The Goiânia Cesium-137 Accident: A Radioactive Disaster Not Many People Talk About

Although not as famous as other radioactive disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima, the Cesium-137 accident in Goiânia, a city in Brazil, had its fair share of consequences that still haunts some of the citizens today.

On September 13, 1987, a radiotherapy device was discovered in an abandoned clinic by Devair Ferreira. Inside of it contained cesium chloride dust, a salt obtained by the radioisotope 137 of cesium. This salt, if in an enviroment with little to no light, emits a blue shine. Fascinated by it and not knowing its potential danger, Devair took the machine to his scrapyard and showed his discovery to his wife, Maria Gabriela and shared it with family and friends. His brother gave some to his daughter, Leide, who touched it and ingested it with her dinner. Another brother of Devair’s also got in contact with the substance.

Exposed to the radioactive material, the symptoms develop only in a few hours: nausea, dizzyness, vomit and diarrhea. The families of those who were contaminated were extremely alarmed and went to pharmacies and drugstores to find help, and some even went to hospitals.

The healthcare workers upon seeing the symptoms thought it was some kind of unknown contagious disease, until Maria Gabriela raised a suspicion for the glowing blue dust, and with the help of a worker in the scrapyard, took the cesium capsule to Health Surveillance, but it stayed abandoned on a chair for two days.

The first person to realize what really was going on was the physicist Walter Mendes Ferreira. By using detectors he determined high levels of radiation, which enabled better ways to solve the issue. However, the government tried to minimize the action and hide data from the population to avoid mass panic, saying it was simply a “gas leak”.

On October 23, Leide and Devair’s wife both died due to the exposure to the substance. Devair went through a decontamination proccess but died 7 years later. Other deaths include Israel Baptista dos Santos and Admilson Alves de Souza, both were Devair’s employees in the scrapyard. About 1000 people in total were exposed to cesium.

Many houses were emptied, roofs and furniture were vacuum cleaned and objects like toys, appliances and pictures had to be discarded. Until today, the people who were contaminated and their descendants still suffer from effects caused by radiation.