Consumer Watchdog, the California advocacy group known to take on Sacramento special interests, certainly grabbed our attention with a press release with the subject line: "Plutonium in your zipper?"

"Have you bought a pair of jeans made here in Los Angeles lately?" the release opened. "You could be wearing jeans with a radioactive zipper."

It's no joke, says the group, which asked an L.A. court for a preliminary injunction against state toxics regulators to keep Boeing from sending contaminated metals and other debris from a former rocket and nuclear reactor testing site in Simi Valley to local recyclers. Who, in turn, evidently sell the hot metal to zipper purveyors.