Radioactive sand was seized from a passenger at Vnukovo airport: the woman said that she wanted to “make cosmetics from it”
A 42-year-old Muscovite arriving from India was stopped by customs officers in the “green” corridor after a special system warned about radiation—the radiation level was 11 times higher. Radioactive volcanic sand was found in the passenger's luggage in a paper bag.
The woman explained that she collected it on the Indian Ocean coast and was taking it to make cosmetics, but was not aware of the dangers of the substance.
The package had to be confiscated: it turned out that the sand contained the natural radionuclide thorium-232.
