Police carry all sorts of things on their utility belt, from flashlights to guns and everything in between. And now, some of them are carrying radiation detectors.
Some police in Texas carry pager-size radiation detectors, and in mid-October, a Houston police officer got an alert on his. Cesium 137 was found at a scrap yard.
There were four devices and the radioactive material was contained in three. In the fourth device, the material was out in the open, which is dangerous.
Sergeant James Luplow is in charge of the Houston police department's bomb squad. He says their primary concern is safety.
He says when such stuff is in it's container, it emits very little radiation. He believes the material had been used in a commercial lab and was eventually scrapped and these containers ended up in a load of steel. Eventually radioactive material ends up at a national disposal site.
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