Radium-contaminated workplaces to disappear by 2019

In the future, no persons in Switzerland should live or work in rooms where there is unacceptable radiation exposure to radium that is hazardous to health. This is the goal of the Radium Action Plan 2015-2019, which the Federal Council has approved. It provides up to five million Swiss francs for radioactivity measurements and remediation work.

The action plan calls for locating sites potentially contaminated with radium, measuring them, and remediating them where necessary. In addition, part of the action plan addresses the monitoring of landfills where radium-containing waste may be stored. The plan will be reviewed regularly.

In June 2014, an address list of buildings was published in which luminous paint-setting workshops of the watch industry used to be located. In order to rule out any risk to the health of current residents, the FOPH, together with Suva, has carried out radioactivity measurements in recent months. The measurements have begun in the city of Biel, where initial pilot remediation work has already been carried out. Further measurements will now follow in the Jura arc. The measurements are part of the Radium Action Plan 2015-2019 drawn up by the FOPH.

In the watch industry, hands and dials were painted with luminous paints containing radium until the 1960s. This work was carried out in setting studios or by home workers. After the use of the radioactive paint was abandoned for health reasons, Suva inspected the workshops it supervised and remediated the contaminated sites. However, the former home-work sites were not systematically recorded and decontaminated. The original originators of the contamination can rarely be traced because they can no longer be found today or no longer exist.