Goiânia 1.1

Radiation

Topic I
Part 1.1
Goiânia

The Goiânia Incident

Our first stop on our examination of the relationship between humans and radiation takes us to the city of Goiânia, Brazil, where one of the strangest and saddest radiation accidents in modern history unfolded in 1987.

The Source

The Instituto Goiano de Radioterapia was a radiotherapy clinic in Goiânia, Brazil. Radiotherapy is a cancer treatment in which a concentrated beam of radiation is targeted at the afflicted area. For this purpose, the IGR employed a cesium-137 based teletherapy machine.

In the radiation head, a container of radioactive cesium-137, 2 inches wide and 1.8 inches long, was housed in lead. The patient would lie on a table underneath the machine, exposing whatever body part necessary (the head could tilt back and forth as well). Once everyone was settled and safe, the aperture would be opened, firing its beam.

The machine had been purchased in 1977, but it was now 1985 and IGR had expanded since then, and was moving to a new facility. They packed up and moved out, then had to deal with the machines – as one would hope, it is not easy to move machines with radioactive materials. One was moved, but the cesium machine stayed.

The abandoned clinic was then lodged in legal warfare.

The abandoned building of IGR

IGR and the St. Vincent de Paul Conference, the owners of the site, were still in court in September 1986, when the Court of Goiás stated it had knowledge of the abandoned radiological material in the building. I shall now quote directly from Wikipedia:

Four months prior to the accident, on May 4th, 1987, Saura Taniguti, then director of Ipasgo, the institute of insurance for civil servants, used police force to prevent one of the owners of IGR, Carlos Figueiredo Bezerril, from removing the objects that were left behind. Bezerril then warned president of Ipasgo, Lício Teixeira Borges, that he should take responsibility "for what would happen with the cesium bomb."

I wish I could tell you why on earth that happened, but the source is written in Portuguese.

The court posted a security guard to protect the hazardous abandoned equipment. Meanwhile, the owners of IGR wrote several letters to the National Commission for Nuclear Energy, warning them about the danger of keeping a teletherapy unit at an abandoned site, but they could not remove the equipment by themselves, once a court order prevented them from doing so.

For reasons unknown to me, IRG still comes out the scapegoats at the end of this one.

The Scavenging

On September 13, 1987, the security guard skipped work.

Another view of the abandoned IGR

On that day, two men, Roberto dos Santos Alves and Wagner Mota Pereira, snuck into the clinic. They were scavenging for scrap metal that they could sell to a junkyard. They found the teletherapy machine, and, thinking that medical equipment must be worth something, they loaded it into a wheelbarrow and carried it to Alves' home.

Between the 13^th and the 18^th, Alves continued to dismantle the machine. On the 18^th, stabbing the machine with a screwdriver, he managed to break the window of the aperture through which the radiation was released. A chalky, powdery substance spilled out; the highly radioactive cesium.

Thinking that this might be gunpowder, Alves attempted to light the powder.

I invite you to pause and think about that for a second.

Thankfully, for all involved (and the entire country of Brazil), he was unsuccessful.

Abandoning the project, Alves and Pereira sold the source assembly to junkyard owner Devair Alves Ferreira.

The Sickness

Removed from this lead encasement, the full radioactivity of the cesium began its work on the unshielded, unsuspecting humans. Radiation can be measured in many ways, and in this case, we're going to refer to it in Grays. The source was giving off 4.65 Gray per hour. For comparison, the accepted annual radiation dose for non-nuclear workers in the US is .001 to .005 Gy.

The day of the 13^th, both Alves and Pereira vomited. Over the next few days they grew increasingly ill, exhibiting vomiting, diarrhea and dizziness. Both assumed that this was due to food poisoning; when Pereira saw a doctor, he was informed that he had a food allergy and should “take it easy” for a week.

Pereira had also developed a burn on his hand, the exact size and shape of the window on the source capsule.

An example of a radiation burn blister from one of the victims of this accident

This story will be continued in Part 1.2; stay tuned.


Sources

My infinite gratitude is extended to the many places that have helped to satiate my curiosity.

Text Sources
The majority of my information comes from two places.
Wikipedia article on the Goiânia accident
What Went Wrong, a blog that seized upon this idea before I'd even heard of it: http://alitanyofdisaster.blogspot.com/2009/06/it-does-matter-what-you-do-with-your.html

Image Sources

Diagram of telepathy unit: What Went Wrong blog

Patient in telepathy unit: IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/SealedRadioactiveSources/q&a.html

Abandoned buildings of IGR and radiation burn: SEMP (Suburban Emergency Management Project), http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=234

Cesium powder: Answers.com, http://www.answers.com/topic/caesium

Fire line: Golden State Photography, http://www.goldenstatephoto.com/GSP1.html