Brazil Deadly Glitter

The lovely phosphorescent powder was unlike anything Leide das Neves Ferreira, 6, had ever seen. Her father, a junk dealer in the Brazilian city of Goiania, discovered the mysterious substance when he pried open a heavy lead casing that a scavenger had sold him. Leide rubbed the powder on her body so that she glowed and sparkled. Dust fell on the sandwich she was eating.

Leide, her father and the scrap collector were in critical condition at a Rio de Janeiro hospital last week, not expected to survive. An additional 20 or so people were also hospitalized, most of them relatives and neighbors of Leide’s father who had carried away traces of the powder on their skin and clothes.

The glittery stuff proved to be cesium-137, a radioactive isotope used in cancer-therapy equipment. The scrap collector found the casing a month ago in a spot where a radiotherapy clinic had once stood. Though months may pass before the final toll is known, the Goiania episode promises to be that rare nightmare, a radiation mishap that kills several people. The worst of these was last year’s explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, which Soviet authorities acknowledge has claimed 31 lives.

The ten Goiania victims in most serious condition, including Leide, were flown to a naval hospital in Rio de Janeiro. There they are being treated by a core team of eight radiation specialists, including one from the U.S. and another from the Soviet Union. Bone-marrow transplants, which were conducted on Chernobyl survivors, are not being considered. Radiation can destroy the vital marrow, which produces among other things the white blood cells that help the body guard against infection, but some of the Goiania victims are so radioactive that new bone marrow would simply become contaminated. All patients are undergoing frequent decontamination baths and are drinking special liquids designed to soak up radiation.

Meanwhile, investigators armed with Geiger counters were searching for other contaminated areas in Goiania (pop. 1.2 million), in central Brazil. Authorities have checked more than 4,000 people for exposure and evacuated 30 families from their homes, many of which were near the junkyard.

A police inquiry is under way to determine why the casing remained at the clinic site. Workers from the National Atomic Energy Commission are preparing to entomb the lead container, the cesium and other contaminated material in concrete. The commission has decided that the material should be airlifted to a remote mountain range in the Amazon jungle.