Sao Paulo raises alarm over theft of car containing radioactive materials

A joint force of several police corporations, firefighters, civil protection and experts in radioactive products are conducting a real clean-up throughout the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, the country’s largest, trying to recover five packages of radioactive sources stolen a week ago. One of the packages, resembling a bucket or a tin reinforced with lead shielding, was found already opened and without the hazardous material late Friday in a favela in the far east of the capital Sao Paulo.

Five packages of radioactive sources of Germanium-Galio (68GE-68GA), which were supposed to supply equipment to hospitals in Curitiba, the capital of Paraná state, and Blumenau, in the neighboring state of Santa Catarina, both in southern Brazil, were inside a van that the driver left parked on a street in the neighborhood of São Mateus, also in the far east of São Paulo, on the night between Sunday and last Monday. He had gone to pick up the dangerous material from Rio de Janeiro and was going to deliver it to the south of the country, but since it was Sunday and he was passing close to home, in the neighborhood of São Mateus, he decided to stop and spent the night with his family, leaving the car on a nearby street, in a dangerous area where drug trafficking is prevalent.

Both the van and the five packages containing radioactive sources were identified by international symbols for this type of product, but it is highly likely that the perpetrators did not know this and therefore stole the pickup without knowing that it contained a substance that could even kill them. The possibility of lack of information was reinforced when the police found an already opened package in the Jardim Marilo area, which, despite having the symbol for radioactive material, was used as a toolbox for the secret dismantling of the vehicle.

Although the van was stolen in the early hours of Sunday through Monday, June 30 to July 1, São Paulo health and public safety authorities were only alerted late Thursday, the 4th, that the vehicle contained radioactive material. According to São Paulo police, the logistics company that owned the vehicle, when reporting the theft, only said that it contained “generators” for hospital equipment, and what had actually been stolen was only revealed when the National Nuclear Energy Company Commission CNEN in Brasilia issued a statement warning the public of the risks of any contact with the products.

As of Saturday morning, neither the vehicle nor the remaining packaging had been found, nor is it known what was done with the product, which was in an open can. In addition to trying to find the van and other packages, authorities will also determine the responsibility of all involved, the driver who transported such a dangerous load and left it on the street in an area where robberies and carjackings are common, as well as the company responsible for transporting it, which kept silent about the true nature of the stolen material.

Three decades ago, a similar incident killed several people and infected more than a thousand in Goiânia, the capital of the state of Goiás, causing cancer in many of them. At the time, the material that caused this tragedy was cesium-137, which was also used in hospital equipment and which was found in a garbage container by residents of a poor area of ​​the city, who opened the lead box to see what was inside and were amazed by the glow of something like a small, harmless shiny stone, they left it on the table and went to call their neighbors to look.