RES: Dirty Bomb - CNN Accuracy?

["John Hunt" <john@ird.gov.br>]

Dear John Andrews,

 

Speaking as one who worked from the beginning doing radiation protection work in the hospital in Goiania which interned some of the contaminated patients, I can assure you that showering (and later steam baths)  was a twice daily requirement.

 

The isolation was also for medical reasons, but as it happened very easy to apply: no-one, not even the hospital cleaning staff, wanted to know about us. For more information there is the Health Physics article:  

 

Oliveira A., Hunt J., Brandão C.E., Valverde, General Medical and Related Aspects of the Goiânia Accident , Health Physics, 1991.  

 

and also:

 

The January 1991 issue of Health Physics was a special issue on "The Goiania Radiation Accident." Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 1988, 25(3):217 and the IAEA Publication, STI/Pub/815, ISBN 92-0-129088-8, 1988.

 

John Hunt.

-----Mensagem original-----
De: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu [mailto:owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu]Em nome de AndrewsJP@AOL.COM
Enviada em: terça-feira, 11 de junho de 2002 17:50
Para: mcnaught@LANL.GOV; epirad@mchsi.com
Cc: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Assunto: Re: Dirty Bomb - CNN Accuracy?

In a message dated 6/11/02 11:12:09 AM Pacific Daylight Time, mcnaught@lanl.gov writes:

Remember Goiania. What should you do with a child who is contaminated with
Cs-137? (a) wash her, or (b) isolate her? The hospital chose: b.

mike
Mike McNaughton
Los Alamos National Lab.

My guess is that the hospital identified the child as contaminated, then washed her, then evaluated the contamination remaining and decided to isolate her.

I once worked with a man who was thoroughly contaminated with Cs-137 (elsewhere).  He was fine except for an unrelated intestinal infection.  We followed his excretion pattern for several hundred days.  Interestingly, most of his excretion was in the feces.  He worked at a nuclear facility and did not require isolation.



John Andrews
Knoxville, Tennessee