Radiation Claims 3rd Victim in Brazil
A junkyard worker who helped break open a capsule containing radioactive cesium 137 died Tuesday, the third victim of the glowing substance he and friends admired but did not understand.
Israel Batista dos Santos, 22, died after three weeks in critical condition at the Marcilio Dias Naval Hospital in Rio, the navy press office said.
Last Friday, a 6-year-old girl and her aunt died of generalized infection caused by radiation.
The bodies of Maria Gabriela Ferreira, 37, and her niece, Leide Das Neves Ferreira, were buried Monday in special lead coffins in Goiania, the central Brazilian city of 800,000, located 850 miles northwest of Rio, where they were exposed to the radiation.
The cesium 137 powder was in a machine found in September at a partly demolished cancer treatment center by junk scavengers, who sold it to a junk dealer.
The dealer broke open the protective casing, exposing the powder. Not knowing what it was, friends and neighbors viewed the substance as beautiful, rubbed it on their bodies and carried it in their pockets. Leide Ferreira even ate some of it.
The cesium 137 contaminated 243 people, of whom 39 remain hospitalized.
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