A French lift maker is having to change the buttons in over 500 of the elevators that it has installed all over France after it was found that the buttons contained traces of radioactive Cobalt 60.

The lift company Otis had imported the buttons from India where it is believed that radioactive scrap metal had been used in their manufacture.

Otis also announced that 20 of its workers who had handled the buttons had been exposed to higher levels of radioactivity than current safety limits allow and that workers at three of it's factories had been told not to report for duties on the 10th October.

The Nuclear Safety Authority in France classed the incident at level 2 out of 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale because of the exposure of more than 10 people to doses exceeding the regulated limit.

Otis say that there is no danger to people using the lifts and that they are planning to trace and remove all of the contaminated buttons.

Quote this article on your site