The thieves who stole a truck transporting radioactive medical waste will likely die from the effects of radiation exposure, according to Mexican officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The truck, which was on its way to a waste disposal facility, was stolen on Dec. 2. Mexican officials said they believe the criminals were unaware of the nuclear material when they took the truck.
The radioactive material, cobalt-60, was found removed from its casing in Hueypoxtla in Mexico State, not far from where the truck was stolen, according to a release from the Comisión Nacional de Seguridad Nuclear y Salvaguardias (CNSNS), Mexico’s nuclear authority.
The cobalt-60 radiation source was removed from its protective casing, but not damaged. The area does not appear to be contaminated, and Mexican said there is no public health risk.
The criminals who opened the casing, however, are likely to die from radiation exposure. The radiation source is classified as Category 1, meaning it is extremely dangerous if not managed securely and protected.
“It would probably be fatal to be close to this amount of unshielded radioactive material for a period in the range of a few minutes to an hour,” IAEA officials wrote in a statement.
There were initial concerns that the cobalt-60 was stolen in order to make a dirty bomb, but that appears not to have been the case.
A 2004 report prepared for the Congressional Research Service identified cobalt-60 as a contender for use in terrorist attacks.
“Isotopes of special concern, typical sources, and Curies per source, include […] cobalt-60 (half-life 5.3 years), used in industrial radiography (3-250 Ci) and cancer therapy (0.0014-0.27 Ci). Such sources often have little security because they are small, have modest amounts of shielding so they can be used in the field, and do not have enough radiation to be self-protected. They are sometimes abandoned.”
Cobalt-60 machines are a common type of teletherapy, or external beam radiation therapy. This cancer treatment uses focused radiation from a source outside the patient’s body to damage and kill cancer cells.
Breast, lung, colon and prostate cancers, as well as tumors of the head and neck, are often treated with external beam therapy, according to the National Cancer Institute. The treatment is an outpatient procedure given over several visits, depending on the cancer.
Cobalt-60 is also the main radiation source in the Gamma Knife, a precise tool for treating brain tumors that destroys cancer cells while sparing adjacent healthy tissue. More than 30,000 patients undergo Gamma Knife treatment each year.
A teletherapy unit was at the center of a 1985 accident that the IAEA called “one of the most serious radiological accidents to have occurred to date” in its subsequent report.
In Goiania, Brazil, a caesium-137 unit was left behind when a radiotherapy clinic was moved to a new location. Two people took the equipment from the empty building to break down for scrap metal, not realizing that it contained radioactive material.
The capsule containing the radioactive material was broken, which contaminated the surrounding environment and people in it. The metal, which glowed in the dark, was broken down, sold to a junkyard and distributed to several families. The problem was identified when one person who had been irradiated connected the symptoms of several people and took remnants of the capsule to a local hospital.
Overall, 112,000 people were monitored “of whom 249 were contaminated either internally or externally,” according to the IAEA report. Twenty people were hospitalized and four died of complications from acute radiation syndrome.
In this case the environmental damage and exposure is small. Officials stated that the individuals who were exposed to the radiation are not a contamination risk for others.
There has been no word yet on the suspects, who are still at large. Area hospitals have been put on alert for anyone showing symptoms of radiation exposure.
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