The World - News from Oct. 2, 1987

Sixteen Brazilians were hospitalized and 40 were isolated and given decontamination baths after a man opened a glowing cylinder and gave the radioactive powder inside to children who rubbed it on their bodies, officials said in Rio de Janeiro. The radiation came from powdered cesium 137, an isotope used in chemotherapy treatment of cancer. It was contained in a radiotherapy machine left in a former clinic in Goiania, 590 miles northwest of Rio, officials said. They said that a cylinder containing the isotope had been obtained by two scavengers who, unaware of the threat, had given some of the powder to children because it glowed like glitter.