A Brief History of: The Goiania Incident (Short Documentary)

[Music] I've covered two out of four of the international nuclear Event Scale level five instance on this channel one of the two left is very well known and will be a future video however the subject for today is much less known he was a tragic story of negligence and shows how much damage can be done that the public unknowingly come into contact with radioactive materials event would leave parts of a city contaminated for dead a further two hundred and forty nine irradiated and another 112 thousand people needing to be examined the event will be called by The Times as one of the worst nuclear incidents in history and it wouldn't happen in the UK USSR or the USA but instead late 1980s Brazil in a controlled and protected environment such as a hospital full of trained staff at teletherapy unit two poses little to no danger to the public this is because said trained staff know how to properly operate and maintain a machine that uses a radioactive material many hospitals and treatment centers use such machinery in the treatment of cancer and the beginning of the gory any incident starts in such an establishment in 1985 one kilometer away for an administrative center of goiânia sadly Instituto guy an EOD riot area / a private radiotherapy center that had been closed down the company moved to a new premises taking a cobalt-60 teletherapy unit with him however a move left behind a cesium 137 unit this was against the institute's license with the licensing authority of the closure of the center that ownership of the property came into dispute however a seemingly unnoticed two organizations arguing over abandoned property and its contents would put the piece of equipment into dangerous waters this was because the IGR was refused entry to the site wildly argued was litigated in doing so not allowing the unit to be removed and placed in a safe and lest abandoned environment during the dispute the court of goiânia noted on the 11th of september 1986 that it was aware of the equipment and it's radioactive contents left at a property due a lack of entry granted to igr owner Carlos Pulido in 1987 to retrieve items left in the abandoned property of the abandonment of the building it became partially demolished leaving the telephony unit unsecured the sorry state of the property led to vagrants regularly entering to search for scrap materials to sell and for shelter needless to say this is not a good thing the city of goiânia in the 1980s had a population of around 1 million first of all let's talk about the equipment that could get into the wrong hands that was worrying the owner of IG are so much in the first place the unit purchased in 1977 was a model sesor pan f3000 designed by Rossetti and company of milan italy in the 1950s the machine used a sealed source capsule to house the caesium-137 made of lead and stainless steel set inside a sauce wheel with a rotating shutter mechanism to provide a beam for use the shutter was turned electrically to align the source capsule with the radiation aperture to be failsafe the mechanism used a spring to return the shutter to its off position after exposure or in the case of a power failure the whole assembly was designed to be able to be dismantled but only with specialist tools the sauce was thought to have been manufactured at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in around 1970 the sauce was caesium-137 in the form of the soluble salt and the sealed capsule was of an international standard size but a time 1987 had come round the value of the machine had become common knowledge in the local area Roberto dos Santos Alvis had heard such rumors and encouraged Waggoner monitor P area to join him on the 13th of September to illegally enter the old AGR site of the intention to dismantle the every thousand unit however the two only took with them basic tools after some wrangling with the units rotating assembly Adira managed to set it free from the machine the assembly being made of stainless steel was shiny and looked valuable and because of this they loaded it into a wheelbarrow and proceeded to take it half a kilometre to Elvis house it's not own weather during the dismantling if the pair received a beam of radiation at the disused clinic however a later investigation would show no contamination at the site mean I hadn't damaged a capsule whilst removing it from the machine Elvis's house that evening the mechanism was dismantled leading to both men feeling sick however this was due to something they ate and continued to work on the assembly the next day a P area felt dizzy as well as vomiting his left hand also began to swell up and on the same hand a burn start to develop in the same shape and size as the exposure aperture by this time at least one of the men had received a direct beam of radiation during their dismantling efforts the next part of the video is based on the International Atomic agency's timeline of events on a 15 for September P area went to the local clinic to seek medical help he was diagnosed with an allergic reaction caused by bad food he received advice to stay in and try to rest only doing like work if necessary needs to save his diagnosis was a little bit off but in health professionals defense radiation exposure isn't a very common complaint the average Brazilian would seek out medical advice for body 18th on his own Elvis had placed assembly under a mango tree over the preceding days he had tried to work to remove the source wheel from the shutter whilst doing so he punctured the fik window of the capsule with a screwdriver he scooped out some of the radioactive material bizarrely he tried to light it as he fought in might have been gunpowder at this point it might be obvious that the men weren't aware of how this tough machinery works and the danger that they had put themselves in by the end of the day he had managed to successfully remove the wheel from the shutter he enters the next person to handle the seemingly harmless yet deadly scrap of metal - via the area a local scrapyard owner bought the capsule off of Elvis later on in the evening he found the puncture left by ours showing an eerie glow thinking about him must be valuable or possibly ghostly the area took it from the yard into his home to show his family the area's wife Gabriella examined a strange item the free days fee area invited friends and neighbors over to look at the source on a 21st Devere and a friend managed to exhume rice sized grains of caesium-137 however they quickly turned to powder office both Davey Fe area and his friend gave out the powder to friends and family they were unknowingly spreading a deadly contaminant amongst a community even scary is that some of the recipients of the powder added its first skin using it as a glitter over the coming days devere's wife started to show a similar symptoms to pee area and again after a visit to the doctor resulted in a diagnosis of allergy caused by some dodgy food obviously again this was a fatal misunderstanding of the patient's complaints by the 23rd Gabriella was sent home to rest and was joined by her mother to help her recover on a 24 de Vera's brother Ivo received some of the powder and took it to his house down the road Ivo place of a serious powder on the floor and his daughter he plays with it putting it on her skin who contaminated hands she ate a sandwich unknowingly consuming some of the sauce tragically this would be over a fatal dose but its 25th of scrap-metal capsule changed hands once again to another scrap yard and a day later more parts of the teletherapy unit were taken from the abandoned igr site although what was taken was mainly scrapped shielding now with most of her family showing some signs of sickness since exposure to the powder Gabriela collected up as much of the broken up capture where she could from both scrap yards and put the pieces into a plastic bag she then took a bus to Zealandia Senate area on 16th Street on the 28th a couple of people who were exposed were also taken to the village ANCA sanitary initially the health workers confused by the symptoms of the group of people thought the case of sickness was from a tropical disease however one of the doctors recognized similar patients lesions as a symptom of some kind of radiation exposure when the doctors also recognized some of scrap metals as possibly from x-ray equipment because of a fort extra investigation was needed and a medical physicist resourced to test the mystery contents of the plastic bag on the morning of the 29th a medical physicist arrived with a scintillation counter oddly it was his second meter as the original one that he had borrowed from the nearby nuclear Brazil offices gave a reading in all directions quite a distance from the village in seer Sennett area assuming it was defective he took the original meter back and took a replacement however the meter was not defective upon using his second meter today and the magnitude of the contamination was apparent the scrap yard vet elves had sold a capsule to was checked for contamination and was shown on scanners as way way too high and the fee areas were evacuated by the end of day the police fire brigade local and national government were very much aware of the situation over the next few days certain areas in the neighborhood were cordoned off by officials as the full scale of contaminate was established the list of contaminated areas ends up being pretty vast and included the abandoned igr facility although no contamination was found it was the known source of the radioactive materials and was treated as dangerous Roberto dos Santos house on brewer 57 de Vere fee areas scrapyard and Rua 15a Ivo fee areas house on 1f Rua 6 but junkyard vet received a capsule after 25th vigilancia Senate area several more houses 14 cars free buses and 5 pigs every resident in the area was removed and triaged and checked for contamination in addition 112 thousand people were screened of which 249 were found to have been contaminated the most contaminated was sent to Olympic Stadium on the 34 September totalling 22 possible people showing signs of radiation sickness most of the people were even relatives friends or workers at both junkyards all of whom were externally contaminated with cesium 137 some of the worst cases were flown to Rio de Janeiro for specialist care the IAEA investigation goes into great detail order medical treatment for the victims and if I covered it all of this in this video but it will be way too long the report is really worth a read and the link for it is in the description we'll go to the victims later on in the video as october rolled in several key areas for the cleanup were surveyed using a helicopter with detectors mounted to it and with a car also fitted with detectors another car was used throughout the wider city to highlight any other contaminated areas the problem with the cesium 137 was that it was a powder and was water soluble meaning contamination could find its way into virtually anywhere due to large amount of radioactive waste a cleanup effort would produce the disposal site was earmarked 20 kilometers away from goiânia near abadeer decoy yes my October would be spent planning the cleanup efforts a target day of the 21st December was set by the government so that residents and workers could return home for Christmas the cleanup team had a few tough weeks ahead 250 technical staff support by 300 workers headed up the main cleaning efforts seven houses were deemed too contaminated to rescue and were demolished with the rubble sent to the disposal site in total 85 houses were found to have some form of contamination present but least contaminated properties were dealt with first as all the contents inside had to be removed and placed in an uncontaminated area for monitoring any safe items were wrapped in plastic and any remaining items were either cleaned or disposed of everything from cloves photos to toys had to be checked once all the items inside the house were checked the entire property was vacuumed clean to remove any contaminated dust any paint that was deemed to have been exposed was stripped off walls and all floors were washed with an acid based cleaning solution the houses roofs were jet washed and two houses had to have their roofs completely removed due to the high levels of contamination if any property had fruit bearing plants when the produce will be disposed of and all trees were pruned a further 45 public places were contaminated in the area and received varying levels of cleanup efforts depending on the exposure topsoil in all of the contaminated areas was removed and placed in industrial drums for disposal there in depth of soil was removed depending on the radiation levels and some 30 millimetres of new topsoil was added the worst area of contamination was the property that a capsule was originally punctured in meaning cleanup crews could only work for a limited time at the epicenter the site was the last to be decontaminated and was the biggest challenge after weeks of 12-hour shifts but December deadline was met for most of the major cleanup efforts after Christmas the affected areas were surveyed and any extra decontamination that was needed was undertaken in total around 3,500 metres squared of waste was generated that was disposed of with 275 lorry loads sent to the disposal site the environmental cleanup efforts took up a lot of resources and not all contamination was stopped quick enough however the most tragic part of the event was the human cost in all four people lost their lives in de goiânia accident and more would face lifelong injuries both mental and physical first victims worse 6 year old lady and Gabriela on the 23rd of October next was twenty-two-year-old israel Baptista de Santos honor 27th he had been exposed working at de Vere's scrapyard whilst trying to extract lead from a source capsule finally was 18 year old Edmilson Alvis de Souza on a 28th also an employee of de Vere Ferreria his exposure was from working on the source as well de Vere Ferreria survived the incident although he received a very high dose of radiation however he would die in 1994 due to depression and a drinking problem the Guyana incident shows how easy it was fun almost uncontrollable radiological accident to unfold sadly the whole event was completely avoidable as proper stewardship of a potentially dangerous piece of equipment would have never allowed the theft of the source in the first place and the victims of the accident were completely unknowing of the dangers that they encountered teletherapy machines are vital in the fight against cancer and shows a great leap forward in patient treatment many lives are saved each year by the type of equipment involved in a go any incident and is sad that such a machine designed to save life ultimately ended for although not the machines fault but the fault of poor management by its owners free of the owners of the IGR were charged with criminal negligence but were ultimately left off however they were ordered to pay a fine for the condition of the building that has the machine hello everyone and thank you very much for watching the video this is just a quick little plug I've just launched a teespring storefront so if you fancy having any one of these t-shirts that are now flashing up on the screen then please go ahead and buy them it helps out the channel and to celebrate this there is a 25% off discount code in the description of the video thank you very much to my patrons listed here if you'd like to become a patreon afford playing difficult Channel then check out the link for my patreon page in the description as well if you liked the video please leave a like share the video as well if you'd like to show your friends and if you have any suggestions for future videos or would like to discuss this video in particular leave a comment in the section below and 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Channel: Plainly Difficult

Views: 1,373,764

Keywords: Goiania Incedent, Goiania Incident, chernobyl, history, plainly difficult, learning education, atomic history, nuclear, brazil, brazil disaster, amazon brazil

Id: nhL0xQzPSy8

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019