- "This particular example came from a 55 gallon drum of tape dispensers that the U.S. Army was about to dispose of as radioactive waste."
This is a common beach sand [0]. It illustrates something absurd, I can't quite put my finger on what, about the relation between human society and technology. No one knows anything about the physical or chemical properties of sand on the beach. No one asks; no one cares. There are no EPA surveys of beach radioactivity. No beach signs warning beachgoers "do not eat the sand", or, "this beach is known to the state of California to cause cancer". But you take one handful of the beach into a plastic box, and accidentally walk it past the wrong regulatory compliance officer, and suddenly the US Army is burying your one-handful-of-beach-sand in a 55-gallon drum packed in bentonite.
It's one lens for nature, and one lens for the anthropogenic.