Maxed out: How much radiation can we take?

[n2doc]

25 April 2010 by Valerie Jamieson

In September 1987, two men entered an abandoned medical clinic in Goiânia, Brazil, and dismantled what they thought was a piece of valuable equipment. Within a day, both were vomiting. Diarrhoea and dizziness struck next. Unbeknown to them, the "scrap" contained a highly radioactive source used to treat cancer patients.

Scrap dealer Devair Ferreira, who bought the source, was intrigued by the blue glow it emitted in the dark. He kept the mug-sized canister of powder in his dining room and invited friends and family around to marvel at it. They touched the powder and daubed it on their bodies like carnival glitter, taking fragments of the radioactive caesium chloride salt home. Within a month, Ferreira's wife, his 6-year-old niece and two of his employees had died from acute radiation syndrome. In total, 249 people were contaminated.

Radiation doses, measured in sieverts, are calculated by taking into account the type of radiation and the area of the body that has been irradiated. All of the fatalities received between 4.5 and 6 sieverts in a matter of days. That's a huge dose when you consider that each year we receive an average of 2.4 millisieverts from natural sources such as radon.

The threshold for an early death is around 2 sieverts, and death is highly likely at 6 sieverts, though Ferreira received 7 and survived. He died in 1994 as a consequence of alcoholic liver cirrhosis. No one knows for sure why Ferreira survived the radiation. The most likely explanation is that he spent more time out of the house than his wife. This gave the cells in his body time to repair some of the damage done.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627562.500-maxed-out-how-much-radiation-can-we-take.html

[lazarus]

1. and how difficult

would it be for someone to gather this radioactive material into the cliched dirty bomb?

[Lithos]

2. Serendipity

There are a lot of factors here:

1) The design of the machine - newer machines tend to use different designs which are not as uncontrolled as this.
2) The cost of radioactive material - most hospitals and other clinics have an incentive to recycle.
3) Increased regulatory control and labeling.
4) Rarity of the event.

As for the safety, the material is also I think designed to prevent the accidental spillage which the "powder" did.

Without reading the full article, I suspect he had one of the earlier machines from the 1950s (or earlier) which had been passed down and ultimately pushed into a backroom where it had been forgotten until some janitor moved it out.

[lazarus]

3. okay

remember that guy that was arrested in, I think, New York upstate a few months ago? He was a trust-fund baby, white supremacist sort who got turned in by his wife. Apparently, he was in the process of accumulating medical devices for the radioactive materials in them. I always thought we dodged a bullet with that one.

[caraher]

4. Then there's the fabled Radioactive Boy Scout

David Hahn tried to build a reactor as a youth, and was later arrested stockpiling smoke detectors. The arrest led to one of the all-time creepiest mug shots:

[TheMadMonk]

5. Not enormously difficult, but the real threat from a "dirty" bomb is not the radiation hazard.

The single biggest threat would be the panic it created.

In order to receive a leathal or even significantly dangerous dose, the victims would have to be close enough to the blast that the first concern would be the immediate trauma inflicted.

A simple shower would remove any external contamination from those not injured. And the bad thing about radiation is also its good point when it comes to removing tiny pieces of shrapnel from those on the periphery. It screams "Here I am."

A small amount of material would be inhaled. However, for those who do not have more immediate life threatening concerns, the exposure would be no worse than a few too many x-rays or high level flights. Their cancer risk would be raised by a few percentage points, but nowhere near enough that you could point at a cancer 5-10 years down the track and say "this would not have happened if..."

Site clean up is a matter of removing soft furnishings and anything sustaining significant damage in the blast (exactly as it would be for any other bomb, but with protective clothing for the workers) and a good pressure washing of hard surfaces.


Anyone who wanted to do significant damage with radiological material would get bigger results by contaminating food, or in some other way ensuring that people receive a great deal of exposure before their efforts were discovered.

Which brings us to the psychology of poisoning. Groups looking to advance an agenda don't do it for the simple reason that pretty much everyone catagorizes poisoning as a "cunt's act" and it would earn nothing but condemnation, even from those who might share their ideology. Nearly all deliberate poisoning is either for the purpose of removing a specific targeted individual, or the action of a lone wolf seeking revenge for some imagined or real slight done them.

[lazarus]

6. I think I sorta realized that

and the panic would, indeed, be the biggest problem. That's what happened after 9-11, after all. The response has been crazy. Thanks.