--- title: "Cobalt-60 Rods: Totally Silent. Totally Deadly." description: "How do you quickly inform someone that lethal invisible beams of energy are nearby that could fry every cell in their body and, unbeknownst to them, may have already handed them a death sentence?\n\nThis is the radioactive symbol. Or, more precisely, it is the symbol posted on various devices, containers, and substances, warning of ionizing radiation, which is extremely harmful to the human body. Often fatal. The symbol is also placed at the perimeter of nuclear power plants, former bomb test sites, and areas that have experienced a catastrophic nuclear meltdown — where radiation levels are dangerously high, even when standing at a distance of several hundred feet or perhaps even a couple of miles. The radioactive symbol was first devised in 1946 in the United States and it slowly became adopted as the standard international hazard symbol for ionizing radiation between 1963 and 1974 — officially being designated with the International Standards Organization number 3-6-1.\n\nIts \"trefoil\" shape is supposed to represent three blasts of radiation coming off an atom. If we hadn't seen this symbol a billion times in movies, TV shows, and comic books, I'm not sure how many of us would have been able to figure out that these geometric shapes represent radiation from an atom, or immediately realize the extreme danger it posed, in time to save our lives. Or, at the very least, spare ourselves permanent injury and some agonizing weeks in hospital. Similarly, popular knowledge of the radioactive symbol is not equally distributed around the world. A survey conducted in India, Brazil, and Kenya in 2004 found that only 6% of respondents understood its meaning and the danger it signified.\n\nAs such, rods made of highly radioactive material have engravings on them that are even more blunt. The most recognizable on the internet being a rod of Cobalt-60, only an inch thick, that could fit in the palm of your hand. The engraving reads, \"Danger, Radiation: Drop & Run.\" If you held one of these fully irradiated rods for five minutes, eventually your hand would swell up like a balloon, large strips of skin would probably turn necrotic and fall off, and the massive amount of radiation that hit the rest of your body would give you a 50/50 chance of dying in the next two months.\n\nIf you held onto a fully irradiated rod of Cobalt-60 for 10 minutes, you'd soon vomit, soil yourself with a heavy bout of diarrhea, have multiple seizures, fall into a coma within the hour, and be dead within two days. Therefore, \"drop and run\" is something of an understatement. You should drop it and run for your goddamn life, until you are the better part of a mile away. Or at least until there are some very heavy walls between you and the object. However, to be frank, you'd be wise to keep running all the way to the emergency room.\n\nGiven that the world's largest supplier of Cobalt-60 rods is Canada, and that the international language of science is English, even this sinister warning may be missed by people who can't read English engravings and aren't terribly familiar with the concept of radioactivity. There are numerous cases from the developing world where people unwittingly dismantled nuclear devices and died horrible deaths.\n\nAs such, in 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency unveiled a supplementary radiation warning: ISO symbol #2-1-4-8-2.\n\nIt is meant to be pasted on nuclear devices in addition to the classic radioactive symbol. If a person ignores the trefoil symbol on the outside of the device and begins to dismantle it, once they lift a panel or remove an outer casing, they will be confronted by a much more insistent blood-red triangle, with the classic radiation symbol at the top. But, this time, the radiation symbol is emitting sinister lines of nuclear energy down toward a skull and crossbones representing high toxicity and death, and next to it, a man running for his life. As such, ISO #21482 is the international symbol of \"Stop what you're doing and get the hell out of there, and if you're lucky you haven't already signed your own death warrant.\"\n\nDue to the immense danger posed by radiation to human beings, and the catastrophes that inevitably follow when radioactive materials are unleashed upon the public, everything in our power must be done to keep unsuspecting people away from them. Which brings us to the tragic event which convinced international authorities that the \"run for your damn life\" symbol was desperately needed around the world — the Samut Prakan Radiation Accident.\n\n## The Perils of Cobalt-60\n\nSamut Prakan is a province included in the Bangkok Metropolitan Area of the Southeast Asian kingdom of Thailand. It is a heavily urbanized region with well over a million people living on top of each other. It was in this crowded area that, in February of the year 2000, a source of tremendous radioactivity was left in a junkyard, sparking a state of emergency and endangering the local populace. The seeds of the disaster were sown several decades earlier in 1969, when the German technology conglomerate, Siemens, exported a radiotherapy machine to a hospital in Bangkok.\n\nThe machine used targeted radiation to induce cell death and shrink malignant tumors that would otherwise continue to grow rapidly, impeding a patient's bodily functions, and ultimately killing them. The machine in question was powered by a rod of Cobalt-60, which had been produced in Canada. Cobalt-60 is a radioactive source that is not found in nature. It must be artificially made. Plain-old, naturally occurring cobalt is usually extracted as a byproduct of nickel and copper mining, and when extracted from the ore, it can be smelted into a bluish-grey metal. Historically, cobalt was used to infuse a splash of blue in everything from Ancient Roman jewelry to Chinese Ming vases.\n\nIn the modern age, cobalt is instead frequently shipped to a heavy water nuclear plant, like those in Canada, where it is bombarded with neutrons in order to fill the nucleus of a cobalt atom with more of them — going from 27 neutrons to 33. This process of neutron enrichment takes the relatively stable blue metal and transforms it into a highly unstable radioactive one called an \"isotope.\" A neutron-laden isotope decays by emitting tremendous amounts of energy into the surrounding environment as it tries to settle into a more stable form again. The fierce blast of energy is called \"ionizing radiation.\" The deadly kind of radiation. It is strong enough to strip electrons from the shell surrounding an atom. Sort of like taking a sharp pick, or a knife, or a piece of steel wool, and scraping the enamel off your teeth.\n\nAs such, in living cells, ionizing radiation can have a hugely unhealthy and destabilizing effect upon the body's complex and fragile patchwork of interwoven parts. It can create horrific swollen burns and skin necrosis, aka dead flesh still attached to your body. It also can destroy parts of DNA — the very fiber of your being — creating grotesque mutations and vastly increasing the risk of cancer. It can also destroy the marrow of your bones, which stops the production of the white blood cells necessary to fight off viruses and hostile bacteria, meaning that the smallest of infections can kill you. It also destroys your gastric, vascular, and neurological systems causing intense nausea, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, unbearable abdominal pain, fever, the shutting down of vital organs, disorientation, seizures, and ultimately death. Once blasted by a significant dose of ionizing radiation, there is often a period of initial nausea followed by a latency period of several days where you show few symptoms. Meanwhile, the cells of your body will quietly contort and curdle until the whole fragile system breaks down and you suddenly become tremendously ill. Without medical treatment, you will almost certainly die. And if you got a heavy enough dose, it doesn't matter if you get medical treatment. You will die anyway.\n\nIn small, targeted doses via radiotherapy machines, ionizing radiation can do just enough damage to living cells that it slowly shrinks cancerous tumors. But if its full power is unleashed upon the world, it is a horrific thing to behold. No different than the fallout experienced by the people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And these devices are in almost every hospital around the globe. As such, the rod of Cobalt-60 used in the Bangkok radiotherapy machine was housed inside of a thick container made out of lead – a metal that is capable of stopping ionizing radiation dead in its tracks. The lead container was surrounded by stainless steel. Because the rod of Cobalt-60 was only an inch thick and 1.5 inches long, the lead and steel container was also quite small: about 17 inches long and 8 inches wide. But due to all the heavy metals involved, the whole thing weighed an astonishingly hefty 230 pounds.\n\nOver time, a rod in a radiotherapy machine will lose its strength. As the rod of Cobalt-60 emits an immense blast of radiation, it gradually decays into a stable form of nickel – chemically changing into a completely different element. It takes 5.2714 years for exactly half of the cobalt atoms to decay, otherwise known as a \"half-life\". As all the Cobalt-60 atoms are slowly used up, the radioactivity of a rod of cobalt becomes less fierce. Thereupon, the rod will need to be replaced. But things didn't work out that way in Bangkok.\n\n## Utter Incompetence, Despicable Negligence\n\nIn the case of the rod of Cobalt-60 powering the radiotherapy machine in Bangkok, it was in use from 1969 until 1981 — 12 years — long after it should have been replaced with a new rod. What this meant for cancer patients at the Bangkok hospital was that they had to spend unreasonably long amounts of time being blasted by an increasingly weak machine in order to shrink their tumors. A new Cobalt-60 rod was installed in the machine in 1981. Thereafter the pattern repeated itself. The rod was in use for a further 13 years until 1994. Thereupon, the Bangkok hospital replaced the entire radiotherapy machine with a new one manufactured by Nordion, a company based in Canada.\n\nIt was here that a problem arose. Where do you put the old machine? Nordion refused to take it, because they had not manufactured it. Siemens, the German company that did manufacture it in 1969, also refused to take it because they had long since stopped working with Cobalt-60 and no longer produced the machines. So instead, the Bangkok hospital sold the old machine to the Thai electric company, Kamol Sukosol, or KSE.\n\nAs a matter of procedure, the hospital and KSE had to report the transfer of the radioactive device to the Thai nuclear regulator, The Office of Atoms for Peace. They did not. That was illegal. The radiotherapy machine was transferred to a KSE warehouse, where it was placed in a storage unit that eventually got filled up with three other radiotherapy machines – when KSE was only licensed to house one. In 1999, KSE terminated their lease of the storage warehouse. Thereupon KSE moved three of the radiotherapy machines to a parking lot they owned in southeast Bangkok. Needless to say, this was also illegal. The radiotherapy machines were stored underneath a simple overhead shelter to protect them from the elements. Otherwise, they were sitting in the open air. Public access was blocked off from the parking lot only by a chain-link fence. However, the neighborhood children had long since cut holes in the fence in order to play football in the wide-open spaces there.\n\nSometime in late 1999 or early 2000, the Bangkok hospital radiotherapy machine was stolen from the parking lot by a person or persons unknown. On January 24th 2000, the container housing the rod of Cobalt-60 was sold to two scrap metal collectors. It is possible these two stole the device on their own, but we shall never know. Due to strict defamation laws in Thailand, these men shall remain nameless, as shall all the other players in this story. They took the container home and left it outside, 100 meters or 330 feet from the house, intending to dismantle it and sell the metal at a later date.\n\nThe Cobalt-60 at this point was 19 years old. The majority of it had already decayed. The original strength of the rod in 1981 was approximately 197 trillion \"becquerels,\" a measurement unit for radioactivity named after the man who discovered the phenomenon. By the year 2000, the Cobalt-60's radioactivity had declined to 15.7 trillion becquerels, a loss of 92% of its potency. But do not be under any illusions. 15.7 trillion becquerels is roughly as radioactive as the contaminated water that leaked out of the Fukushima power plant in the aftermath of the disaster. It's more than enough to kill you if you get close to it. The only silver lining in this situation is that a brand-new rod of Cobalt-60 would have killed exponentially more people in the area.\n\n## Unleashing Pure Death\n\nOn February 1st, the two scrap collectors were joined by two other men to try and bust the container open. One was a 23-year-old brother-in-law of one of the collectors, the other was a 19-year-old neighbourhood lad just looking to help out. He was the same age as the rod of Cobalt-60. For the next hour, they all tried to bust it open and one of the scrap collectors took a hammer and chisel to the device. The scrap collector managed to crack a welded seam between the stainless-steel exterior and the thick lead container. A toxic oily liquid came seeping out. This was a build-up of decades of moisture inside the casing that had turned radioactive. Because the scrap collector did the majority of the work, he suffered most of the exposure to it, but the other men were exposed too. At the time, the container of the Cobalt-60 remained largely unpenetrated, so it was not as bad as it could have been.\n\nAt this point, the other scrap metal collector declared that they weren't getting anywhere and proposed he take the device to a junkyard in Samut Prakan, about 30 minutes' drive away. There the junkyard staff could dismantle the device on site, and the scrap collectors could sell the metal to them. The device was loaded onto a motorcycle driven cart. The impatient scrap collector drove, while the 19-year-old youth sat in the cart with his leg dangling over the now cracked and leaking radiotherapy device. The chisel-man and the brother-in-law remained at the house and avoided being exposed any further. But the worst was yet to come.\n\nArriving at the junkyard, the scrap collector approached a member of staff and asked him to cut open the steel and lead casing containing the Cobalt-60 with an oxy-acetylene welding torch. It burned hot at 3500 degrees Celsius or 6000 degrees Fahrenheit. Another junkyard worker observed the process from just a few feet away. The cutting released a foul-smelling yellow smoke into the air. Part of the lead casing, now cut in half, fell and hit the ground. Unbeknownst to the men, the 1.5 inch long, 1 inch thick rod of Cobalt-60 also fell out and rolled into a nearby pile of scrap. With the rod unleashed, all four men in the junkyard were now getting blasted with a potentially fatal dose of radiation. The junkyard worker picked up the two pieces of lead casing and weighed them in his hands. His hands immediately began to itch. After putting the pieces down, the junkyard staff member continued to work, trying to separate the stainless steel from the lead, but he had become alarmed by the yellow smoke. The owner of the junkyard, a 45-year-old woman, approached the men and told the scrap collector to take the radiotherapy device home and separate the rest of the lead and steel there. The two pieces of lead that had fallen to the ground were laid to one side. Meanwhile, the rod of Cobalt-60 was left in a pile of scrap in the open air, blasting out radiation into the surrounding neighbourhood. It was only 11 feet or 3.35 meters from the junkyard owner's office. Not long after the scrap collector left, the two junkyard employees got severe headaches and began to vomit.\n\nOn the drive home, the scrap collector also came down with a splitting headache and began to feel nauseated, but did not vomit. His 19-year-old assistant also began to feel ill and felt an itching sensation on his leg where he had draped it over the radiotherapy device on the drive over. Back at the house, the scrap collector and the 19-year-old boy managed to overcome their feelings of illness and they separated the stainless steel from the rest of the lead. Because the Cobalt-60 was back at the yard, they did not suffer further exposure in doing so. The scrap collector brought the stainless steel and the lead back to the junkyard for sale, the next day, on February 2nd.\n\nMeanwhile, the junkyard owner and staff continued to feel the brunt of the radiation from the Cobalt-60 sat right there in the yard. The two junkyard employees took some time off for Chinese New Year, during which they lost weight and had no appetite. They returned to work on February 7th and continued to be exposed to radiation. The junkyard owner and her husband, who lived across the street and both worked in the office only a few feet away from the Cobalt-60, also continued to be dosed over the next several days. As did the junkyard owner's 33-year-old maid (who worked part-time in the yard) and the owner's 75-year-old mother who regularly visited her daughter at work.\n\nOn February 12th, the junkyard owner grew alarmed at how sick her two employees were getting. They were suffering chronic diarrhea which they could only halt by medication. The owner summoned the scrap collector and told him to take away the lead casing and sell it somewhere else, suspecting it was the lead that was somehow making her staff sick. She also asked a different scrap collector to throw away the two smaller pieces that had hit the ground. The man threw them down a nearby public drainpipe. Meanwhile, the rod of Cobalt-60 remained in the scrap pile in the yard.\n\nThat same day, on February 12th, the scrap collector who had gone to the junkyard became distressed at the swollen burns on his hands and had them checked out at a private clinic. No diagnosis was reached. Over the next few days, the burn continued to swell and darken, and the scrap collector began vomiting and losing his hair.\n\nOn February 15th, the scrap collector went to the outpatient clinic at Samut Prakan Hospital, where the doctors took some blood. The scrap collector returned on the 16th for the results, was told his white blood cell count was alarmingly low and he was immediately admitted to hospital.\n\nAlso on the 16th, one of the junkyard staff went to Samut Prakan hospital with a fever, rapid weight loss, diarrhea, burned hands, and loss of hair. He was examined and immediately admitted. The following day, the 17th, the junkyard owner grew distressed at how sick her other employee was getting. He was losing weight and his hair was falling out. The owner drove her second employee to Samut Prakan hospital and he, too, was admitted. Meanwhile, the owner noticed that a stray dog that frequently wandered into the junkyard was lying there dead.\n\nLater on the 17th, the owner and her husband drove to Bangkok General Hospital. The owner had been feeling weak and noticed her hair had begun falling out. Her husband, meanwhile, was also feeling weak, in addition to suffering severe abdominal pain and chronic nose bleeds. The doctors took blood and found their white blood cell count was dangerously low. A bone marrow biopsy was also taken from both of them. The husband was admitted due to his uncontrollable nose bleeds, while the junkyard owner was not admitted but remained as an outpatient at Bangkok Hospital.\n\n## The Emergency Response\n\nOn the morning of February 18th, at Samut Prakan Hospital, the condition of the scrap collector and the two junkyard employees continued to deteriorate. The doctors at Samut Prakan drew a connection between the symptoms of the three patients and concluded they had suffered acute radiation poisoning. At 11:10 am, they called the Office of Atoms for Peace, who dispatched two investigators to Samut Prakan. They arrived at 12:30 pm, concurred with the diagnosis, and summoned the junkyard owner from her husband's beside at Bangkok General to Samut Prakan for questioning.\n\nFrom there, the investigators went to the public drainpipe to fish out the two small pieces of lead. They no longer emitted any radioactivity. At 7 pm, the investigators were driving in the direction of the junkyard, still several blocks away, and noticed that radiation levels were spiking to 8 micro-sieverts per hour, or about 20 times the normal levels. The investigators continued driving and when they arrived at the junkyard, the radiation levels in their car spiked 125 times higher to 1 milli-sievert, the same level as a fenced off high radiation area at a nuclear power plant. The investigators concluded that intense gamma rays were blasting out of the junkyard and called for assistance. The emergency response team arrived and began assessing radiation levels in the area in order to locate the source.\n\nThe beauty salon on one side of the junkyard and the grocery store on the other side, shielded by walls and fences, were both being blasted with 200 micro-sieverts of radiation per hour, equivalent to cosmic rays in unshielded interplanetary space. Meanwhile, the buildings across the street from the junkyard were being pelted with unobstructed gamma rays. The radiation was twice to four times higher the equivalent of a perpetual CT scan running 24 hours a day. The main gate to the junkyard was even worse, hit by 10 milli-sieverts per hour, or the equivalent of a dose of radiation typically inflicted on a city when a nuclear plant blows up. The junkyard office, being only a few feet from the rod of Cobalt-60, was being hit by 50 milli-sieverts per hour, or roughly 2000 times higher than the radiation experienced by nuclear reactor technicians in the same space of time.\n\nThe biggest dose of radiation was coming from a scrap pile at the front of the yard – 10 full sieverts per hour. Almost as bad as what emergency workers experienced at ground zero at Chernobyl, and far beyond the levels of exposure that would result in a 50/50 chance of death in the next two months. In fact, 10 full sieverts would typically result in a 99-100% mortality rate, even with medical intervention. As such, the emergency response team couldn't get near the scrap pile in order to locate the source of the radiation. The street was closed to traffic and the immediate area 10 meters from the entrance to the junkyard was cordoned off, but evacuation of the wider area was deemed unnecessary. There were 1872 people living within 100 meters or 330 feet of the junkyard and they were allowed to stay put.\n\nEmergency workers continued to narrow down the location of the source of the radiation throughout the night until 4 am on February 19th when operations were suspended as they formulated a plan to remove the source from the scrap pile. Meanwhile, the junkyard owner's maid was admitted to hospital with nausea, vomiting, and headache. The condition of the two junkyard workers continued to worsen. Their white cell count dropped near to zero, they had radiation burns over their arms, chests, and faces, they had fever, nosebleeds that required nasal packing to staunch the flow of blood, and their lips and tongues had become painfully swollen.\n\nBack at the junkyard, at 4pm, the source removal plan was put into action. A mechanical excavator tore down the fence at the front of the yard. A bulldozer was rigged up with spotlights and a lead shield that was 6-and-a-half-feet tall and 2 inches thick to allow emergency workers to hide behind it in an effort to get closer to the scrap pile. The workers did not have hazmat suits, but wore cloth gloves and face masks, which were practically useless. Some of the workers also insisted on wearing lead aprons, which are appropriate for a dentist during an X-ray, but they offered next to no protection from the immense levels of radiation blasted out by a rod of Cobalt-60. In fact, the aprons slowed the workers' movements, increasing the risk of exposure. Yet the officials in charge of the emergency response team allowed the workers to wear the lead aprons as a sort of security blanket to allay their fears and keep them calm.\n\nLarge pieces of scrap were taken away from the pile with a mechanical grasping tool. Smaller pieces of scrap were removed by an improvised 16-foot bamboo pole, with an electromagnet tied to the end. One by one, pieces of scrap were removed, dropped into an old bathtub with a radiation scanner in it, and assessed as to whether the scrap was the source. Next to the bathtub was a 3.3-inch-thick lead container into which the source would be dropped once it was found. With the larger pieces of overhanging scrap removed from the pile, the workers still could not figure out which piece of material was emitting all the radiation. After nightfall, they decided to bring in a fluorescent screen to figure out which piece of material was glowing like a Christmas tree. However, even with the search lights turned off, the moon was so bright that it made it difficult to read the screen. Finally, at around 9pm, there was enough cloud cover to figure out the source of the radiation was a small object only 1.5 inches long.\n\nSome more scrap was cleared and, after some difficulty in grasping the object without getting a fatal dose of radiation, at 12:20 am on February 20th, the workers finally managed to pick up the Cobalt-60 with the bamboo rod with the electromagnet at the end. It was dropped in the lead container and then sealed in. The container was then shipped off for safe handling and storage. Despite shoddy and makeshift equipment, the emergency response team managed to pull it off without getting a heavy dose of radiation. At the uppermost 6 of the workers received the equivalent of a full-body CT scan, while the remaining 46 emergency workers received considerably less. As ramshackle as the effort may seem, the lead shield and the grappling tools were a success.\n\n## The Aftermath\n\nA few hours later on February 20th, authorities located the second scrap collector – the chisel-man who had initially cracked the welded seam – and took him to Samut Prakan hospital. His white blood cell count was low and his hands were swollen bright red, and looked as if they were half-melted candles. The 19-year-old lad who had draped his leg over the radiotherapy machine on the way to the junkyard was also located. Predictably, the young man had a severe radiation burn down the back of his right leg, stretching from the thigh to the calf. The skin was falling off and slowly becoming necrotic, risking a grisly infection. There was a second burn 10 inches in diameter on his right knee. He also had suffered radiation burns to some of his fingers, and, as with others, he was running low on white blood cells. The junkyard owner was also admitted to hospital on the 20th, was accordingly treated for a low white cell count, and later treated for fever and a bleeding rectum. She also suffered vascular deterioration and damage to her lungs, but thankfully with regular blood transfusions and antibiotics, she did not require invasive surgery or a respirator. By the end of March, she had made a full recovery. The junkyard owner's mother was admitted to hospital on February 22nd. She had been suffering nausea, fever, and a low white blood cell count. The brother-in-law of one of the scrap collectors wasn't located until March 3rd. He had only been present during the hammer and chisel stage. Nevertheless, he had sustained radiation burns to his right hand, and the nails on his middle finger and pinky eventually fell off.\n\nThe two scrap collectors, the brother-in-law, the 19-year-old, the junkyard owner, her maid, and her mother, spent about a month in hospital and eventually made full recoveries. The others weren't so lucky. The two junkyard workers had received the full brunt of the Cobalt-60 when they had cut open the lead container, and they had worked in the yard for a further week with the Cobalt-60 right there, slowly killing them. The junkyard worker who had actually cut open the container could not recover his white blood cell count, open sores began appearing in his mouth and on his tongue, and large segments of his skin began falling off. He got severe diarrhea again on March 2nd and by March 6th he could no longer eat food and had to be fed through a tube. On the 15th his lungs began to shut down and he was hooked up to a respirator. On the 17th he fell into a coma. It was the low white blood cell count and infection that got him in the end. And on March 18th, he died of sepsis. The other junkyard worker suffered intense fever, his hair almost completely fell out, and open sores began appearing in his mouth and on the sides of his head. By March 7th, he was no longer able to eat or breathe. He began bleeding in his gastrointestinal tract. On March 9th he went into septic shock, suffered a seizure, his heart stopped, defibrillation didn't work, and he died that evening. Finally, the junkyard owner's husband developed hives over his back from a fungal infection, fell into a dangerously high fever, and his white cell count could not be improved. He was put on a respirator on March 22nd, as liquid began to fill his lungs. And on the morning of March 24th, his heart gave out from the stresses of his many symptoms.\n\nAll told, the regular junkyard staff were the worst hit by the radiation, due to the fact they were exposed to the open air Cobalt-60 whenever they were on-site between February 1st and the 17th. It is estimated that the two junkyard workers, the junkyard owner, and her husband, were hit with approximately 6 to 8 \"Grays\" which is the measurement unit for the amount of radiation that has been absorbed by the body. The impact on the maid and mother was less severe because they were only there part-time.\n\nBear in mind that 5 Grays gives you a 50/50 chance of dying in the next two months, so the fact that the junkyard owner survived at all when the other three men died is something of a miracle. It is likely due to the fact she didn't work outside her office as often as her two employees and her husband. Not that the nuclear reactor levels of radiation in her office were by any means safe. Meanwhile, the two scrap collectors, the brother-in-law, and the 19-year-old were hit by 1-3 Grays. At 1-3 Grays, with medical intervention, there is a 5-30% chance you will die in the next two months. Most of their symptoms were burns where they had handled the radiotherapy device in their attempts to open and transport it. Despite low white blood cell counts they all made full recoveries.\n\nAs for the 1872 people who lived within 100 meters or 330 feet of the junkyard, they had received a range of doses equivalent to being blasted by cosmic rays in outer space to getting multiple CT scans to getting a bad sunburn. All of which would increase the risks of cancer in later life. 862 of them were checked out by doctors, 782 of them had their blood taken, 907 of them received government advice. The other half of them got nothing. Five pregnant women lived within 50 meters or 165 feet of the junkyard. One of them decided to have an abortion, fearing that the radiation might cause the child to be born with mutations.\n\nKSE, the electricity company who had initially stored the radiotherapy device in a parking lot, along with two other machines, was initially fined just $450 US dollars. In 2003, the Office of Atoms for Peace was sued in a class action lawsuit for failing to keep track of the whereabouts of nuclear device after its removal from the KSE warehouse. The dozen plaintiffs won $155,000 dollars in compensation. That's the average annual salary of about four people in Thailand. In 2007, the quite frankly bigger culprit, KSE, was sued in civil court and had to pay a further $19,000 US dollars to the victims of the disaster. That was all the compensation anyone received. Nor can it be said that this was the last incident of nuclear materials being unleashed on the Thai public as a result of industrial negligence and lack of regulatory oversight.\n\nThe most positive thing to come out of the incident was the introduction of hazard symbol number 21482, after much institutional humming-and-hahhing, a full seven years later. But, with any luck, it shall encourage anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation to the scrap collectors and junkyard workers to drop what they are doing and run — run for their goddamn lives.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- The radioactive symbol, adopted internationally since 1974, warns of ionizing radiation danger.\n- Cobalt-60 rods carry blunt warnings like 'Danger, Radiation: Drop & Run' due to extreme hazards.\n- The Samut Prakan Radiation Accident in 2000 highlighted the need for better radiation warnings.\n- Ionizing radiation from Cobalt-60 can cause severe burns, DNA damage, and fatal health issues.\n- The incident led to the introduction of a supplementary radiation warning symbol in 2007.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What does the radioactive symbol represent?\n\nThe radioactive symbol, also known as the trefoil symbol, represents three blasts of radiation coming off an atom. It is used to warn of ionizing radiation, which is extremely harmful and often fatal to the human body.\n\n### What is Cobalt-60 and why is it dangerous?\n\nCobalt-60 is a radioactive isotope that emits ionizing radiation. It is dangerous because it can cause severe burns, skin necrosis, DNA damage, cancer, and death if exposed to it for extended periods.\n\n### What are the symptoms of acute radiation poisoning?\n\nSymptoms of acute radiation poisoning include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, seizures, coma, and death within a short period. Prolonged exposure can lead to severe burns, hair loss, and internal organ failure.\n\n### What happened in the Samut Prakan Radiation Accident?\n\nIn February 2000, a rod of Cobalt-60 was left in a junkyard in Samut Prakan, Thailand. Scrap collectors and junkyard workers were exposed to high levels of radiation, leading to severe illness and death for some.\n\n### How was the Cobalt-60 rod handled and transported?\n\nThe Cobalt-60 rod was initially handled by scrap collectors who attempted to open it with a hammer and chisel. It was then transported to a junkyard on a motorcycle-driven cart, where it was further exposed and eventually cut open with a welding torch.\n\n### What was the international response to the Samut Prakan Radiation Accident?\n\nThe International Atomic Energy Agency introduced a supplementary radiation warning symbol (ISO #21482) to be used in addition to the classic radioactive symbol. This new symbol is meant to be more insistent and clear, warning people to stop and run away from the source of radiation.\n\n### What are the long-term effects of exposure to the Cobalt-60 rod?\n\nLong-term effects of exposure to the Cobalt-60 rod include increased risk of cancer, skin necrosis, and other health issues. Those who lived near the junkyard were advised to seek medical attention and monitor their health.\n\n### What measures were taken to remove the Cobalt-60 rod from the junkyard?\n\nEmergency workers used a mechanical excavator and a bulldozer with a lead shield to remove scrap from the pile. They used a bamboo pole with an electromagnet to grasp the rod and place it in a lead container for safe handling and storage.\n\n### What was the outcome for the people involved in the Samut Prakan Radiation Accident?\n\nSeveral people, including scrap collectors and junkyard workers, suffered severe radiation poisoning. Two junkyard workers and the junkyard owner's husband died from their exposure. Others, including the junkyard owner and her family, made full recoveries after medical treatment.\n\n### What was the legal and financial fallout from the Samut Prakan Radiation Accident?\n\nKSE, the electricity company that initially stored the radiotherapy device, was fined $450. In 2003, the Office of Atoms for Peace was sued and paid $155,000 in compensation. KSE was later sued and paid an additional $19,000 to the victims.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Into the Shadows video: Cobalt-60 Rods: Totally Silent. Totally Deadly.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhVSVXUB1rw)\n- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Dutch_Flat_Placer_County_California_United_States_-_2023_June_05.jpg) by Jengod / openverse, by-sa.\n\n## Related Coverage" url: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/cobalt-60-rods-totally-silent-totally-deadly.md canonical: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/cobalt-60-rods-totally-silent-totally-deadly datePublished: 2026-06-29 dateModified: 2026-06-29 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://intotheshadows.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Into the Shadows image: "https://media.intotheshadows.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/VhVSVXUB1rw/hero.jpg" type: Article contentHash: 9bf1d0975a9739be0208cf2df64e558d78dd32408042ea50091f2e92e6139e1e tokens: 9181 summaryUrl: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/cobalt-60-rods-totally-silent-totally-deadly.md.summary.md --- How do you quickly inform someone that lethal invisible beams of energy are nearby that could fry every cell in their body and, unbeknownst to them, may have already handed them a death sentence? This is the radioactive symbol. Or, more precisely, it is the symbol posted on various devices, containers, and substances, warning of ionizing radiation, which is extremely harmful to the human body. Often fatal. The symbol is also placed at the perimeter of nuclear power plants, former bomb test sites, and areas that have experienced a catastrophic nuclear meltdown — where radiation levels are dangerously high, even when standing at a distance of several hundred feet or perhaps even a couple of miles. The radioactive symbol was first devised in 1946 in the United States and it slowly became adopted as the standard international hazard symbol for ionizing radiation between 1963 and 1974 — officially being designated with the International Standards Organization number 3-6-1. Its "trefoil" shape is supposed to represent three blasts of radiation coming off an atom. If we hadn't seen this symbol a billion times in movies, TV shows, and comic books, I'm not sure how many of us would have been able to figure out that these geometric shapes represent radiation from an atom, or immediately realize the extreme danger it posed, in time to save our lives. Or, at the very least, spare ourselves permanent injury and some agonizing weeks in hospital. Similarly, popular knowledge of the radioactive symbol is not equally distributed around the world. A survey conducted in India, Brazil, and Kenya in 2004 found that only 6% of respondents understood its meaning and the danger it signified. As such, rods made of highly radioactive material have engravings on them that are even more blunt. The most recognizable on the internet being a rod of Cobalt-60, only an inch thick, that could fit in the palm of your hand. The engraving reads, "Danger, Radiation: Drop & Run." If you held one of these fully irradiated rods for five minutes, eventually your hand would swell up like a balloon, large strips of skin would probably turn necrotic and fall off, and the massive amount of radiation that hit the rest of your body would give you a 50/50 chance of dying in the next two months. If you held onto a fully irradiated rod of Cobalt-60 for 10 minutes, you'd soon vomit, soil yourself with a heavy bout of diarrhea, have multiple seizures, fall into a coma within the hour, and be dead within two days. Therefore, "drop and run" is something of an understatement. You should drop it and run for your goddamn life, until you are the better part of a mile away. Or at least until there are some very heavy walls between you and the object. However, to be frank, you'd be wise to keep running all the way to the emergency room. Given that the world's largest supplier of Cobalt-60 rods is Canada, and that the international language of science is English, even this sinister warning may be missed by people who can't read English engravings and aren't terribly familiar with the concept of radioactivity. There are numerous cases from the developing world where people unwittingly dismantled nuclear devices and died horrible deaths. As such, in 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency unveiled a supplementary radiation warning: ISO symbol #2-1-4-8-2. It is meant to be pasted on nuclear devices in addition to the classic radioactive symbol. If a person ignores the trefoil symbol on the outside of the device and begins to dismantle it, once they lift a panel or remove an outer casing, they will be confronted by a much more insistent blood-red triangle, with the classic radiation symbol at the top. But, this time, the radiation symbol is emitting sinister lines of nuclear energy down toward a skull and crossbones representing high toxicity and death, and next to it, a man running for his life. As such, ISO #21482 is the international symbol of "Stop what you're doing and get the hell out of there, and if you're lucky you haven't already signed your own death warrant." Due to the immense danger posed by radiation to human beings, and the catastrophes that inevitably follow when radioactive materials are unleashed upon the public, everything in our power must be done to keep unsuspecting people away from them. Which brings us to the tragic event which convinced international authorities that the "run for your damn life" symbol was desperately needed around the world — the Samut Prakan Radiation Accident. ## The Perils of Cobalt-60 Samut Prakan is a province included in the Bangkok Metropolitan Area of the Southeast Asian kingdom of Thailand. It is a heavily urbanized region with well over a million people living on top of each other. It was in this crowded area that, in February of the year 2000, a source of tremendous radioactivity was left in a junkyard, sparking a state of emergency and endangering the local populace. The seeds of the disaster were sown several decades earlier in 1969, when the German technology conglomerate, Siemens, exported a radiotherapy machine to a hospital in Bangkok. The machine used targeted radiation to induce cell death and shrink malignant tumors that would otherwise continue to grow rapidly, impeding a patient's bodily functions, and ultimately killing them. The machine in question was powered by a rod of Cobalt-60, which had been produced in Canada. Cobalt-60 is a radioactive source that is not found in nature. It must be artificially made. Plain-old, naturally occurring cobalt is usually extracted as a byproduct of nickel and copper mining, and when extracted from the ore, it can be smelted into a bluish-grey metal. Historically, cobalt was used to infuse a splash of blue in everything from Ancient Roman jewelry to Chinese Ming vases. In the modern age, cobalt is instead frequently shipped to a heavy water nuclear plant, like those in Canada, where it is bombarded with neutrons in order to fill the nucleus of a cobalt atom with more of them — going from 27 neutrons to 33. This process of neutron enrichment takes the relatively stable blue metal and transforms it into a highly unstable radioactive one called an "isotope." A neutron-laden isotope decays by emitting tremendous amounts of energy into the surrounding environment as it tries to settle into a more stable form again. The fierce blast of energy is called "ionizing radiation." The deadly kind of radiation. It is strong enough to strip electrons from the shell surrounding an atom. Sort of like taking a sharp pick, or a knife, or a piece of steel wool, and scraping the enamel off your teeth. As such, in living cells, ionizing radiation can have a hugely unhealthy and destabilizing effect upon the body's complex and fragile patchwork of interwoven parts. It can create horrific swollen burns and skin necrosis, aka dead flesh still attached to your body. It also can destroy parts of DNA — the very fiber of your being — creating grotesque mutations and vastly increasing the risk of cancer. It can also destroy the marrow of your bones, which stops the production of the white blood cells necessary to fight off viruses and hostile bacteria, meaning that the smallest of infections can kill you. It also destroys your gastric, vascular, and neurological systems causing intense nausea, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, unbearable abdominal pain, fever, the shutting down of vital organs, disorientation, seizures, and ultimately death. Once blasted by a significant dose of ionizing radiation, there is often a period of initial nausea followed by a latency period of several days where you show few symptoms. Meanwhile, the cells of your body will quietly contort and curdle until the whole fragile system breaks down and you suddenly become tremendously ill. Without medical treatment, you will almost certainly die. And if you got a heavy enough dose, it doesn't matter if you get medical treatment. You will die anyway. In small, targeted doses via radiotherapy machines, ionizing radiation can do just enough damage to living cells that it slowly shrinks cancerous tumors. But if its full power is unleashed upon the world, it is a horrific thing to behold. No different than the fallout experienced by the people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And these devices are in almost every hospital around the globe. As such, the rod of Cobalt-60 used in the Bangkok radiotherapy machine was housed inside of a thick container made out of lead – a metal that is capable of stopping ionizing radiation dead in its tracks. The lead container was surrounded by stainless steel. Because the rod of Cobalt-60 was only an inch thick and 1.5 inches long, the lead and steel container was also quite small: about 17 inches long and 8 inches wide. But due to all the heavy metals involved, the whole thing weighed an astonishingly hefty 230 pounds. Over time, a rod in a radiotherapy machine will lose its strength. As the rod of Cobalt-60 emits an immense blast of radiation, it gradually decays into a stable form of nickel – chemically changing into a completely different element. It takes 5.2714 years for exactly half of the cobalt atoms to decay, otherwise known as a "half-life". As all the Cobalt-60 atoms are slowly used up, the radioactivity of a rod of cobalt becomes less fierce. Thereupon, the rod will need to be replaced. But things didn't work out that way in Bangkok. ## Utter Incompetence, Despicable Negligence In the case of the rod of Cobalt-60 powering the radiotherapy machine in Bangkok, it was in use from 1969 until 1981 — 12 years — long after it should have been replaced with a new rod. What this meant for cancer patients at the Bangkok hospital was that they had to spend unreasonably long amounts of time being blasted by an increasingly weak machine in order to shrink their tumors. A new Cobalt-60 rod was installed in the machine in 1981. Thereafter the pattern repeated itself. The rod was in use for a further 13 years until 1994. Thereupon, the Bangkok hospital replaced the entire radiotherapy machine with a new one manufactured by Nordion, a company based in Canada. It was here that a problem arose. Where do you put the old machine? Nordion refused to take it, because they had not manufactured it. Siemens, the German company that did manufacture it in 1969, also refused to take it because they had long since stopped working with Cobalt-60 and no longer produced the machines. So instead, the Bangkok hospital sold the old machine to the Thai electric company, Kamol Sukosol, or KSE. As a matter of procedure, the hospital and KSE had to report the transfer of the radioactive device to the Thai nuclear regulator, The Office of Atoms for Peace. They did not. That was illegal. The radiotherapy machine was transferred to a KSE warehouse, where it was placed in a storage unit that eventually got filled up with three other radiotherapy machines – when KSE was only licensed to house one. In 1999, KSE terminated their lease of the storage warehouse. Thereupon KSE moved three of the radiotherapy machines to a parking lot they owned in southeast Bangkok. Needless to say, this was also illegal. The radiotherapy machines were stored underneath a simple overhead shelter to protect them from the elements. Otherwise, they were sitting in the open air. Public access was blocked off from the parking lot only by a chain-link fence. However, the neighborhood children had long since cut holes in the fence in order to play football in the wide-open spaces there. Sometime in late 1999 or early 2000, the Bangkok hospital radiotherapy machine was stolen from the parking lot by a person or persons unknown. On January 24th 2000, the container housing the rod of Cobalt-60 was sold to two scrap metal collectors. It is possible these two stole the device on their own, but we shall never know. Due to strict defamation laws in Thailand, these men shall remain nameless, as shall all the other players in this story. They took the container home and left it outside, 100 meters or 330 feet from the house, intending to dismantle it and sell the metal at a later date. The Cobalt-60 at this point was 19 years old. The majority of it had already decayed. The original strength of the rod in 1981 was approximately 197 trillion "becquerels," a measurement unit for radioactivity named after the man who discovered the phenomenon. By the year 2000, the Cobalt-60's radioactivity had declined to 15.7 trillion becquerels, a loss of 92% of its potency. But do not be under any illusions. 15.7 trillion becquerels is roughly as radioactive as the contaminated water that leaked out of the Fukushima power plant in the aftermath of the disaster. It's more than enough to kill you if you get close to it. The only silver lining in this situation is that a brand-new rod of Cobalt-60 would have killed exponentially more people in the area. ## Unleashing Pure Death On February 1st, the two scrap collectors were joined by two other men to try and bust the container open. One was a 23-year-old brother-in-law of one of the collectors, the other was a 19-year-old neighbourhood lad just looking to help out. He was the same age as the rod of Cobalt-60. For the next hour, they all tried to bust it open and one of the scrap collectors took a hammer and chisel to the device. The scrap collector managed to crack a welded seam between the stainless-steel exterior and the thick lead container. A toxic oily liquid came seeping out. This was a build-up of decades of moisture inside the casing that had turned radioactive. Because the scrap collector did the majority of the work, he suffered most of the exposure to it, but the other men were exposed too. At the time, the container of the Cobalt-60 remained largely unpenetrated, so it was not as bad as it could have been. At this point, the other scrap metal collector declared that they weren't getting anywhere and proposed he take the device to a junkyard in Samut Prakan, about 30 minutes' drive away. There the junkyard staff could dismantle the device on site, and the scrap collectors could sell the metal to them. The device was loaded onto a motorcycle driven cart. The impatient scrap collector drove, while the 19-year-old youth sat in the cart with his leg dangling over the now cracked and leaking radiotherapy device. The chisel-man and the brother-in-law remained at the house and avoided being exposed any further. But the worst was yet to come. Arriving at the junkyard, the scrap collector approached a member of staff and asked him to cut open the steel and lead casing containing the Cobalt-60 with an oxy-acetylene welding torch. It burned hot at 3500 degrees Celsius or 6000 degrees Fahrenheit. Another junkyard worker observed the process from just a few feet away. The cutting released a foul-smelling yellow smoke into the air. Part of the lead casing, now cut in half, fell and hit the ground. Unbeknownst to the men, the 1.5 inch long, 1 inch thick rod of Cobalt-60 also fell out and rolled into a nearby pile of scrap. With the rod unleashed, all four men in the junkyard were now getting blasted with a potentially fatal dose of radiation. The junkyard worker picked up the two pieces of lead casing and weighed them in his hands. His hands immediately began to itch. After putting the pieces down, the junkyard staff member continued to work, trying to separate the stainless steel from the lead, but he had become alarmed by the yellow smoke. The owner of the junkyard, a 45-year-old woman, approached the men and told the scrap collector to take the radiotherapy device home and separate the rest of the lead and steel there. The two pieces of lead that had fallen to the ground were laid to one side. Meanwhile, the rod of Cobalt-60 was left in a pile of scrap in the open air, blasting out radiation into the surrounding neighbourhood. It was only 11 feet or 3.35 meters from the junkyard owner's office. Not long after the scrap collector left, the two junkyard employees got severe headaches and began to vomit. On the drive home, the scrap collector also came down with a splitting headache and began to feel nauseated, but did not vomit. His 19-year-old assistant also began to feel ill and felt an itching sensation on his leg where he had draped it over the radiotherapy device on the drive over. Back at the house, the scrap collector and the 19-year-old boy managed to overcome their feelings of illness and they separated the stainless steel from the rest of the lead. Because the Cobalt-60 was back at the yard, they did not suffer further exposure in doing so. The scrap collector brought the stainless steel and the lead back to the junkyard for sale, the next day, on February 2nd. Meanwhile, the junkyard owner and staff continued to feel the brunt of the radiation from the Cobalt-60 sat right there in the yard. The two junkyard employees took some time off for Chinese New Year, during which they lost weight and had no appetite. They returned to work on February 7th and continued to be exposed to radiation. The junkyard owner and her husband, who lived across the street and both worked in the office only a few feet away from the Cobalt-60, also continued to be dosed over the next several days. As did the junkyard owner's 33-year-old maid (who worked part-time in the yard) and the owner's 75-year-old mother who regularly visited her daughter at work. On February 12th, the junkyard owner grew alarmed at how sick her two employees were getting. They were suffering chronic diarrhea which they could only halt by medication. The owner summoned the scrap collector and told him to take away the lead casing and sell it somewhere else, suspecting it was the lead that was somehow making her staff sick. She also asked a different scrap collector to throw away the two smaller pieces that had hit the ground. The man threw them down a nearby public drainpipe. Meanwhile, the rod of Cobalt-60 remained in the scrap pile in the yard. That same day, on February 12th, the scrap collector who had gone to the junkyard became distressed at the swollen burns on his hands and had them checked out at a private clinic. No diagnosis was reached. Over the next few days, the burn continued to swell and darken, and the scrap collector began vomiting and losing his hair. On February 15th, the scrap collector went to the outpatient clinic at Samut Prakan Hospital, where the doctors took some blood. The scrap collector returned on the 16th for the results, was told his white blood cell count was alarmingly low and he was immediately admitted to hospital. Also on the 16th, one of the junkyard staff went to Samut Prakan hospital with a fever, rapid weight loss, diarrhea, burned hands, and loss of hair. He was examined and immediately admitted. The following day, the 17th, the junkyard owner grew distressed at how sick her other employee was getting. He was losing weight and his hair was falling out. The owner drove her second employee to Samut Prakan hospital and he, too, was admitted. Meanwhile, the owner noticed that a stray dog that frequently wandered into the junkyard was lying there dead. Later on the 17th, the owner and her husband drove to Bangkok General Hospital. The owner had been feeling weak and noticed her hair had begun falling out. Her husband, meanwhile, was also feeling weak, in addition to suffering severe abdominal pain and chronic nose bleeds. The doctors took blood and found their white blood cell count was dangerously low. A bone marrow biopsy was also taken from both of them. The husband was admitted due to his uncontrollable nose bleeds, while the junkyard owner was not admitted but remained as an outpatient at Bangkok Hospital. ## The Emergency Response On the morning of February 18th, at Samut Prakan Hospital, the condition of the scrap collector and the two junkyard employees continued to deteriorate. The doctors at Samut Prakan drew a connection between the symptoms of the three patients and concluded they had suffered acute radiation poisoning. At 11:10 am, they called the Office of Atoms for Peace, who dispatched two investigators to Samut Prakan. They arrived at 12:30 pm, concurred with the diagnosis, and summoned the junkyard owner from her husband's beside at Bangkok General to Samut Prakan for questioning. From there, the investigators went to the public drainpipe to fish out the two small pieces of lead. They no longer emitted any radioactivity. At 7 pm, the investigators were driving in the direction of the junkyard, still several blocks away, and noticed that radiation levels were spiking to 8 micro-sieverts per hour, or about 20 times the normal levels. The investigators continued driving and when they arrived at the junkyard, the radiation levels in their car spiked 125 times higher to 1 milli-sievert, the same level as a fenced off high radiation area at a nuclear power plant. The investigators concluded that intense gamma rays were blasting out of the junkyard and called for assistance. The emergency response team arrived and began assessing radiation levels in the area in order to locate the source. The beauty salon on one side of the junkyard and the grocery store on the other side, shielded by walls and fences, were both being blasted with 200 micro-sieverts of radiation per hour, equivalent to cosmic rays in unshielded interplanetary space. Meanwhile, the buildings across the street from the junkyard were being pelted with unobstructed gamma rays. The radiation was twice to four times higher the equivalent of a perpetual CT scan running 24 hours a day. The main gate to the junkyard was even worse, hit by 10 milli-sieverts per hour, or the equivalent of a dose of radiation typically inflicted on a city when a nuclear plant blows up. The junkyard office, being only a few feet from the rod of Cobalt-60, was being hit by 50 milli-sieverts per hour, or roughly 2000 times higher than the radiation experienced by nuclear reactor technicians in the same space of time. The biggest dose of radiation was coming from a scrap pile at the front of the yard – 10 full sieverts per hour. Almost as bad as what emergency workers experienced at ground zero at Chernobyl, and far beyond the levels of exposure that would result in a 50/50 chance of death in the next two months. In fact, 10 full sieverts would typically result in a 99-100% mortality rate, even with medical intervention. As such, the emergency response team couldn't get near the scrap pile in order to locate the source of the radiation. The street was closed to traffic and the immediate area 10 meters from the entrance to the junkyard was cordoned off, but evacuation of the wider area was deemed unnecessary. There were 1872 people living within 100 meters or 330 feet of the junkyard and they were allowed to stay put. Emergency workers continued to narrow down the location of the source of the radiation throughout the night until 4 am on February 19th when operations were suspended as they formulated a plan to remove the source from the scrap pile. Meanwhile, the junkyard owner's maid was admitted to hospital with nausea, vomiting, and headache. The condition of the two junkyard workers continued to worsen. Their white cell count dropped near to zero, they had radiation burns over their arms, chests, and faces, they had fever, nosebleeds that required nasal packing to staunch the flow of blood, and their lips and tongues had become painfully swollen. Back at the junkyard, at 4pm, the source removal plan was put into action. A mechanical excavator tore down the fence at the front of the yard. A bulldozer was rigged up with spotlights and a lead shield that was 6-and-a-half-feet tall and 2 inches thick to allow emergency workers to hide behind it in an effort to get closer to the scrap pile. The workers did not have hazmat suits, but wore cloth gloves and face masks, which were practically useless. Some of the workers also insisted on wearing lead aprons, which are appropriate for a dentist during an X-ray, but they offered next to no protection from the immense levels of radiation blasted out by a rod of Cobalt-60. In fact, the aprons slowed the workers' movements, increasing the risk of exposure. Yet the officials in charge of the emergency response team allowed the workers to wear the lead aprons as a sort of security blanket to allay their fears and keep them calm. Large pieces of scrap were taken away from the pile with a mechanical grasping tool. Smaller pieces of scrap were removed by an improvised 16-foot bamboo pole, with an electromagnet tied to the end. One by one, pieces of scrap were removed, dropped into an old bathtub with a radiation scanner in it, and assessed as to whether the scrap was the source. Next to the bathtub was a 3.3-inch-thick lead container into which the source would be dropped once it was found. With the larger pieces of overhanging scrap removed from the pile, the workers still could not figure out which piece of material was emitting all the radiation. After nightfall, they decided to bring in a fluorescent screen to figure out which piece of material was glowing like a Christmas tree. However, even with the search lights turned off, the moon was so bright that it made it difficult to read the screen. Finally, at around 9pm, there was enough cloud cover to figure out the source of the radiation was a small object only 1.5 inches long. Some more scrap was cleared and, after some difficulty in grasping the object without getting a fatal dose of radiation, at 12:20 am on February 20th, the workers finally managed to pick up the Cobalt-60 with the bamboo rod with the electromagnet at the end. It was dropped in the lead container and then sealed in. The container was then shipped off for safe handling and storage. Despite shoddy and makeshift equipment, the emergency response team managed to pull it off without getting a heavy dose of radiation. At the uppermost 6 of the workers received the equivalent of a full-body CT scan, while the remaining 46 emergency workers received considerably less. As ramshackle as the effort may seem, the lead shield and the grappling tools were a success. ## The Aftermath A few hours later on February 20th, authorities located the second scrap collector – the chisel-man who had initially cracked the welded seam – and took him to Samut Prakan hospital. His white blood cell count was low and his hands were swollen bright red, and looked as if they were half-melted candles. The 19-year-old lad who had draped his leg over the radiotherapy machine on the way to the junkyard was also located. Predictably, the young man had a severe radiation burn down the back of his right leg, stretching from the thigh to the calf. The skin was falling off and slowly becoming necrotic, risking a grisly infection. There was a second burn 10 inches in diameter on his right knee. He also had suffered radiation burns to some of his fingers, and, as with others, he was running low on white blood cells. The junkyard owner was also admitted to hospital on the 20th, was accordingly treated for a low white cell count, and later treated for fever and a bleeding rectum. She also suffered vascular deterioration and damage to her lungs, but thankfully with regular blood transfusions and antibiotics, she did not require invasive surgery or a respirator. By the end of March, she had made a full recovery. The junkyard owner's mother was admitted to hospital on February 22nd. She had been suffering nausea, fever, and a low white blood cell count. The brother-in-law of one of the scrap collectors wasn't located until March 3rd. He had only been present during the hammer and chisel stage. Nevertheless, he had sustained radiation burns to his right hand, and the nails on his middle finger and pinky eventually fell off. The two scrap collectors, the brother-in-law, the 19-year-old, the junkyard owner, her maid, and her mother, spent about a month in hospital and eventually made full recoveries. The others weren't so lucky. The two junkyard workers had received the full brunt of the Cobalt-60 when they had cut open the lead container, and they had worked in the yard for a further week with the Cobalt-60 right there, slowly killing them. The junkyard worker who had actually cut open the container could not recover his white blood cell count, open sores began appearing in his mouth and on his tongue, and large segments of his skin began falling off. He got severe diarrhea again on March 2nd and by March 6th he could no longer eat food and had to be fed through a tube. On the 15th his lungs began to shut down and he was hooked up to a respirator. On the 17th he fell into a coma. It was the low white blood cell count and infection that got him in the end. And on March 18th, he died of sepsis. The other junkyard worker suffered intense fever, his hair almost completely fell out, and open sores began appearing in his mouth and on the sides of his head. By March 7th, he was no longer able to eat or breathe. He began bleeding in his gastrointestinal tract. On March 9th he went into septic shock, suffered a seizure, his heart stopped, defibrillation didn't work, and he died that evening. Finally, the junkyard owner's husband developed hives over his back from a fungal infection, fell into a dangerously high fever, and his white cell count could not be improved. He was put on a respirator on March 22nd, as liquid began to fill his lungs. And on the morning of March 24th, his heart gave out from the stresses of his many symptoms. All told, the regular junkyard staff were the worst hit by the radiation, due to the fact they were exposed to the open air Cobalt-60 whenever they were on-site between February 1st and the 17th. It is estimated that the two junkyard workers, the junkyard owner, and her husband, were hit with approximately 6 to 8 "Grays" which is the measurement unit for the amount of radiation that has been absorbed by the body. The impact on the maid and mother was less severe because they were only there part-time. Bear in mind that 5 Grays gives you a 50/50 chance of dying in the next two months, so the fact that the junkyard owner survived at all when the other three men died is something of a miracle. It is likely due to the fact she didn't work outside her office as often as her two employees and her husband. Not that the nuclear reactor levels of radiation in her office were by any means safe. Meanwhile, the two scrap collectors, the brother-in-law, and the 19-year-old were hit by 1-3 Grays. At 1-3 Grays, with medical intervention, there is a 5-30% chance you will die in the next two months. Most of their symptoms were burns where they had handled the radiotherapy device in their attempts to open and transport it. Despite low white blood cell counts they all made full recoveries. As for the 1872 people who lived within 100 meters or 330 feet of the junkyard, they had received a range of doses equivalent to being blasted by cosmic rays in outer space to getting multiple CT scans to getting a bad sunburn. All of which would increase the risks of cancer in later life. 862 of them were checked out by doctors, 782 of them had their blood taken, 907 of them received government advice. The other half of them got nothing. Five pregnant women lived within 50 meters or 165 feet of the junkyard. One of them decided to have an abortion, fearing that the radiation might cause the child to be born with mutations. KSE, the electricity company who had initially stored the radiotherapy device in a parking lot, along with two other machines, was initially fined just $450 US dollars. In 2003, the Office of Atoms for Peace was sued in a class action lawsuit for failing to keep track of the whereabouts of nuclear device after its removal from the KSE warehouse. The dozen plaintiffs won $155,000 dollars in compensation. That's the average annual salary of about four people in Thailand. In 2007, the quite frankly bigger culprit, KSE, was sued in civil court and had to pay a further $19,000 US dollars to the victims of the disaster. That was all the compensation anyone received. Nor can it be said that this was the last incident of nuclear materials being unleashed on the Thai public as a result of industrial negligence and lack of regulatory oversight. The most positive thing to come out of the incident was the introduction of hazard symbol number 21482, after much institutional humming-and-hahhing, a full seven years later. But, with any luck, it shall encourage anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation to the scrap collectors and junkyard workers to drop what they are doing and run — run for their goddamn lives. ## Key Takeaways - The radioactive symbol, adopted internationally since 1974, warns of ionizing radiation danger. - Cobalt-60 rods carry blunt warnings like 'Danger, Radiation: Drop & Run' due to extreme hazards. - The Samut Prakan Radiation Accident in 2000 highlighted the need for better radiation warnings. - Ionizing radiation from Cobalt-60 can cause severe burns, DNA damage, and fatal health issues. - The incident led to the introduction of a supplementary radiation warning symbol in 2007. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What does the radioactive symbol represent? The radioactive symbol, also known as the trefoil symbol, represents three blasts of radiation coming off an atom. It is used to warn of ionizing radiation, which is extremely harmful and often fatal to the human body. ### What is Cobalt-60 and why is it dangerous? Cobalt-60 is a radioactive isotope that emits ionizing radiation. It is dangerous because it can cause severe burns, skin necrosis, DNA damage, cancer, and death if exposed to it for extended periods. ### What are the symptoms of acute radiation poisoning? Symptoms of acute radiation poisoning include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, seizures, coma, and death within a short period. Prolonged exposure can lead to severe burns, hair loss, and internal organ failure. ### What happened in the Samut Prakan Radiation Accident? In February 2000, a rod of Cobalt-60 was left in a junkyard in Samut Prakan, Thailand. Scrap collectors and junkyard workers were exposed to high levels of radiation, leading to severe illness and death for some. ### How was the Cobalt-60 rod handled and transported? The Cobalt-60 rod was initially handled by scrap collectors who attempted to open it with a hammer and chisel. It was then transported to a junkyard on a motorcycle-driven cart, where it was further exposed and eventually cut open with a welding torch. ### What was the international response to the Samut Prakan Radiation Accident? The International Atomic Energy Agency introduced a supplementary radiation warning symbol (ISO #21482) to be used in addition to the classic radioactive symbol. This new symbol is meant to be more insistent and clear, warning people to stop and run away from the source of radiation. ### What are the long-term effects of exposure to the Cobalt-60 rod? Long-term effects of exposure to the Cobalt-60 rod include increased risk of cancer, skin necrosis, and other health issues. Those who lived near the junkyard were advised to seek medical attention and monitor their health. ### What measures were taken to remove the Cobalt-60 rod from the junkyard? Emergency workers used a mechanical excavator and a bulldozer with a lead shield to remove scrap from the pile. They used a bamboo pole with an electromagnet to grasp the rod and place it in a lead container for safe handling and storage. ### What was the outcome for the people involved in the Samut Prakan Radiation Accident? Several people, including scrap collectors and junkyard workers, suffered severe radiation poisoning. Two junkyard workers and the junkyard owner's husband died from their exposure. Others, including the junkyard owner and her family, made full recoveries after medical treatment. ### What was the legal and financial fallout from the Samut Prakan Radiation Accident? KSE, the electricity company that initially stored the radiotherapy device, was fined $450. In 2003, the Office of Atoms for Peace was sued and paid $155,000 in compensation. KSE was later sued and paid an additional $19,000 to the victims. ## Sources - [Original Into the Shadows video: Cobalt-60 Rods: Totally Silent. Totally Deadly.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhVSVXUB1rw) - [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Dutch_Flat_Placer_County_California_United_States_-_2023_June_05.jpg) by Jengod / openverse, by-sa. ## Related Coverage