October 10, 2025
JAKARTA – Indonesia has recently been hit with a wave of literally toxic news, starting with a warning from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA detected cesium-137 (Cs-137) contamination in a sample of frozen shrimp imported from Indonesia. The seafood was packed by a company operating at the Cikande Industrial Estate in Serang, Banten.
Following further investigation, the government later declared a “special radioactive contamination event” in the complex. Coordinating Food Minister Zulkifli Hasan said the declaration was necessary to expedite efforts to decontaminate the materials, which are believed to have originated from scrap metal stored in nearby sites.
Banten was not the only place with reports of Cs-137 contamination. Several weeks after the shrimp alert, the FDA issued another warning after finding the material in a sample of clove exports from Surabaya, East Java, which the government is still investigating.
Cs-137 is relatively safe for humans as we are exposed to some of it every day from medical and industrial appliances. However, exposure to large amounts of the material may increase the risk of cancer or even death.
While we acknowledge the government’s efforts to clean up the radioactive materials from the Cikande complex to prevent further contamination of foods processed there for export, this incident must serve as a stark warning about the root cause of the problem: Poor waste management and lack of regulatory oversight in the country.
Zulkifli revealed that authorities traced the Cs-137 contamination to a steel melting plant located approximately 2 kilometers from the shrimp production facility. The melting plant is owned by a company that reportedly imported scrap metal contaminated with the radioactive material as its raw material.
Authorities further suspect the Cs-137 was primarily spread through airborne dust produced during the melting process. This dust then settled on multiple surfaces within the facility before dispersing beyond the plant’s perimeter and contaminating the surrounding area.
Indonesia has ratified the Basel Convention, which bans the border crossing of dangerous and toxic waste. However, according to national regulations, some parties are still allowed to import metal or plastic waste from other countries that can be processed into raw materials for domestic industries or even re-export. Industries often argue they need to import this waste to address the shortage of raw materials from within the country.
But the national regulations about importing waste for raw industrial materials are still lenient, making Indonesia a recipient of waste materials that are not suitable for further processing. Some of this trash ends up in our landfills without proper processing, causing it to release hazardous materials, such as radioactive substances, into the environment that may harm our health.
We have seen a similar issue with plastic, where villages in East Java are smothered in plastic waste imported from Europe, the US and other countries. Some of the plastic waste is even used by tofu factories as fuel for their stoves, despite reports of such practices producing toxic smoke that contaminates food materials and poses a serious health risk.
We believe the authorities should push for better waste management in the country to prevent similar contaminations to those in Banten and East Java from happening again. With better waste reuse and recycling, industries may use discarded materials from inside the country for their raw materials, which would prevent imports of hazardous waste that harm our people and environment. We would thereby not need to import metals that release Cs-137 into the air after being improperly processed.
It seems that for years, the government both at national and local levels has neglected the issue of waste management, which then leads to incidents such as in Banten and East Java, among other regions. Warnings from the FDA should serve as a wake-up call for authorities to work harder and better on our waste, before it ends up hurting the people, environment and economy.