The Goiânia Accident

September 1987
The Goiânia accident started in
September 1987, when scrap
scavengers removed a highly
radioactive C-137 source from its
protective housing in a teletherapy
machine found in an abandoned clinic
in Goiânia, Brazil (population ~ 1
million). They moved the source to a
junkyard for sale as scrap.
Workers broke open the encasement
and cut the 20-gram capsule of C-137
into pieces. The valuable-looking
scrap was then distributed around the
city to friends and family of the
workers. The results were devastating
not only in loss of life but in financial,
economic, and social consequences.
The accidental contamination of Goiânia illustrates the potential for a terrorist group to wreak havoc with
a radioactive source.
The Goiânia accident illustrates
consequences resulting from
unintentional acts involving a source,
in this case the loss of regulatory
control.
 Over 112,000 people (10% of the
population) were monitored. To
monitor so many people, special
facilities had to be made
available, in this case a sports
field. Numerous response
personnel and institutions had to
be mobilized. Radiation
specialists had to be available to
assist those emergency services
that do not normally deal with
radiation, several of which actually feared radiation.
 271 people were contaminated, 20 people were hospitalized, and four died within the first month.
 159 houses were monitored, 101 found to be contaminated resulting in 200 people being evacuated
from their homes. 42 houses required decontamination and six houses were demolished.
 Contamination was removed from 58 public sites, including pavements, squares, shops, and bars.
Contamination was also found on various vehicles: about 64 in all.
 Decontamination of the city required 730 workers. Special radiation protection precautions had to be
implemented for all those personnel.
 Waste management became a special challenge. Due to the large amount of radioactive waste (3,500
cubic meters) generated from that tiny Cs capsule, special waste storage facilities had to be designed
and built. This had to be accomplished extremely fast because there was nowhere else to store the
large volumes of waste.
 The cleanup and restoration cost was approximately $35 million USD (equivalent to $600M today).
 Tourism activities in the city and state reduced to almost zero.
 Sales of cattle, cereals, and other agricultural produce, and of cloth and cotton products, the main
economic products of the area, fell by a quarter in the period after the accident. The GDP of the state
decreased by 20%. It took 10 years for city to recover to pre-accident economic levels.
The lessons learned from the Goiania
incident provide insight into the
possible consequences from the
malicious use of radiological sources.
The psychological stress started for
some victims when they arrived at the
local hospital to be treated. Twenty
people were admitted to the Goiania
General Hospital, a government
facility which was on strike with only
its emergency section functioning.
These victims were at first not
concerned with the consequences of
the accident or aware of the risks
involved. The hospital's director had
arranged for one ward to receive them
and they were left without attention,
either because of fear or lack of
preparation from the hospital staff
regarding radiation syndrome.

Agricultural products from Goiania were boycotted; hotels in Brazil refused Goiania residents to register
as guests; airline pilots refused to fly aircraft with Goiania residents onboard; bus drivers refused Goiania
residents on their busses; passengers of several automobiles with Goiania were stoned.