Radiation "nationwide panic"

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

> The Montreal Gazette Monday edition's front page feature on the Goiania
> Radiation Incident, "Radiation victim remains a pariah," is not the first
> time the 1987 news story has been resurrected. As in the Gazette's Oct.
> 17, 1991 AP story "Brazil's Chernobyl," there is a number of inaccuracies
> in the description of the circumstances. Moreover, the two Gazette
> accounts contradict each other, and both are false.
> 
> The Monday 24 May 1999 story (reprinted from the Dallas Morning News, by
> Tod Robberson) says that "It all began when scavengers rummaging through
> the rubble of a demolished clinic in Goiania carted a heavy metal table to
> a scrap yard..." while the Oct. 17, 1991 story stated that the 1987
> radiation incident came about after "some children discovered a glowing
> capsule in a scrap-paper heap and played with it."
> 
> The most complete discussion of the Goiania story  -  including all
> aspects   from personal physicians' insights, to internal contamination
> measurement procedures and results, to decontamination of affected houses,
> to surveys of trace contamination of local soils and a waterway  -
> appeared in the January 1991 special issue of  HEALTH PHYSICS journal, a
> 100-plus page (solid text) volume subtitled "The Goiania Radiation
> Accident."
> 
> It turns out that in reality, the radioactive Cesium source was stolen
> from a radiotherapy unit by two scavengers who BROKE INTO an abandoned
> clinic. A photo in the Health Physics special issue shows that the Cesium
> source was NOT a "metal table." It was a massive metal block which is
> normally installed over a table on which a patient lies down (familiar to
> anyone who has ever seen or visited a radiotherapy ward). Then it took
> them about three hours to partially break open the container, which was
> later sold to a junk dealer. Sent to a second junkyard, others tried to
> break open the ruptured capsule with a power saw. It took them days before
> they finally succeeded.
> 
> More importantly though, both Gazette articles seek to exonerate the media
> from its malicious involvement in this sad story. The Monday article
> continues on page A5 under the title "Discovery created a nationwide
> panic," whereas in fact it was the MEDIA and JOURNALISTS that "created a
> nationwide panic." 
> 
> As the specialist physicians of the Instituo de Radioprotecao e Dosimetria
> of Brazil explain in some of their articles in Health Physics,
> "participation of the doctors of the city of Goiania and the Hospital's
> medical staff itself... was greatly reduced due to fear or
> misinformation... instead of helping us by explaining exactly what was
> happening, and printing integral interviews with scientists working on the
> project... irresponsible yellow journalism stirred fear in the population
> ...hysteria instigated by the media was very expensive for the government
> and extremely painful to those involved... the victims of Cesium 137 were
> rejected by an entire city and its population... as much discriminated
> against by society (as are) AIDS patients."
> 
> As usual, readers of newspapers never get to find out the truth. Horror
> fantasy is what sells.
> 
> Jaro 
> 
> e-mail: frantaj@aecl.ca
>    
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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