Radiation monitors rarely used at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport

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Two cardboard boxes were lying on the floor at the air freight terminal of Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. An attatched red slip of paper shouted "Must not be loaded. Delivery stopped by safety inspection".
      The boxes contained ski wax they were the only freight delivery to have been rejected that afternoon. Officials saw them as fire hazards.
     
A very small proportion of hazardous material transport is by air. However, in 2002, for instance, 16 percent of air-freighted hazardous materials were radioactive. The room reserved for approved radioactive materials contained only one small package in the afternoon, which was destined for a hospital in the north of Finland.
      Most radioactive air freight involves substances for hospitals. They are often transported by air freight because they spoil quickly.
      Finnair uses passenger planes for its air freight.
     
The safety of both air freight and passenger luggage is determined at Helsinki-Vantaa primarily on the basis of what the guards see on the screens of their X-ray machines. Explosive-sniffing devices and radiation monitors are rarely used.
      Explosive sniffers are used in air freight only for packages that do not fit into the X-ray machine.
      "Geiger counters are not even used every day", says security chief Jussi Mattila.
      "Geiger counters are used with luggage if there is cause to suspect radioactivity", says the airport’s head of security, Jyri Wikström.
      Much more difficult than radioactive materials, in Wikström’s view, are chemical and biological substances, which are more difficult to identify. The airport does not have devices for chemical analysis.
     
On Saturday a Finnair passenger plane was stuck in Moscow because of radiation from a cobalt air freight delivery destined for industry.
      On Monday, the Ministry of Transport and Communications sent Finnair and the Finnish Civil Aviation Authority a request for clarifications on what kinds of dangerous materials are transported in Finland.
      By the evening the request had not yet reached CEO Jukka Heinonen, but Taneli Hassinen, the airline’s head of communications, was already waiting for it.
      "The response will be ready as soon as the request reaches us", Hassinen insisted.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Radioactive cobalt in luggage hold delays Finnair flight from Moscow (4.12.2006)

Helsingin Sanomat