Contaminated stainless steel from China in Hesse (Germany)

Steel-producer's in China are required by law, to take proper care, that all delivered products will be free of radioactive contaminations. At purchase time of raw material, this fact is documented by an appropriated supplied certificate.  All raw materials have to be manufactured according to standards ASTM A240 / A240M, ensuring freedom of radioactive contaminations.

That confidence will be good, but control much better, was also a experience of one Chinese supplier.  For the production of sample parts of a Hessian company, stainless steel with material certificate was purchased. However, at final customers side control a radioactive pollution was found.  The infection was also not identified at airfreight delivery by the custom authorities.  

The described process must be assumed as a particular case.  Nevertheless the Chinese supplier has drawn consequences immediately. Since that time, for a certainty future avoidance of polluted supplies, the Chinese supplier arranged additional tests of vulnerable materials in cooperation with the Chinese environmental agency, just providing an appropriate certificate for relevant products.

These documents were supplied to the customers before shipping relevant parts.