Kazakhs Hunt For "Radioactive Dollars"
Date: 27-Jan-06
Country: KAZAKHSTAN
The Kazakh central bank said in a letter to financial institutions the radiation level of the US dollar notes was 100 times above normal. A Kazakh citizen brought them into the country in November, it said.
"(The dollars) pose a direct threat to people's health," said the letter, obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.
Officials urged banks and exchange bureaux to redouble efforts to find the notes by checking the serial numbers.
It was not clear how the money, nearly $4,000 in 100-dollar and 50-dollar bills, got contaminated.
The Soviet Union used Kazakhstan, a vast Central Asian state, the for many decades as a testing ground for nuclear weapons after it detonated its first plutonium bomb in 1949.