Goiania 137Cs Accident
(September 13-29, 1987, Goiania, Brazil)
   

Accident Scenario
September 13: 137Cs therapy unit (50.9 TBq) was stolen from the Institute of Goiania Radiotherapy (A) by twp scavengers (B).
September 18: The source was brought to the junkman ©, and left first in his house and later in the junkyard.
September 28: The wife of the junkman brought the source to the Sanitary Surveillance Division (F) for inspection.
September 29: The source was found to be highly radioactive by GM survey meter, and CNEN was notified of this.
            The evacuation of the building and control to the access to the area.

Actions
Monitoring: 112,000; Contamination: 249; External and internal contamination: 129; Hospitalized: 42
 Interlaboratory comparison

Blood sample was obtained from a severely exposed victim on October 2, 1987, and lymphocyte cultures and chromosome preparations were made in separate laboratories (#1 and #2).

Reference: Ramalho, A. T.1, Nascimento, A. C. H.1, Littlefield, L. G.2, Natarajan, A. T.3 and Sasaki, M. S.4 (1991). Frequency of chromosomal aberrations in a subject accidentally exposed to 137Cs in Goiania (Brazil) radiation accident: intercomparison among four laboratories. Mutation Res., 252:157-160.
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Culture No. of Aberrations Distribution of cells with indicated number of aberrations
ID cells Cu Ds Tet Tri Dic Rc Ra aM F del S del Aberr 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
#1 100 57 4 0 2 57 5 2 16 70 8 9 5 Dics 54 34 7 5
D+R 49 38 8 4 1
Del 88 11 1
All 39 37 13 8 3
#2 145 91 2 0 2 107 15 8 18 117 9 21 13 Dics 73 39 29 3 1
D+R 64 40 32 7 1 1
Del 125 18 2
All 52 39 34 14 5 1
Total 245 418 6 0 4 164 20 10 34 187 17 30 18 Dics 127 73 36 8 1
D+R 113 78 40 11 2 1
Del 213 29 3
All 91 76 47 22 8 1
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 Dose distribution profiles as assessed by unfolding the distribution of dics+rings by the method of Sasaki, M. S. (2003) Int. J. Radiat. Biol., 79:83-97.