Seoul City Expands 'Citizen Radiation Testing Request System'

As Part of Efforts to Alleviate Food Anxiety

Seoul City announced on the 29th that it will expand the operation of the ‘Citizen Radiation Inspection Request System,’ which allows citizens to request radiation inspections for foods suspected of radioactive contamination, and the city will conduct the inspections and inform the results to alleviate public concerns about radioactive contamination in food.

The ‘Citizen Radiation Inspection Request System’ enables any Seoul resident or civic organization based in Seoul to apply for radiation inspection of foods suspected of radioactive contamination through various methods such as the Seoul City Food Safety website, fax, mail, or in-person submission. After receiving the application, Seoul City collects and inspects the food and informs the applicant of the results.

For accurate inspection, foods that are spoiled, deteriorated, or contaminated with foreign substances are excluded from the inspection. The inspection procedure involves reviewing the application form → Seoul City directly collects and inspects foods deemed appropriate for inspection → the results are directly notified to the applicant and publicly disclosed on the Seoul City website for anyone to view.

Any citizen can apply for inspection at any time, and to expand the inspections, the volume of inspections will be increased more than fivefold compared to the previous amount. However, to prevent repetitive inspections, applications are limited to one per month per applicant.

In particular, to ensure prompt inspection, the city aims to provide inspection results within 24 hours after receiving the application, and will quickly disclose the results to address citizens’ concerns.

Meanwhile, the city stated that since the 2011 nuclear accident, it has conducted radiation inspections on a total of 13,477 domestic and imported food products, all of which were deemed safe.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.