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This is a spooky read: > On September 16, Alves succeeded in puncturing the capsule's aperture window with a screwdriver, allowing him to see a deep blue light
by lqet 5y ago
This is a spooky read:
> On September 16, Alves succeeded in puncturing the capsule's aperture window with a screwdriver, allowing him to see a deep blue light coming from the tiny opening he had created. He inserted the screwdriver and successfully scooped out some of the glowing substance. Thinking it was perhaps a type of gunpowder, he tried to light it, but the powder would not ignite. [...] On September 18, Alves sold the items to a nearby scrapyard. That night, Devair Alves Ferreira, the owner of the scrapyard, noticed the blue glow from the punctured capsule. Thinking the capsule's contents were valuable or even supernatural, he immediately brought it into his house. Over the next three days, he invited friends and family to view the strange glowing substance. On September 21, at the scrapyard, one of Ferreira's friends succeeded in freeing several rice-sized grains of the glowing material from the capsule using a screwdriver. Ferreira began to share some of them with various friends and family members.
> The day before the sale to the third scrapyard, on September 24, Ivo, Devair's brother, successfully scraped some additional dust out of the source and took it to his house a short distance away. There he spread some of it on the concrete floor. His six-year-old daughter, Leide das Neves Ferreira, later ate an egg while sitting on this floor. She was also fascinated by the blue glow of the powder, applying it to her body and showing it off to her mother. Dust from the powder fell on the egg she was consuming; she eventually absorbed 1.0 GBq and received a total dose of 6.0 Gy, more than a fatal dose even with treatment. [...] She was buried in a common cemetery in Goiânia, in a special fiberglass coffin lined with lead to prevent the spread of radiation. Despite these measures, news of her impending burial caused a riot of more than 2,000 people in the cemetery on the day of her burial, all fearing that her corpse would poison the surrounding land.
- cranekam 5y agoIt is a staggering read for sure. It's heartbreaking to imagine that little girl playing with something she thinks is a toy without knowing it is silently killing her. It's easy to think the victims were stupid for playing with a weird glowing material but these are likely uneducated people who're just trying to get by. That they were able to run into such a dangerous substance is a tragedy.
- moffkalast 5y ago> Devair Ferreira himself survived despite receiving 7 Gy of radiation. He died in 1994 of cirrhosis aggravated by depression and binge drinking. I'd be binge drinking too if some invisible dust killed my entire family.
- kragen 5y agoEspecially if you inflicted it on them.
- kergonath 5y agoI don’t think we have any study about long-term psychological consequences of being irradiated at such doses. It would not be really surprising if there were neurological consequences, on top of the PTSD associated with living through this…
- matheusmoreira 5y ago> She was also fascinated by the blue glow of the powder, applying it to her body and showing it off to her mother. Jesus.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoSounds a lot like some stories in The Radium Girls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls and those were adults.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago> U.S. Radium Corporation hired approximately 70 women to perform various tasks including handling radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves > Because the true nature of the radium had been kept from them, the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth, and faces for fun with the deadly paint produced at the factory. Holy shit! I've seen some bad employers while working in occupational medicine but this is on a whole new level.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoThe movie's on Netflix. I don't know how true it is to the actual events, but to say they were scum is being extremely pleasant.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]