A Brief History of: The Goiania Incident (Short Documentary) 

Type correction it’s 120,000 not 120,00 my bad!

Brazilian Judge: No you may not remove radioactive materials. Also Judge: You are criminally negligent for not removing radioactive materials.

Radiologist: "Wait this reading can't be right, let me go grab another unit." Radiologist: "Uh oh."

"used it for body glitter" just makes me want to scream in horror.

I can just imagine doctors doing a "YOU WHAT??" moment when they the patients were explaining what happened

You missed the weirdest part: There WAS a guard at the site, but that day he left earlier so he and his family could go see Herbie Goes Bananas

So the court basically said we know there's a radiotherapy equipment in the abandoned building, you are not allowed to remove it. Then, after the inevitable happens, they charged them for not taking care of the radiotherapy equipment?! This is just crazy...

I have a suggestion the 1962 Mexico city radiation accident that killed an entire family because a little boy found a cobalt 60 source on the side of a scrap yard and then carried it in his pocket for two weeks

Citizen from Goiânia here. And yes, this was awful. Brazilian education for the poor in the 80's was insuficient and overall bad, and most people would be clueless about something so dangerous. This could've gotten much worse. The ones that where aware of the danger, and just left the dangerous material on that building should've recieved more serious punishment, but as you can guess, IGR and their executive staff are fine to this day. There are some other facts. People on Abadia de Goiás protested against the building of the disposal site, and some people are still not pleased about it to this day. The little girl, Leide, had to be buried on a sealed lead and concrete coffin, and there where protests on the cemetery too, from people that didn't want her body to be buried there. To this day Goiânia is known mainly for two things: being one of the less violent capitals of Brazil (not by that much) and the Cesium-137 incident. And the jokes about the people of Goiânia being radiocative mutants come arround quite a lot.

Great work! I'm from Goiânia and always lived in the accident's neighborhood. I'm 47 now, but there's no way to forget the scenario, the guys wearing protective disposable clothes, the barrels, the containment and all that live horror movie. (I just don't remember the pigs, but this must be because of my age :P) I knew Roberto Alves personally. Indeed he was a scrapper, a funny one. At times he showed up with a piece of something to trade. I remember the IGR facilities, it was a piece of no man's land at the very center of the city. Only debris, no walls, no fences, no sign, no nothing. At all! And a big chunk of lead in the middle, that could worth some good money. Too bad those pals couldn't realize the dimension of the threat. They just took something that was left in the open. The results last for decades. Surprisingly, cancer didn't prevail as dramatically as expected, which makes us think about how stochastic effects take place. Yesterday we lost a dear friend who lived next door to one of the scrapyards, not due to cancer but aortic aneurysm. Prejudice was insanely cruel. Cars were pelted, people from Goiânia used to be banned from public places in other cities, insanity... Lord, have mercy! Ignorance kills. Lessons were hard. And the feeling is unforgettable. Keep going, friend. Keep spreading the stories so that it never happens again. Thanks!

I think the saddest part of this story is that 6 year old girl living her innocent life as expected.... then an adult entering the area with something and going”. Oooohhh loooook”. Pretty”. Placing substance down for child to inspect......”. Dam that’s sad

"Radiation is the gift that keeps on giving." -Gordon Freeman

Here are a few extra details that people may be interested in. - When Gabriela decided to take the 'salt' powder to the authorities on the bus, she had a friend help her who subsequently ended up carrying the bag containing the caesium-137 on his shoulder between the bus and the clinic they took it to. This resulted in a significant radiation burn to his shoulder and a considerable full body dose of radiation, which thankfully he survived. - Once they got the powder to the clinic, the doctor they saw still didn't initially recognise it for what it was and kept it on his desk for a while. Meanwhile, they were both sent off to a clinic for assessment and then on to the Tropical Diseases Hospital. - Meanwhile, the doctor with the bag full of caesium-137 on his desk decided he was worried enough to move it to a chair against an outside wall of a courtyard where it sat for most of another day. - As the video explains, red flags finally started to get raised, both by the original doctor and also over at the Tropical Diseases Hospital where another doctor finally realised they were dealing with radiation burns. One final kicker though. Whilst the physicist with the dose rate meter was busy realising that there was a major source of radiation somewhere in the city, the original doctor back in the hospital with his suspicious package decided to call the local fire brigade. In the words of the official International Atomic Energy Agency report into the incident, the scientist with the dose meter "arrived just in time to dissuade the fire brigade from their initial intention of picking up the source and throwing it into a river".

Stories like this are the most scary for me. These people didn't even know they were exposed to deadly radiation. They thought that these are just pretty glowy glittery thingies. And this story about little girl eating contaminated sandwich. Parents had no clue that this would kill her. This absence of understanding that they are straight on killing themselves is just terrifying.

Huge fucking kudos to Gabriela for recognizing the pattern of sickness associated with the powder and not only rushing her family to the hospital, but fucking *collecting as much powder as she could for evidence because she knows it will help.* Everyone in the comments busy talking about how “stupid” these people are (they’re disadvantaged and uneducated how tf do you expect them to know what caesium is, looks like and does?) but no one is talking about how sharp and astute she was to observe what’s going on and take that action. Fuck yeah Gabriela, mom of the year!

Man this makes me, a radiology technician, really happy that we're using liniar accalerators and cyclotrons instead of these outdated units, which are actually hazardous to their surroundings and the staff that are operating them.

My wife’s mother lived in a small town about 2hours drive outside of Rio de Janiero. She fell ill and my wife and I flew to Brazil to see her. The hospital where she was being treated seemed normal, but one day I accidentally walked up the stairs to a higher floor than I needed to. The stairs were barricaded with plastic chairs, but there was a way through. I went through to find the top floor of the hospital was abandoned, complete with all large equipment still in place, and was being used by vagrants and drug addicts who got in through the fire escape. I asked the staff downstairs about it and they said they could not afford to keep the floor open and they were waiting for the management to seal it off and take out the heavy equipment. That was 3 years before.

Of course they had to fine the owner of the hospital who warned the officials long beforehand and was ignored by them.

This is amazing how something so simple and stupid led to so much misery

That's the scariest part of radioactive waste. It's not a glowing drum of green goop. It can be as harmless looking as the dirt in your front yard, and you don't know you've been exposed until the damage is already done.

Impressed by how quickly the professionals jumped to action. Good for them.

I was watching a documentary about this case, and a lot of things were covered up. They hired truck drivers to take the radioactive dirt and debris to a dump telling them it was contaminated with "gas". These drivers never wore any protection against radiation and they were not told at all it was radiation. A truck driver discovered it was cesium because he had a friend who knew radioactive materials. After that he told it to the press what it really was and then the sh*t really begun. And the ones who died had to be buried in a special coffin (just like people in Chernobyl). In the day of the burial people went berserk because they thought these people who died (including the kid) brought the "desease". Everything was a shame. And unfortunately people are still paying the toll for this neglect. Really sad.

Lesson of the day, dont go scrap huntimg at places containing radioactive materials.

The glitter part reminds of how some old civilizations would use dangerous substances as makeup, normally slowly killing the ones using it.

"This reading can't be right." Is one of the things you never want to hear from a Radiologist

As a brazilian I am so glad you covered this case, thanks for raising more awareness about it! This incident should not be forgotten

7:21 Oh it just gets worse. 7:30 JESUS. 8:06 Oh good god no. 8:43 NOOOOOO 9:23 (insert not great but not terrible joke here) 10:47 So not a large clean up needed then... Amazing to think how much damage was caused by something so simple. Great video.

Its like Chernobyl but with a tropical twist

Your attempt of speaking Portuguese gave me Neurological Damage, oh wait, it was this funky glitter I found.

Its amazing that the court goes after the owners when the same court told the owners they could not enter the premises to take their equipment.... seems like the people who are responsible dont want to admit they messed up....

"I've fallen in love with the glow of death" Devair Alves Ferreira (1950/51 - 1994)

Not mentioned: Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years, decaying into stable Barium-137. So half of the radioactive material has already decayed.

I swear this sounds like a scrip for a dark comedy

This and similar chemical incidents led to the adoption of pictogram warnings on dangerous equipment as an effort to warn people even if they can't read identification placards due to a language barrier.

I was born in Goiânia in 1984 and still live here. That`s such a sad part of our history, its kinda surreal to see it being presented in technical terms when so much emotion was (and still is) involved. Some of the sites are still there. Maybe someday I`ll add some details to this comment on how it was from a citzens POV. Anyway, you did a pretty good job explaining it to the general public, much richer in details than some brazillian channels. And yes, you did butcher portuguese language to the full extent, lol. It`s all good though, we also do that when trying to speak english. Take care!

This one reminds me of my grandparents telling this story, and how here in Salvador they would avoid cars with a license plate that said "Goiania" like the plague when they saw one, and not approach anyone with a Goias' accent. We don't have a nuclear bomb, we had no nuclear energy at the time, and we still fucked up. Our ability to screw up is a record! Also, I laughed really hard at some of your pronunciations, sorry. But I understand you, suddenly being asked to pronounce a language with which you have very little familiarity must be tough. I can think of several languages, like Arabic or Mandarin, where I'd do 10 times worst, so good job, actually. Oh, and superb video, as always.

Moral of story ; if you don't know what something is LEAVE IT BE!!!!!!

This was very interesting. There are 2 other incidents you might look in to. One is about a cobalt therapy machine. The machine was scrapped and the core containing the cobalt pellets got mixed in with other scrap metals. It got melted down by a company in Mexico and was made into rebar and sold to the US for concrete reinforcement and I can't remember where most of it went. I vaguely remember something about new york but all the buildings that used the rebar are radioactive. Another interesting one is called the Indiana incident where a very powerful tiny radioactive probe from a remote afterloader therapy machine broke off in a patient and no one knew it. The patient passed away and when the body got to the funeral home, their radiation detectors went crazy. Tons of people were exposed to this pt and got huge doses of radiation.

Lmao faulty meter. Gee where have we heard that before

"ooooooooh, a lot of scrap metal" "damn this thing is sealed well" "nice shiny heavy part in the middle" "this thing twists open, and shines blue, cool!" "maybe its gunpowder" "let's give some to everybody" (facepalm trough skull)

USSR: Chernobyl was a disaster USA: Three Mile Island was a “disaster” UK: Windscale was a disaster Brazil: YO WATCH THIS SHIT! *proceeds to use radioactive material as glitter*

There was a chunk in the middle of that where like every additional second made me angrier than the last.

"How much of that dodgy curry takeout did you have??" "Just 3.6oz - not great not terrible..."

6:07 After puncturing the glass with a screwdriver he scooped out some of the material and tried to eat it in a bowl with Milk thinking it was Captain Crunch Cereal.

"i fall in love with a shine of death" This line is said by devair , describe very well how unfortunately and sad this is , he died seven years later after this , in depression .

Brazil at its finest. Scrapdealer buying a a hunk of metal full of radioactive caesium and giving it to friends.

"The assembly, being made of stainless steel, was SHINY AND LOOKED VALUABLE." Brazil: some adult supervision will be required.

Using it as a glitter. Holy frack, people.....

I'm only like 8 minutes into the video and already this story is gonna give me a hernia out of stress

Doctors: "noooo you can't manipulate extremely dangerous metal scraps that contain large amounts of Cesium-137!" Brazilians: "haha shiny glitter go brrr"

There's actually a full report of the incident in PDF format online. The details are even more gruesome than they are here.

[Insert 3.6 roentgen joke here]

Interestingly, since these events, the "radioactive" symbols which is so common in the west (but unknown elsewhere has been supplemented with many skull and crossbones designs, to try and avoid future incidents like this one.

Imagine seeing a sparkly powder that glows blue and thinking “yea lemme let my 6 year old child play with it im sure itll be fine”

I was born in Goiânia. That incident is still quite famous, and although it could've been prevented and was overall something terrible, at least it served to teach us to correctly keep/dispose of that kind of machinery and how dangerous it is to mess with such things when you're not correctly trained/equiped to do so. The saddest part, though, was how much the little girl who smeared the Caesium 137 all over her body suffered. She was only six years old, an innocent victim of people's ignorance and greed, and had to die in such a gruesome way :( Oh, also, Devair's death was not only because of his drinking problem and depression. He developed cancer because of the radiation exposure. Ivo Ferreira, the father of the little girl, was the only one directly involved who died of something "unrelated" to the radiation. As he was also wracked by guilt, he had depression because of that, so he started smoking 6 packs of cigar a day, and died 16 years later due to a pulmonary emphysema.

The writers of Cyberpunk 2077 once said that Brazil was the most "cyberpunk dystopia" country they knew of. I didn't know what they meant by that back then. I do now.

My favorite part was the contamination list "and five pigs"

I remember learning of this incident in a nuclear materials handling lecture, but at the time I had no idea the scale of the contamination was so large!

The worst part of this story is that it was 100% preventable. One of the owners who were in the dispute at the time asked for a judge in court for access to remove the machine for safety reasons and had his request denied many times. When he finally gave up on it he made a statement on the record of the courts saying "people will die because of this and it will be your fault"

Great video! I've been looking for a well-made video in English for a long time and I'm glad I found it to share with others. I'm a Goiânia's citizen and I personally know many people who worked in the accident. My father was a firefighter at that time and he was part of the logistics dealing with the contaminated people. Many people, unfortunately, in the following years came to develop detrimental health consequences. Congratulations👏🏻👏🏻

As a Brazilian, it's super interesting to see a foreigner talking about this incident, especially because there are few videos in english about. Thank you!

The Star Trek TNG episode "Thine Own Self" was loosely based on this incident.

That was an amazing account. Well meaning medical tech placed in countries without proper logistical support for them. The manufacturer probably would have agreed to arrange a pickup if someone had known who to call, saving people from death and suffering. Thanks for the work you did to bring this to the global awareness!

One of the damn saddest true stories I have ever heard. Poor people just trying to scrap out a living. But this could very well happen here in America. ALL of these units need to never 'evaporate' from the legal agencies that confirm they were properly disposed of. Awful awful story. Excellent video.

Goiânia's court before: "Yeah, we know there is a potentially lethal piece of equipment in a unwatched building open to thieves. You can't remove it nor enter into the building to check its condition." Goiânia's court after: "you are charged to have negligently left a potentially lethal piece of equipment unwatched."

Goiania: "Hey, can i borrow your homework for a bit?" Chernobyl: "Sure, just make sure you change it a bit."

I thought of Cheech and Chong taking it apart. Like check it out man, it’s some kind of like green stuff man. Like wow man.

Gosh, there's a lot of people with food allergies lately. Ohwell!

If someone had something like this here in the USA I can see the same things happen as people really don't know much about radioactive material.

"I fell in love with the glow of Death." - Devair Alves Ferreira.

I have to say, I really appreciate the MS Paint-style artwork for all the visuals for which an actual picture wouldn't/couldn't fit. :D

you usually do a good job of having great detail without making it so detailed it becomes boring. I think this video shows your getting better at it. keep up the great work bud!

Darwin level: God

Even briefer summary: Two dudes steal a medical instrument and four people die because they thought it was cool

I LOVE your channel, just stumbled upon it today and have watched around 25 videos so far, very well done man!!

Thanks for such a well produced video, it's great when people like you put so much effort into help educate others

This is why i have a Gieger counter. It is fun to walk around with, my house had extremely high readings due too Radon gas, so I installed the proper methods to deal with that. A few hot particles i found on my roof, probably from Japan. And completely unknown to us all, the uranium glass that lines my cabinets. We had no idea that all our plates and cups were radioactive. They are shelf pieces now.

Oh I remember it. Some relatives were involved. :( It seems that after this accident scrap yards around the world (not in brazil) have radiation detectors.

What’s weird is I hear about what they did with the cesium and think “that must be some ridiculous, third world education they’re playing with”. Took me a second to realize that near every adult around me in college and the military in the US would have acted the same exact way. Gives me far less hope in humanity.

Everyone is gangsta until the banana tree starts talking.

Great vid as always Plainly Difficult!I've never knew about this & I've always been fascinated with radiation related disaster to be spread among the people rather than simply seeing a general overview the general disaster

Pronunciation warning. I love it!

The busy strings part in danse macabre is actually really good for documentary openings

It was glowing blue, so he thought it might be valuable... or HAUNTED. I have no words for this level of ignorance.

The little girl who died was so contaminated she had to be buried in a lead lined coffin. I can't imagine how painful a death that was, especially for a young child.

I was thinking this morning while i was watching the demon core video that it had been a while since an upload, another good video thanks!

Lesson of the day, if it glows in the dark. Dont bring it in the house

There's an error at 2:48 the logo shown is from Argentina's CNEA Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Brazil regulatory agency is CNEN and the logo is totally different

Hi! First of all, thank you very much for the respect and kindness that you displayed on making this video. Is very common to see diminishing comments about the people involved. They were poor and unneducated people, and Brazil had just freed itself form a military dictatorship at that time. So, again, thank you for being an amazing human being. I would like to make an addition to Ivan's great comment. I was born after the accident happened, around 10 years later, and every single school here in Goiânia used to teach about the radiologic accident. The original IGR site exists until today, it is a tomb of concrete, next to a Convention Center. My parents told me histories about the suffering, stigma and prejudice that folks of our town recieved all around the country. The mayor and governor covered up the case because huge sports competitions were going to happen by that time in Goiânia. Goods such as milk and meat were banished and stigmatized at Brazil. People from Goiânia were hostilized, sportsmen, professionals and all sorts of people were called names, humiliated and separated from the rest. It was a very strange time.

Weird fact: after the incident, Goiânia became the national capital of Sertanejo Music, a Brazilian variation of folk-country. Duos singing about heartbreak, rodeos, binge drinking and womanizing spread through the nation like.... A cloud of radiation.

Oh my god, this is frustrating in SO many ways. The slow moving, stupid government - the uneducated, superstitious people (ON YOUR SKIN DUDE WTF OH MY GOD), the discovery, the response. Crazy that this chain of events can even happen, thanks for all the anxiety triggers! Excellent video!

This is a hell of a story. I read the report a while ago, but the video was still worth a watch, what with all the pictures.

So, the company either forgot or left behind the device, intending to come back. But the new owners disputed this and got a court order barring them from removing anything. The court knew it was radioactive, but were not moved to do anything about it. The company gave warnings that went unheeded. And then when people died, the court tried punish the company that tried to prevent it from happening in the first place? Yeah, should have just moved away instead...

I live in Brasillia I was diagnosed with linphoma in 2019 ( unrelated to the accident) and my doctor asked me if my parents were in Goiania in the 80's.

2:50 That logo and acronym belongs to another country, which has nothing to do with this video. The brazilian one is named CNEN, not CNEA.

Could have avoided all that by just putting some equipment in secure storage.

Yea now he has to live with the fact he killed his daughter by giving her glowing blue powder to his daughter and said play with this I'm so mad

Imagine snorting the radioactive powder.

So this was basically Darwin awards *OLYMPIC EDITION*

I was just binging the HBO miniseries _Chernobyl_ all night through morning when this uploaded, gg