in the fall of 1987 scrapper roberto dos
santos elves decided that he could no
longer ignore the rumors he'd been
hearing
hidden in the crumbling and cracking
building near his home in goyonja brazil
supposedly was a scavenger's treasure
a treasure that looked like another
man's trash
it was september 10th of that year when
alves and his friend wagner pejera
descended on the site with simple tools
and after some poking and prying they
uncovered their treasure what appeared
to be a shiny metal capsule no larger
than a thermos
over the next few days alves was further
able to disassemble the capsule
revealing something that looked even
more valuable
he had been vomiting and feeling dizzy
during this time but he thought it was
just something that he ate
alves took all the pieces they had by
wheelbarrow to a one devier fejera
the owner of the scrapyard gave elves 25
for the shiny assembly and placed the
pieces in his garage
when night fell fejera noticed something
odd
the pieces in his garage were glowing
and glowing blue
three days later family and friends had
been invited to see the blue oddity and
soon fejera's employee ernesto fabiano
had cracked the canister's one
millimeter thick glass window wide open
and the true treasure spilled out
it was 93 grams of a sparkling
crystalline powder less material than
would fill a third of a soda can that
crumbled easily between the fingers
fabiano took a large glowing crystal to
make a ring for his wife describing it
like carnival glitter and gave some of
the powder to his brother to take home
vegeta's brother dipped a finger into
the dust and drew a cross
across his abdomen
family and friends sifted and examined
over the next week pieces of the
original assembly would be distributed
across multiple scrap yards and glowing
blue dust would be sprinkled in many
homes and on many bodies across the city
and so began one of the worst nuclear
disasters in history
this
is the true story
of the geyonya incident
goyonya is the capital and largest city
of the brazilian state of goyas
it sits on the central brazilian plateau
a region known for its cereal farms and
cattle ranches
in 1971 a cancer treatment center local
to goyonja bought a radiotherapy machine
a device that focuses beams of energy
emanating from highly radioactive source
material into tumors
when the practice finally closed 14
years later it didn't take the machine
with it it was abandoned as was the
building most of the clinic was
subsequently demolished and left in a
derelict state
this was already a disaster in potentia
as the radioactive heart of the therapy
device was now an orphan source
a self-contained radioactive source no
longer under proper regulatory control
lost stolen or otherwise unaccounted for
and that made it extremely dangerous
as the entire city would soon find out
the unstable nuclei inside of the orphan
source ernesto fabiano would soon open
were that of cesium 137 a common fission
byproduct of the natural and man-driven
decay of uranium
and unfortunately for goyonja cesium-137
is one of the most problematic isotopes
there is it is seriously radioactive has
a relatively long half-life and
disperses quickly and easily through an
environment as one of its most regular
chemical compounds is a water-soluble
salt
widespread cesium contamination after
both the chernobyl and fukushima daiichi
nuclear disasters is proof enough of
cesium's deadly potential
less than a quarter of a pound of
caesium 137 salt doesn't sound like much
all of it would fit in a small sandwich
bag but the immense potential of the
nuclear and the social and curious
nature of humans meant that it was more
than enough to trigger the screening of
more than 100 000 brazilians in the fall
of 1987.
all of them would return home
and many
wouldn't have homes to return to
in biology there is a term called an
evolutionary trap
this is where some evolved behavior can
suddenly become maladaptive in a rapidly
changing environment
sea turtles for example who evolved over
millions of years to hatch and then use
the moon to find their way to the sea
can exhaust themselves and die in a
modern world where many beaches and
coastlines are lined with artificial
lights much brighter than the moon and
facing in the wrong direction
australian jewel beetles can take
themselves out of the gene pool by
mistakingly mating with similarly shaped
and colored discarded beer bottles
the human pancha for the shiny and
glossy made 93 grams of cesium-137
dangerously attractive in a similar way
it is relevant to note said a 1988
report by the international atomic
energy agency
that the interest aroused by the blue
glow that emanated from the radioactive
cesium chloride significantly affected
the course of the accident end quote
in other words if the cesium did not
have an almost supernatural glow
more people would have survived
after ernesto fabiano opened the
pandora's box the young scrappers had
found the curious powder was passed
between no fewer than 22 fejera family
members
for five days fragments the size of rice
grains were given to several families
deveir's wife maria gabriella covered
her pajamas the sparkling blue dust and
her bed sheets
her mother came to visit her when she
started vomiting and then returned home
days later bringing contamination with
her
after otis and fejera held the gleaming
dust in his hands he went back to work
he was a bus driver
he came into contact with dozens of
people
deveir's brother evo brought back some
crystals to his house too
his six-year-old daughter leger was
infatuated
she rubbed the crumbling glitter all
over her arms and hands
she ate her lunch while admiring how her
fingers were sparkling
within 10 minutes
she was throwing up
within 10 days of opening the cesium
capsule a significant number of people
were vomiting had diarrhea and displayed
skin lesions and burns
local doctors put the symptoms on
obscure tropical diseases or food
poisoning
at this point no one really knew what
seemed to be killing goyona's families
that was until maria gabriella convinced
that the glowing blue powder was the
true culprit got on a bus with an
employee of her husband's junkyard and
headed for a nearby public health
department the employee was carrying the
radiotherapy assembly and all the
glowing blue powder he could find in a
bag slung over his shoulder
an intense radiation burn would later
reveal exactly which shoulder the bag
was on
on september 28 1987 maria gabriella who
had been dizzy and vomiting for days at
this point
walked into the vigilancia sanitaria and
placed the bag carrying the remains of
the radiotherapy unit on a doctor's desk
this she said firmly
this was killing her family
the doctor dismissed both maria and the
junkyard employee to a health center and
then later to a tropical diseases center
where a number of those who had handled
the glowing powder were now showing up
the doctor eventually got worried enough
about the mysterious bag maria was
carrying that he moved it to this chair
in the courtyard of the health center
at the same time another doctor on site
was starting to suspect that the many
skin lesions being reported were not
from any tropical disease but from
radiation damage
he contacted yet another doctor who was
working at the tropical diseases center
only to discover that he wasn't the
first doctor who had called him about
suspicious symptoms
it was decided to have a visiting
medical physicist come and inspect the
bag maria had brought but the physicist
wouldn't be able to do so
for at least another day
[Music]
the next morning the visiting physicist
had borrowed a centolometer from a local
government agency usually used for
geology and set out towards the
vigilancia sanitaria he decided to
switch the meter on before he entered
the building
and the meter immediately indicated the
highest value it could measure
no matter what direction the physicist
pointed the detector the radiation
levels were off the charts something
must be wrong with the meter he thought
so he returned to the local government
agency to get a replacement
two hours later he returned with a new
meter but again the centalometer
displayed the highest amount of
radioactivity that it could
simultaneously the doctor who saw maria
gabriella had called the fire department
the physicist now convinced that there
was a major source of radiation inside
the health center had to persuade the
firefighters not to go near the source
and that's because they were planning on
picking up the bag
and throwing it in the nearest river
the rest of the day was a blur of
activity
40 minutes later the police and fire
brigades helped evacuate everyone from
the health center an hour after that
doctors had descended on deferred
fejera's junkyard and found the same off
the charts readings fejera and his
family who had to be convinced were
evacuated
over the next few hours government
agencies were contacted the secretary
for health was informed and the national
nuclear energy commission was brought up
to speed
by nightfall the secretary for health
had made the city's olympic stadium a
staging ground for receiving potentially
contaminated persons
and the tropical diseases hospital the
first to see many of the suspicious
symptoms was informed that their
patients were in fact irradiated known
sites of contamination were re-surveyed
and the civil defense force was put on
alert
[Music]
the estadio olimpico pedro ludovico has
a capacity of 13 and a half thousand
people
beginning on september 30th the national
nuclear energy commission would monitor
over a hundred and twelve thousand
people there on the field
those most affected by the radiation
were placed in tents and more people
throughout the city were showing up
after hearing rumors
many tried to go to the olympic stadium
simply for reassurance
although no local plans for responding
to radiological emergencies on the scale
had existed concluded the 1988 report by
the international atomic energy agency
the authority's improvised strategy
worked effectively in bringing the
situation under control and preventing
further serious exposure
contaminated persons were directed to
take showers and place their clothes in
bags this reduced the ticking of
radiation meters by between 50 and 80
percent and monitoring equipment was set
up to screen the hundreds lining up
outside the stadium
unfortunately decontamination was only
partially successful as the most
affected victims were constantly
sweating out the cesium-137 that had
accumulated inside of their bodies
in the early morning hours of september
30th authorities returned to the
vigilancia sanitaria to contain the
remainder of the source first brought in
by bus by maria gabriela
a small crane was used to lower a
section of sewer pipe over the chair
where the bag still sat and then
concrete was pumped in over the wall to
seal a chair inside the pipe forever
radiation rates dropped dramatically
of the 112 000 people monitored for
cesium-137 exposure in goyonja 1000 had
received the equivalent of an entire
year's worth of normal background
radiation in just a few days
249 people were seriously contaminated
either externally or internally through
direct contact with the cesium dust and
of those people 20 displayed acute
radiation sickness needing immediate
hospital treatment
these patients were transported to
hospitals across brazil
but at goyonja general hospital the
patients were left uncared for for two
days as no one on site had the training
to deal with the irradiated
19 of the 20 most contaminated had some
sort of serious skin injury swelling
bronzing blistering loss of skin
entirely
ernesto fabiano who took a rice grain
sized chunk of cesium to make a ring for
his wife ended up putting that piece in
his pocket against his thigh
the radiation ate all the way into his
largest muscles
the bus driver odesen fejera lost most
of the skin on his hand where he handled
the powder and would end up losing the
tips of some
fingers the rupture of a medical device
in goyonja resulted in the worst case of
cesium-137 contamination in medical
history a history that includes both
fukushima daiichi and chernobyl
and sadly
not all of the tragically curious 20
would survive
the goal of this documentary is not to
exploit the trauma or the injuries of
the people of goyonja
rather it is to show how the
unimaginable potential of nuclear
reactions can lead to disaster when not
properly respected managed and
communicated
this could be no clearer than after
legie fejera died
the six-year-old who thought she was
playing with fairy dust
after legend succumbed to acute
radiation poisoning her body was
transferred to be buried in a cemetery
back in goyonja
the news of her impending burial caused
a riot of nearly 2 000 people
they believed that her body would poison
the land
they used stones and bricks to block the
car carrying her body
but she was still successfully buried in
a special fiberglass coffin lined with
lead
the military also had to hold back
protesters during the burial of israel
baptista dos santos one of the scrapyard
employees who dismantled the cesium
capsule for its lead
admiralson alves de souza aged 18 worked
with dos santos and also died
maria gabriella aunt of leijer and wife
of de vair
died on the same day as her niece
one month after exposure
the goyona incident would end up costing
four lives
the contamination of an entire city and
an economic catastrophe all from less
material than would fill half of a
tennis ball
if there is anything at all good to say
about the goyona incident it's that the
situation was brought under control by
swiftly acting public and private
personnel extremely quickly within three
days of discovering that it was the
glowing blue powder that was burning
through unfortunate families all sources
of exposure were identified and
contained
by the following saturday the main
concerns were patient treatment and the
cleanup of contaminated sites
a helicopter was brought in to survey
more than 67 square kilometers detectors
mounted inside of cars checked on and
around more than 2 000 kilometers of
roads
85 houses were significantly
contaminated
42 of them were decontaminated with
vacuums and pressure washers
the rest along with several city blocks
were demolished
three buses 14 cars and 50 000 rolls of
toilet paper were also now radioactive
in total three and a half thousand cubic
meters of waste was sealed away around
one and a half olympic swimming pools of
cesium poison material
by christmas all the main sites of
contamination were dealt with and work
continued with the hopes of returning
the area to normal for the next three
months
but
while dust can be buried and homes can
be rebuilt
the people of goyona lived with the
lingering effects of just a handful of
glowing powder
for the rest of their lives
the fejera family
lost everything
their homes had to be destroyed
irradiated pets
had to be put down
whole family histories packed into drums
of nuclear waste and buried
the junkyard owner defyir pictured here
died seven years after his wife maria
gabriela leger
reportedly due to a plunging depression
and years of heavy drinking
wagner pejera
one of the two original thieves of the
orphan source
would be scarred for life
the bus driver otis and fejera was
marked in a similar way losing parts of
his fingers and the skin on his hands
and the damage done in goyonja wasn't
all physical
after the incident odison recalls being
ostracized by his community
his neighbors as they did with lesia's
burial tried to block his family from
moving into certain neighborhoods
he ended up getting a vasectomy because
he was now too afraid to have any more
children
i still have pain in my hands
especially when the temperature changes
odison told beyond nuclear international
in 2018
sometimes
my hands are so hot
that i have to put them in the freezer
today odison is the president of the
association of cesium victims of goyonja
which has more than sixteen hundred
members seeking continued compensation
and medical treatment in 2017 he
received an honorary lifetime
achievement award the uranium film
festival for his many decades of
advocacy
the original radiotherapy capsule taken
by the military back in 1987 is now on
display at the school of specialized
instruction in rio de janeiro and is
much less fatally attractive
the accident in goyonja the 1988 report
by the international atomic energy
agency concludes
shows how actions that would have been
innocuous under ordinary circumstances
became matters
of life and death
if humans weren't such social creatures
if we didn't like to touch and to share
if cesium-137 weren't so radioactive
enough to ionize the air around it
this disaster might have been avoided
entirely
instead a curious consequence of our
quest to fully harness the near
limitless potential of the nuclear
lives on to scar the minds parts
and hands of the people of goyona
after the cancer treatment clinic was
abandoned in 1985 one of its owners
tried to return and recover some of the
objects left behind including the
radiotherapy machine
a court-appointed police force stopped
him as the owners of the land the clinic
was built on disputed the final state of
the building
now deterred the man warned that they
would be responsible quote for what
would happen with the cesium bomb
end quote
and all this happened four months before
the incident
and records now show that the state
court of goyass brazil
knew that there was radioactive material
inside the abandoned building
for more than a year
before two young men looking for scrap
metal
accidentally started the worst
radiological disaster in latin america's
history
until next time
thank you so much to the very nerdy
staff at the facility for the direct and
substantial support in the creation of
this year video today especially i'd
like to recognize research assistant
chuch and visiting scholar gabe santos
yes i picked his name because i was
ready to say if you want to join the
facility if you want to drape on a silky
white lab coat if you want to see videos
like this early if you want to talk to
me on discord if you want private
members only live streams with yours
truly not like that you can go to
patreon.com
kyle hill and join the facility today
and hey if you support us just enough
you get your name on arya here in every
single video and there's literally
hundreds of you i've i have no idea how
i'm gonna pass the look if there's any
portuguese speakers or brazilians
watching first of all i want to
apologize if i totally messed up the
names in this entire video it probably
infuriated you the whole time i did my
best with pronunciation guides i'm sorry
or i'm not sorry depending on how i did
and if you live outside of latin america
you might
never heard of the geonia incident but
actually you may have there's an episode
of the popular children's cartoon
captain planet he's our hero going to
bring pollution down there's an episode
called deadly glow where two children
find a glowing blue piece of scrap it's
actually cesium-137 and they have to get
have to bring pollution down to
we need to bring pollution down to zero
that's why orphan sources are so hard to
deal with
he's our hero
you know what i was going to say
thanks