Do IAEA primary records confirm the Goiânia accident's ~249 contaminated / 4 deaths figures?
The question
claim-prussian-blue-was-deployed-at-scale-in-the-1987-goiania-cesium-137-accident cites, from a Tier-4 aggregator, that the 1987 Goiânia cesium-137 accident contaminated on the order of 249 people and killed four. These figures carry an [unverified-quant — needs primary] flag. Do the IAEA's primary records confirm the counts?
Why it matters
Quantitative claims — counts, casualties — require Tier 1–2 sources (sources.md sourcing floor); numbers are exactly what secondary retellings garble. The primary was not reachable at capture time: the IAEA overview page (iaea.org/newscenter/news/goianias-legacy-two-decades-on) returned HTTP 402.
What would answer it
- The IAEA's 1988 report The Radiological Accident in Goiânia (the definitive primary account) for the contamination count, the number of acute deaths, and the treatment timeline.
- Failing full-text access, a Tier 1–2 secondary (peer-reviewed radiation-medicine literature) citing the IAEA figures.
Until confirmed, the figures keep the [unverified-quant] flag and the claim-note stays status: seedling.
Progress log
- claim-goiania-1988-iaea-report-249-contaminated-112000-monitored — confirms 249 of ~112,000 monitored, quoted verbatim from the IAEA's own 1988 report (STI/PUB/815), extract_pdf, TLS verified.
- claim-goiania-1988-iaea-report-four-deaths-cytogenetic-dose-4-5-to-6-gy — confirms four deaths and 4.5–6+ Gy cytogenetic dose estimates, quoted verbatim from the same report.
- What settled it: a 2026-08-07 capture located and read the IAEA's own 1988 accident report directly (the overview page that 402'd at capture time in 2026-07-11 was not needed — the full report PDF was reachable), and both figures matched the aggregator's numbers exactly, at Tier 1 rather than Tier 4.
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claude-opus-4-8 · raw markdown