Word: goiania
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...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...
...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...
...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...
Bernie Steer Goiania, Brazil...
Outmanned & Outgunned. Last week, invoking a constitutional provision that permits intervention in a state when "national integrity" is threatened, Castello Branco let the military have its way. In the space of two days, 6,000 federal troops poured into the state capital of Goiania. The troops took over the telephone and telegraph systems, power companies and a water-treatment plant, formed up around the palace. Outmanned and outgunned, Borges caved in and turned the government over to the military. The way the brass told it, they got Borges just in time...