One handful contaminated a city...

in the fall of 1987 scrapper roberto dos santos elves decided that he could no longer ignore the rumors he'd been hearing hidden in the crumbling and cracking building near his home in goyonja brazil supposedly was a scavenger's treasure a treasure that looked like another man's trash it was september 10th of that year when alves and his friend wagner pejera descended on the site with simple tools and after some poking and prying they uncovered their treasure what appeared to be a shiny metal capsule no larger than a thermos over the next few days alves was further able to disassemble the capsule revealing something that looked even more valuable he had been vomiting and feeling dizzy during this time but he thought it was just something that he ate alves took all the pieces they had by wheelbarrow to a one devier fejera the owner of the scrapyard gave elves 25 for the shiny assembly and placed the pieces in his garage when night fell fejera noticed something odd the pieces in his garage were glowing and glowing blue three days later family and friends had been invited to see the blue oddity and soon fejera's employee ernesto fabiano had cracked the canister's one millimeter thick glass window wide open and the true treasure spilled out it was 93 grams of a sparkling crystalline powder less material than would fill a third of a soda can that crumbled easily between the fingers fabiano took a large glowing crystal to make a ring for his wife describing it like carnival glitter and gave some of the powder to his brother to take home vegeta's brother dipped a finger into the dust and drew a cross across his abdomen family and friends sifted and examined over the next week pieces of the original assembly would be distributed across multiple scrap yards and glowing blue dust would be sprinkled in many homes and on many bodies across the city and so began one of the worst nuclear disasters in history this is the true story of the geyonya incident goyonya is the capital and largest city of the brazilian state of goyas it sits on the central brazilian plateau a region known for its cereal farms and cattle ranches in 1971 a cancer treatment center local to goyonja bought a radiotherapy machine a device that focuses beams of energy emanating from highly radioactive source material into tumors when the practice finally closed 14 years later it didn't take the machine with it it was abandoned as was the building most of the clinic was subsequently demolished and left in a derelict state this was already a disaster in potentia as the radioactive heart of the therapy device was now an orphan source a self-contained radioactive source no longer under proper regulatory control lost stolen or otherwise unaccounted for and that made it extremely dangerous as the entire city would soon find out the unstable nuclei inside of the orphan source ernesto fabiano would soon open were that of cesium 137 a common fission byproduct of the natural and man-driven decay of uranium and unfortunately for goyonja cesium-137 is one of the most problematic isotopes there is it is seriously radioactive has a relatively long half-life and disperses quickly and easily through an environment as one of its most regular chemical compounds is a water-soluble salt widespread cesium contamination after both the chernobyl and fukushima daiichi nuclear disasters is proof enough of cesium's deadly potential less than a quarter of a pound of caesium 137 salt doesn't sound like much all of it would fit in a small sandwich bag but the immense potential of the nuclear and the social and curious nature of humans meant that it was more than enough to trigger the screening of more than 100 000 brazilians in the fall of 1987. all of them would return home and many wouldn't have homes to return to in biology there is a term called an evolutionary trap this is where some evolved behavior can suddenly become maladaptive in a rapidly changing environment sea turtles for example who evolved over millions of years to hatch and then use the moon to find their way to the sea can exhaust themselves and die in a modern world where many beaches and coastlines are lined with artificial lights much brighter than the moon and facing in the wrong direction australian jewel beetles can take themselves out of the gene pool by mistakingly mating with similarly shaped and colored discarded beer bottles the human pancha for the shiny and glossy made 93 grams of cesium-137 dangerously attractive in a similar way it is relevant to note said a 1988 report by the international atomic energy agency that the interest aroused by the blue glow that emanated from the radioactive cesium chloride significantly affected the course of the accident end quote in other words if the cesium did not have an almost supernatural glow more people would have survived after ernesto fabiano opened the pandora's box the young scrappers had found the curious powder was passed between no fewer than 22 fejera family members for five days fragments the size of rice grains were given to several families deveir's wife maria gabriella covered her pajamas the sparkling blue dust and her bed sheets her mother came to visit her when she started vomiting and then returned home days later bringing contamination with her after otis and fejera held the gleaming dust in his hands he went back to work he was a bus driver he came into contact with dozens of people deveir's brother evo brought back some crystals to his house too his six-year-old daughter leger was infatuated she rubbed the crumbling glitter all over her arms and hands she ate her lunch while admiring how her fingers were sparkling within 10 minutes she was throwing up within 10 days of opening the cesium capsule a significant number of people were vomiting had diarrhea and displayed skin lesions and burns local doctors put the symptoms on obscure tropical diseases or food poisoning at this point no one really knew what seemed to be killing goyona's families that was until maria gabriella convinced that the glowing blue powder was the true culprit got on a bus with an employee of her husband's junkyard and headed for a nearby public health department the employee was carrying the radiotherapy assembly and all the glowing blue powder he could find in a bag slung over his shoulder an intense radiation burn would later reveal exactly which shoulder the bag was on on september 28 1987 maria gabriella who had been dizzy and vomiting for days at this point walked into the vigilancia sanitaria and placed the bag carrying the remains of the radiotherapy unit on a doctor's desk this she said firmly this was killing her family the doctor dismissed both maria and the junkyard employee to a health center and then later to a tropical diseases center where a number of those who had handled the glowing powder were now showing up the doctor eventually got worried enough about the mysterious bag maria was carrying that he moved it to this chair in the courtyard of the health center at the same time another doctor on site was starting to suspect that the many skin lesions being reported were not from any tropical disease but from radiation damage he contacted yet another doctor who was working at the tropical diseases center only to discover that he wasn't the first doctor who had called him about suspicious symptoms it was decided to have a visiting medical physicist come and inspect the bag maria had brought but the physicist wouldn't be able to do so for at least another day [Music] the next morning the visiting physicist had borrowed a centolometer from a local government agency usually used for geology and set out towards the vigilancia sanitaria he decided to switch the meter on before he entered the building and the meter immediately indicated the highest value it could measure no matter what direction the physicist pointed the detector the radiation levels were off the charts something must be wrong with the meter he thought so he returned to the local government agency to get a replacement two hours later he returned with a new meter but again the centalometer displayed the highest amount of radioactivity that it could simultaneously the doctor who saw maria gabriella had called the fire department the physicist now convinced that there was a major source of radiation inside the health center had to persuade the firefighters not to go near the source and that's because they were planning on picking up the bag and throwing it in the nearest river the rest of the day was a blur of activity 40 minutes later the police and fire brigades helped evacuate everyone from the health center an hour after that doctors had descended on deferred fejera's junkyard and found the same off the charts readings fejera and his family who had to be convinced were evacuated over the next few hours government agencies were contacted the secretary for health was informed and the national nuclear energy commission was brought up to speed by nightfall the secretary for health had made the city's olympic stadium a staging ground for receiving potentially contaminated persons and the tropical diseases hospital the first to see many of the suspicious symptoms was informed that their patients were in fact irradiated known sites of contamination were re-surveyed and the civil defense force was put on alert [Music] the estadio olimpico pedro ludovico has a capacity of 13 and a half thousand people beginning on september 30th the national nuclear energy commission would monitor over a hundred and twelve thousand people there on the field those most affected by the radiation were placed in tents and more people throughout the city were showing up after hearing rumors many tried to go to the olympic stadium simply for reassurance although no local plans for responding to radiological emergencies on the scale had existed concluded the 1988 report by the international atomic energy agency the authority's improvised strategy worked effectively in bringing the situation under control and preventing further serious exposure contaminated persons were directed to take showers and place their clothes in bags this reduced the ticking of radiation meters by between 50 and 80 percent and monitoring equipment was set up to screen the hundreds lining up outside the stadium unfortunately decontamination was only partially successful as the most affected victims were constantly sweating out the cesium-137 that had accumulated inside of their bodies in the early morning hours of september 30th authorities returned to the vigilancia sanitaria to contain the remainder of the source first brought in by bus by maria gabriela a small crane was used to lower a section of sewer pipe over the chair where the bag still sat and then concrete was pumped in over the wall to seal a chair inside the pipe forever radiation rates dropped dramatically of the 112 000 people monitored for cesium-137 exposure in goyonja 1000 had received the equivalent of an entire year's worth of normal background radiation in just a few days 249 people were seriously contaminated either externally or internally through direct contact with the cesium dust and of those people 20 displayed acute radiation sickness needing immediate hospital treatment these patients were transported to hospitals across brazil but at goyonja general hospital the patients were left uncared for for two days as no one on site had the training to deal with the irradiated 19 of the 20 most contaminated had some sort of serious skin injury swelling bronzing blistering loss of skin entirely ernesto fabiano who took a rice grain sized chunk of cesium to make a ring for his wife ended up putting that piece in his pocket against his thigh the radiation ate all the way into his largest muscles the bus driver odesen fejera lost most of the skin on his hand where he handled the powder and would end up losing the tips of some fingers the rupture of a medical device in goyonja resulted in the worst case of cesium-137 contamination in medical history a history that includes both fukushima daiichi and chernobyl and sadly not all of the tragically curious 20 would survive the goal of this documentary is not to exploit the trauma or the injuries of the people of goyonja rather it is to show how the unimaginable potential of nuclear reactions can lead to disaster when not properly respected managed and communicated this could be no clearer than after legie fejera died the six-year-old who thought she was playing with fairy dust after legend succumbed to acute radiation poisoning her body was transferred to be buried in a cemetery back in goyonja the news of her impending burial caused a riot of nearly 2 000 people they believed that her body would poison the land they used stones and bricks to block the car carrying her body but she was still successfully buried in a special fiberglass coffin lined with lead the military also had to hold back protesters during the burial of israel baptista dos santos one of the scrapyard employees who dismantled the cesium capsule for its lead admiralson alves de souza aged 18 worked with dos santos and also died maria gabriella aunt of leijer and wife of de vair died on the same day as her niece one month after exposure the goyona incident would end up costing four lives the contamination of an entire city and an economic catastrophe all from less material than would fill half of a tennis ball if there is anything at all good to say about the goyona incident it's that the situation was brought under control by swiftly acting public and private personnel extremely quickly within three days of discovering that it was the glowing blue powder that was burning through unfortunate families all sources of exposure were identified and contained by the following saturday the main concerns were patient treatment and the cleanup of contaminated sites a helicopter was brought in to survey more than 67 square kilometers detectors mounted inside of cars checked on and around more than 2 000 kilometers of roads 85 houses were significantly contaminated 42 of them were decontaminated with vacuums and pressure washers the rest along with several city blocks were demolished three buses 14 cars and 50 000 rolls of toilet paper were also now radioactive in total three and a half thousand cubic meters of waste was sealed away around one and a half olympic swimming pools of cesium poison material by christmas all the main sites of contamination were dealt with and work continued with the hopes of returning the area to normal for the next three months but while dust can be buried and homes can be rebuilt the people of goyona lived with the lingering effects of just a handful of glowing powder for the rest of their lives the fejera family lost everything their homes had to be destroyed irradiated pets had to be put down whole family histories packed into drums of nuclear waste and buried the junkyard owner defyir pictured here died seven years after his wife maria gabriela leger reportedly due to a plunging depression and years of heavy drinking wagner pejera one of the two original thieves of the orphan source would be scarred for life the bus driver otis and fejera was marked in a similar way losing parts of his fingers and the skin on his hands and the damage done in goyonja wasn't all physical after the incident odison recalls being ostracized by his community his neighbors as they did with lesia's burial tried to block his family from moving into certain neighborhoods he ended up getting a vasectomy because he was now too afraid to have any more children i still have pain in my hands especially when the temperature changes odison told beyond nuclear international in 2018 sometimes my hands are so hot that i have to put them in the freezer today odison is the president of the association of cesium victims of goyonja which has more than sixteen hundred members seeking continued compensation and medical treatment in 2017 he received an honorary lifetime achievement award the uranium film festival for his many decades of advocacy the original radiotherapy capsule taken by the military back in 1987 is now on display at the school of specialized instruction in rio de janeiro and is much less fatally attractive the accident in goyonja the 1988 report by the international atomic energy agency concludes shows how actions that would have been innocuous under ordinary circumstances became matters of life and death if humans weren't such social creatures if we didn't like to touch and to share if cesium-137 weren't so radioactive enough to ionize the air around it this disaster might have been avoided entirely instead a curious consequence of our quest to fully harness the near limitless potential of the nuclear lives on to scar the minds parts and hands of the people of goyona after the cancer treatment clinic was abandoned in 1985 one of its owners tried to return and recover some of the objects left behind including the radiotherapy machine a court-appointed police force stopped him as the owners of the land the clinic was built on disputed the final state of the building now deterred the man warned that they would be responsible quote for what would happen with the cesium bomb end quote and all this happened four months before the incident and records now show that the state court of goyass brazil knew that there was radioactive material inside the abandoned building for more than a year before two young men looking for scrap metal accidentally started the worst radiological disaster in latin america's history until next time thank you so much to the very nerdy staff at the facility for the direct and substantial support in the creation of this year video today especially i'd like to recognize research assistant chuch and visiting scholar gabe santos yes i picked his name because i was ready to say if you want to join the facility if you want to drape on a silky white lab coat if you want to see videos like this early if you want to talk to me on discord if you want private members only live streams with yours truly not like that you can go to patreon.com kyle hill and join the facility today and hey if you support us just enough you get your name on arya here in every single video and there's literally hundreds of you i've i have no idea how i'm gonna pass the look if there's any portuguese speakers or brazilians watching first of all i want to apologize if i totally messed up the names in this entire video it probably infuriated you the whole time i did my best with pronunciation guides i'm sorry or i'm not sorry depending on how i did and if you live outside of latin america you might never heard of the geonia incident but actually you may have there's an episode of the popular children's cartoon captain planet he's our hero going to bring pollution down there's an episode called deadly glow where two children find a glowing blue piece of scrap it's actually cesium-137 and they have to get have to bring pollution down to we need to bring pollution down to zero that's why orphan sources are so hard to deal with he's our hero you know what i was going to say thanks

Channel: Kyle Hill

Views: 1,772,664

Keywords: because science, engineering, kyle hill, learning, math, physics, science, stem, the facility, chernobyl, goiania incident, goiania brazil, goiania nuclear accident, nuclear accident, radiation poisoning, true crime

Id: -k3NJXGSIIA

Length: 21min 51sec (1311 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/lord_taint]

His nuclear diaries videos have been really interesting.

[u/havok7]

How is this not a movie yet??!!?

Title: Orphan Source

This thing would write itself.

[u/whitesummerside]

Thanks for sharing. Half Life Histories is one of my favorite ongoing things on YouTube. I usually have the series as background noise sometimes. Kyle is a great, informative storyteller.

[u/stereoworld]

I watched the Fascinating Horror coverage of this the other day - I can't believe I've never heard of this tragedy before. Absolute madness.

[u/planetworthofbugs]

That was super interesting, thanks! Seems crazy that the adults didn't think "wow, this powder is glowing, maybe it's radioactive".

Unfortunately, "The Simpsons" didn't start until two years later :p

[u/antney0615]

Thanks for posting, I watched the whole thing! I heard about this incident a long time ago but this had a lot more information.

[u/Timedoutsob]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

The Goiânia accident [ɡojˈjɐniɐ] was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, in Goiânia, in the Brazilian state of Goiás, after a forgotten radiotherapy source was found in an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths. About 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination and 249 of them were found to have been contaminated.[1][2]

In the consequent cleanup operation, topsoil had to be removed from several sites, and several houses were demolished. All the objects from within those houses, including personal possessions, were seized and incinerated. Time magazine has identified the accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters" and the International Atomic Energy Agency called it "one of the world's worst radiological incidents"

[u/Saroroca]

Is my home town...My mother was pregnant of my older sister at the time of the tragedy. She lived far from neighborhood where it happened, but she was terrified just like everybody else in town.

I know the history my whole life, and always felt particularly sad about the death of the child Leide das Neves.