Member-only story
Symbols of Danger
Why Warnings Fail to Warn: The Radiation Trefoil
Herbie Goes Bananas and Other Makings of a Disaster
On September 13, 1987, a security guard at the defunct Instituto Goiano de Radioterapia (IGR), a private radiotherapy institute in the Brazilian state of Goias, decided to take a sick day in order to check out Herbie Goes Bananas with his family at the local cinema. His decision to take in a piece of first world movie franchise detritus with a south-of-the-border flavor would be the gateway to a radiological disaster.
The source of this disaster was another first world commercial good: a radiological therapy machine sitting in the ruins of the IGR institute. Buried within the radiological therapy machine was its delivery mechanism: a salt shaker-sized capsule of highly radioactive cesium. While the security guard took the day off, opportunistic scavengers entered the unguarded facility. They discovered the machine and wheelbarrowed it back to their neighborhood.
Over the next two weeks, several people progressively disassembled the machine for scrap, separated the cesium capsule from the machine, and eventually pried open the leaden capsule. Scrapyard workers were fascinated by the glowing fluorescence of the cesium contents, and exchanged the cesium among friends and…
