To not forget: Radiation victims speak up

 

 

Sweden / Brazil, 2009, Director Lars Westman, Co-Production Zenildo Barreto. Documentary, 70 min, Portuguese / Swedish with English subtitles - An incomparable document of history about the worst radioactive accident in Latin America and the work of cleaning it up. In September 1987, 19 grams of radioactive cesium-137 from a cancer treatment unit harmed and contaminated hundreds of people and produced 6,000 tons of nuclear waste in the city of Goiânia. Swedish TV-journalist Lars Westman arrived in Goiânia soon after the official recognition of the radioactive accident and gathered impressive images of the decontamination work and the victims. After the first recordings, he met the interviewees twice in the following years. One of the interviewees, Ivo Alves Ferreira, died days after the last recording.  

 

 

 

Brazil, 2017, Director Benedito Ferreira. Fiction, Portuguese with English subtitles, 23 min - Grandmother and granddaughter live in the center of Goiânia, next to the place where the Cesium-137 accident happened. But they are on the move, as the house will soon be demolished to build a museum about the accident. „The little we keep“ is a personal and sensitive reflection on the 1987 radioactive accident in Goiânia, the worst nuclear disaster in Brazil and Latin America.

 

The film received the best short film award of the  the environmental film festival FICA in Goiás and the best short film award of the International Uranium Film Festival in 2017.  Benedito Ferreira highlighted in his award speech the lack of discussion around the Cesio 137 accident: “We should discuss more about the accident. We have to keep the memory alive, so that it never happens again.”

 

 

 

Brazil, 2011, Director Michael Valim. Video art / modern dance and musical performance, no dialogue, 9 min - Among the roles of art is to bring to light things that the city's memory tries to hide. To remember the accident with cesium 137, a modern dance group chose a very special place for their performance in the centre of Goiânia in 2011: Street 57, house number 60. Because of the cesium-137 accident, it was one of the most radioactive contaminated places in the world in September 1987. The houses standing here were demolished, the top layer of the earth removed and everything was disposed as "nuclear waste".

 

However, the ground was still too radioactive. For that it was sealed with a 50 centimeter thick layer of cement. To this day, this cemented gap in the center of Goiânia bears witness to the worst radioactive accident in Brazil like an open wound.

 

 

 

Brazil, 2021, Directors Márcia Gomes de Oliveira and Norbert G. Suchanek, 30 min, Portuguese / German with English subtitles - Odesson Alves Ferreira could have been any of us when he was seriously contaminated by cesium 137 in Goiânia. His family was one of the hardest hit. It was his brother, owner of a junkyard, who bought the scrap, an old radiotherapy device, which caused the worst radioactive contamination in Latin America. Odesson has survived the radiation and has fought since the beginning of the tragedy for the rights of the Victims of Cesium-137. 30 years after the accident, Odesson Alves Ferreira traveled to Berlin to receive the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Uranium Film Festival 2017.  It was his first flight outside Brazil. In an interview, Odesson recalls unforgettable scenes from the accident.

 

 

Brazil, 2003, Director Ângelo Lima, Fiction, No dialogue, 4 min - Leide das Neves was the first fatal victim of the radioactive accident in Goiânia, with cesium-137. She was a 6 year old child. Where are her dreams? Leide das Neves didn't have time to play. Introduction by Leopoldo Nunes.

 

More information about the accident

34 years ago, on September 13, 1987, two young men in search of junk entered the unsecured ruins of the Goiano Radiation Therapy Institute, a former cancer treatment clinic, in the city of Goiânia. They found an abandoned radiation therapy unit with a heavy lead capsule that contained 19 grams of cesium-137. Without knowing the risks of radioactivity or even the name "radioactive", they took the capsule, dragged it home in a wheelbarrow and sold it to a scrap dealer six days later. The curious scrap dealer breaks open the capsule and discovers the white crystal powder that glows bluish in the dark, cesium-137 chloride - the death glow!

It was not until September 29, when dozens of sick people with strange symptoms were already filling the hospitals in Goiânia, that the nuclear authorities became aware of the radioactive accident. At that time the cesium-137-crystals were already spread unknowingly widely over the quarter, hundreds of people became contaminated and thousands were unknowingly exposed to gamma rays. The authorities recognized officially only four deaths caused by radiation. But surveys by unions and surviver associations indicate at least 66 deaths and around 1,400 contaminated victims. Just 19 grams of cesium-137 not only caused endless suffering to the victims, but also generated in Goiânia more than 6,000 tons of radioactive waste that is dangerous for over 200 years and is stored today in the radioactive waste repository of Abadia de Goiás, a suburb just a few miles outside of the City. Cesium-137 is a highly radioactive and unnatural nuclide with a half-life of 30 years. It is a fission product of uranium-235 and is created by the explosion of atomic bombs or in nuclear power plants as radioactive waste. Instead of storing it, cesium-137 was sold for decades around the globe to irradiate cancer cells. The radiation source of the Goiânia accident was thought to have been made in the U.S. at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. More information - Photo exhibition "The Goiânia Cesium-137 Accident" in German here! (Top photo: Street 57, Number 60 was in September 1987 one of the two most radioactive places in Goiânia city.)