I'm a radiologist involved in disaster planning for my local hospitals. I recently spoke to an FBI agent specializing in weapons of mass destruction. They are worried sick about the "dirty bomb." He thinks this is much more likely than a smallpox epidemic or true nuclear detonation.
Have you heard of the Goiania incident? About 100 grams of cesium-137, an amount you could hold in the palm of one hand, were accidentally released from a medical device in a Brazilian scrapyard in 1987. This resulted in 4 deaths and 30 people hospitalized with acute radiation sickness. Many city blocks were contaminated and 70 homes were torn down.
The Chechens allied with Bin Laden are known to have more than 150 pounds of cesium-137. It is commonly found in hospitals and nuclear waste depots all over the world.
Sweet dreams...
-ccm
Case Study: Accidental Leakage of Cesium-137 in Goiania, Brazil, in 1987
In September of 1987, scavengers dismantled a metal canister from a radiotherapy machine at an abandoned Cancer Clinic in Goiania, Brazil. Five days later a junkyard worker pried open the lead canister to reveal a pretty blue, glowing dust: radioactive cesium-137. In the following days, scores of Goianian citizens were exposed to the radioactive substance. In a nuclear disaster second only to Chernobyl, the city of Goiania had one of the largest radioactive leaks on its hands and for a few days, they knew nothing about it.
History
In the early 1980's, "three doctors had owned the private downtown [Cancer] clinic...when they left [in 1985], the doctors simply abandoned the radiotherapy machine and left the building to deteriorate without windows or doors."i Two years later, the canister containing cesium-137 was found by scavengers. Accounts differ as to who found the canister and how it was opened. However, once the canister was pried open releasing its radioactive contents, tragedy ensued.
Radiation Contamination Facts
Radiation destroys the most rapidly dividing cells of the body the cells of the skin, hair, gastrointestinal tract, and bone marrow. Because the bone marrow gives rise to the blood cells, including those of the immune system and the platelets that staunch bleeding, radiation victims are susceptible to infections and hemorrhaging.
Cesium Facts
Naturally occurring cesium is entirely the nonradioactive isotope, cesium-133 Cesium-137 is useful in medical and industrial radiology because of its long half-life of 30 years...
When cesium comes into contact with plants and animals, it is absorbed into system by replacing potassium.
Goiania Facts
Goiania, city, capital of Goias estado (state), south-central Brazil. (1980) 702,858.
Case
Sometime around September 21, 1987, a lead canister containing 1400 curies of cesium-137 was opened launching the second largest nuclear accident after Chernobyl. The cesium from within the canister was a "luminous blue powder" which both children and adults rubbed on their bodies. Six year old Leide das Neves Ferreira "rubbed the powder on her body so that she glowed and sparkled." She later ate a sandwich tainted with cesium powder from her hands; "she reportedly received five to six times the lethal dose [of radiation] for adults." The cesium was later parceled out to friends and family, spreading the contamination from the junkyard to homes around the city, although mainly contained within a localized area. The radioactive substance continued to contaminate the population for a week before Devair Ferreira finally reported to health authorities.
On September 28, "Devair Ferreira went to the Goiania public clinic where a health care worker correctly diagnosed radiation illness and alerted authorities."ii When the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Commission dispatched a team equipped to handle a radiation accident they found:
244 persons to be contaminated, 54 seriously enough to be hospitalized for further tests or treatment. Thirty-four were treated and released. The next day the ten sickest patients...were airlifted to the Navy hospital, Dias, in Rio.
Upon realizing the severity of the accident, the Brazilian government requested help from the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) which sent a team of doctors.
The medical team found the 20 most seriously irradiated victims had received doses ranging from 100 to 800 rads... Nineteen of the 20 had radiation-induced skin burns, from minor to major. And all 20 patients were internally contaminated, which meant that they were being continually irradiated from the cesium that they had inhaled or accidentally ingested. The patients themselves were radioactive.
Because the patients themselves were radioactive:
...the first task was to attempt to rid their bodies of cesium. For this, they administered Prussian blue, an iron compound that bonds with cesium, aiding its excretion. The problem in this case was the substantial delay-at least a week-from initial exposure to treatment. By that time much of the cesium had moved from the bloodstream into the tissues, where it is far more difficult to remove...the patients were also treated with antibiotics as needed to combat infections and with cell infusions to prevent bleeding.
Between six and eight (according to different accounts) of the most adversely affected patients were treated with an experimental drug called "GM-CSF, or granulocyte-macrophange colony-stimulating factor...one of at least five hormones that boot the production of white blood cells in the [bone] marrow."iv While a debate sprang around the experimental treatment used:
...the doctors injected GM-CSF into each patients vena cava, the central vein that leads to the heart. Within 48 to 72 hours, the white blood cell count increased in five of the six patients...within a week, four of the six patients had dies, overwhelmed by pneumonia, blood poisoning and hemorrhaging.
Six year old, Leide Ferreira was among the four who did not make it.
As the rest of the city was being decontaminated "technicians ...checked more than 34,000 people with Geiger counters at the city's soccer stadium."i However, the National Commission on Nuclear Energy had:
...underestimated the severity of the problem. At least 42 of its technicians did not wear protective overalls, hoods, gloves or boots while carrying out decontamination. And no one remembered for several days to decontaminate the ambulances used to take victims from Rio de Janeiro's Santos Dumont airport to the city's naval hospital- one of only two facilities for treating radiation sickness.
Decontamination efforts were lackadaisical at times, despite the use helicopters equipped with radiation detectors to identify hot spots and the decontamination of items such as furniture and money.ii The accident contaminated homes, businesses and soil. What could not be decontaminated was collected or dismantled and placed in concrete lined drums for disposal as nuclear waste.
Conclusion
It is clear that the city of Goiania and the country of Brazil were ill-prepared for medical treatment of a nuclear disaster, as are many nations. The lack of regulation surrounding the use of nuclear materials in Brazil, by both national and international regulation committees, as well as the abandonment of the radiotherapy machine was an accident waiting to happen. The best protection one can have against a large-scale nuclear disaster happening is two-fold: better regulation and better preparation. The lack of adequate response time and materials greatly contributed to the number of casualties and fatalities. Although it took a few days to report the radioactive leakage, the cause is also twofold. Primarily, the canister should never have been left behind. Secondly, the general public had no idea that they were handling a radioactive substance. The lack of regulation of nuclear substances, whether for medical purposes or electricity, remains a major factor in the possibility of future nuclear accidents.
The city of Goiania now makes money off of its tourism business and it will be many years before the effects of the nuclear disaster of 1987 will be fully realized. The "incubation" period for increases in radiation fallout related Leukemia increases is 9-10 years. It is only in 1996, that we are seeing a significant enough rise in Leukemia cases in areas surrounding Chernobyl, that doctors are considering the possibility of a correlation between the nuclear accident and the rise in leukemia rates.
Although the Goiania accident happened barely a year after the Chernobyl accident, the people of Goiania were able to benefit from decontamination and medical treatment efforts used there. Studies and the monitoring of Chernobyl victims continues to provide the most indepth information on the long-term effects of radiation exposure.
We could deal effectively with the contamination, I fear the panic.
And also WAY less likekly to do significant damage than either said epidemic or nuclear detonation. Sure, it will contaminate a small area pretty badly, and scare the **** out of a lot of people, but the conventional explosive simply cannot spread the rad-waste broadly enough to cause major loss of life.