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I could be wrong but it won't just be the idiots that die, innocents that come in contact with their bodies could also become ill.
by ck2 13y ago
I could be wrong but it won't just be the idiots that die, innocents that come in contact with their bodies could also become ill.
- johnward 13y agoThere will definitely end up being others who were exposed to radiation during the transport/storage. This was linked on the reddit submission of this article and I thought it was interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
- shabble 13y agoI don't believe Co-60 is capable of activating (making radioactive) other materials to any significant degree, so the danger is really only from direct exposure to the source material. So you get irradiated, but you don't become radioactive. If they were handling the material directly, there's a chance they contaminated themselves and their clothing, which could be transmissible. (c.f. Goiânia incident "[The scrapyard owner's daughter] was also fascinated by the blue glow of the powder, and applying it to her body, showed it off to her mother. Dust from the powder fell on the sandwich she was consuming.") Obviously the guys opening the shielding and anyone in the vicinity of where that happened, where it was stored, or dumped is at risk, but it also sounds like the sources were encapsulated into pellets which makes incidental dust contamination much less of a problem than in previous incidents where it gets broken up and mixed with dirt, etc.
- vibrolax 13y agoAFAIK, non-radioactive materials are activated by neutron bombardment. Co60 is primarily a gamma emitter.
- randlet 13y agoNo this is not correct. Their bodies will not be radioactive (unless they ingested the cobalt!) after getting dosed by this source. People get irradiated by similar sources of radiation everyday for cancer therapies without becoming radioactive.