Cs-137 is commonly extracted from fuel used as a source for radiation therapy, although less so these days, due in part to incidents with misplaced sources. Th

Cs-137 is commonly extracted from fuel used as a source for radiation therapy, although less so these days, due in part to incidents with misplaced sources. The poster child for Cs-137 incidents is the Goiânia accident where four people died when a Cs-137 capsule was stolen from an abandoned hospital and sold to a scrapyard. Four people died of radiation poisoning, including a six year old. My guess is this probably has a similar root cause, someone didn't dispose of a medical Cs-137 source properly and it ended up in the scrap metal stream.