How the US ended up with radioactive shrimp and sneakers from Indonesia

The first sign of trouble surfaced thousands of miles from Indonesia.

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Inspectors in the US are used to seeing containers of frozen shrimp and sneakers pass through their ports. Some 600,000 metric tonnes of the seafood and more than two billion pairs of shoes arrive each year from various countries, usually without incident.

But in July, inspectors in Los Angeles then other ports on either side of the US - discovered something strange: shipments of prawns and Nike branded sneakers emitting faint traces of man-made radiation.

At the same time, across the Atlantic, a single container of sneakers made for Adidas was making its way to Switzerland, only to be flagged for traces of radiation by port officials in Rotterdam.

When the authorities began to investigate, the trail led halfway across the globe to Southeast Asia and to a bustling factory park outside the Indonesian capital Jakarta. And what local officials found at the Modern Cikande Industrial Estate was startling.

Radioactive Caesium-137 had been released it is unclear if by accident or deliberately - into the air from a small smelter processing scrap metal. Minuscule particles of the isotope found their way into more than 20 factories, including shrimp being packed into refrigerated containers by one of Indonesia's largest seafood exporters and at a big factory producing shoes for brands including Nike and Adidas.

The revelations set off protective recalls of the seafood at stores including Walmart and Kroger. Shrimp exports from western Indonesia temporarily ground to a halt, stranding hundreds of containers in waters far from Indonesia.