That's interesting. I hadn't heard of that.
When I read your post, my first thought was "cobalt 60."
That seems to be it, based on a little googling:
http://agmetalminer.com/2009/02/17/radioactive-stainless-steel-found-in-germany/ It seems someone in India melted down some scrap metal from a spice sterilizer. There are uses for cobalt in steelmaking, but a typical stainless alloy shouldn't contain much, if any (less than 1/5 of 1%, according to the article).
Fortunately, this seems to have been an isolated incident. I guess this is another reason to assay shipping containers for radioactivity, but I don't think it's any reason to panic over what's already in your house.
Jami McBride wrote:Wow, where can I rent a geiger counter 
Geiger counters require some training, and the use of a calibration standard (i.e., a standardized radioactive substance kept with the machine). You can use a Geiger counter to find, among other things, bananas (due to potassium content) and cigarettes (due to polonium) in the dark; without some education in health physics (i.e., how various types and doses of radiation correspond to various health risks), it's easy to drive yourself crazy with one.
A film dosimeter might be more suitable for home use; it would definitely be
enough to catch the material mentioned in the article linked to above.
Another instrument,
much easier to use (if more complicated in theory) which can catch this sort of contamination now that it's a known entity, is the alpha-particle x-ray spectrometer. In practice, it's an instrument slightly smaller than a toaster, which can be placed on an item and, after a short time, displays its composition (all elements heavier than about aluminum). Since most stainless shouldn't contain cobalt, it's a dead giveaway (no pun intended). I believe most US recyclers use an APXS device to identify chunks of scrap. There is also a (high-precision, miniaturized) APXS on each Mars rover, which made the technology slightly more famous.
Stainless steel doesn't dissolve into food the way
cast iron might. I could be wrong on this, but I think that the stainless in question would be more of a health risk to from the radiation shining out of it as it sits on the shelf, than from radionuclides finding their way into food.
Jami McBride wrote:It is so hard to stay clean and safe in this modern world.
"Clean and safe" are both very relative and qualitative terms. You and I have likely had much less contact with other people's excrement, and seen far fewer of our relatives die of childhood disease or of violence, than most of our ancestors. But you're right, we're both much more likely to encounter PCBs and plutonium than almost any of our ancestors were.
