noted it was “unclear” whether the release occurred “by accident or deliberately.”

In the affected area, there were at least 20 manufacturers, including sneaker factories for Nike and Adidas, as well as seafood exporters. Officials around the world enhanced screening, and a shipment of contaminated Indonesian cloves arrived at the Port of Long Beach, California.