jaro wrote:
A cautionary tale of Cs137....
While there is no doubt that Goiânia was a cluster f..k, in the broader picture of industrial pollution in Brazil it is a minuscule event. São Paulo's pollution is so bad its nickname is Cough city. It's pollution levels are fueled by poor infrastructure design and gasoline prices that are among the lowest in the world. A study by the University of São Paulo shows that 3500 people die in the city
per year due to pollution related illnesses like respiratory diseases. The Goiânia accident killed 4, injured 28, and produced around 200 cases of detectable radiation poisoning.
The point here is that while Goiânia is held up as a horror story of the dangers of nuclear technology the fact of the matter is that the damage was limited, and the clean-up effective.