This article lists notable civilian accidents involving radioactive materials or involving ionizing radiation from artificial sources such as x-ray tubes and particle accelerators. Accidents related to nuclear power that involve fissile materials are listed at List of civilian nuclear accidents. Military accidents are listed at List of military nuclear accidents.
Scope of this article In listing civilian radiation accidents, the following criteria have been followed: There must be well-attested and substantial health damage, property damage or contamination. The damage must be related directly to radioactive materials or ionizing radiation from a man-made source, not merely taking place at a facility where such are being used. To qualify as "civilian", the operation or material must be principally for non-military purposes. The event is not an event involving fissile material or a nuclear reactor.
Before 1950s Clarence Madison Dally (1865–1904) – No International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) level – New Jersey, USA – overexposure of laboratory worker to X-rays Various dates – No INES level – France – overexposure of scientists Marie Skłodowska Curie (1867–1934) was a Polish-French physicist and chemist. She was a pioneer in the early field of radioactivity, later becoming the first two-time Nobel laureate and the only person with Nobel Prizes in both physics and chemistry. Her death, at age 67, in 1934 was from aplastic anemia due to massive exposure to radiation in her work,Rollyson, Carl (2004). Marie Curie: Honesty In Science. iUniverse, prologue, x. much of which was carried out in a shed with no proper safety measures being taken, as the damaging effects of hard radiation were not generally understood at that time. She was known to carry test tubes full of radioactive isotopes in her pocket, and to store them in her desk drawer, resulting in massive exposure to radiation. She was known to remark on the pretty blue-green light the metals gave off in the dark. Although her papers are likely to present little risk today, they are nonetheless contaminated with radium. They are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear gloves and sign a waiver out of caution.Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 148. Various dates – No INES level – various locations – overexposure of workers – radium poisoning Luminescent radium was used to paint watches and other items that glowed. The most notable incident is the "Radium Girls" of Orange, New Jersey, USA where many workers suffered from radiation poisoning. Other towns including Ottawa, Illinois experienced contamination of homes and other structures, and became Superfund cleanup sites. Various dates – No INES level – Colorado, USA – contamination Radium mining and manufacturing left a number of streets in the state's capital and largest city of Denver contaminated.Denver Radium Streets Programdenvergov.org 1927–1930 – No INES level – USA – radium poisoning Eben Byers ingested almost 1400 bottles of Radithor, a radioactive patent medicine, leading to his death in 1932. He is buried in Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a lead-lined coffin. Harry Daghlian, an American physicist in the Manhattan Project, was building a neutron reflector by stacking tungsten carbide bricks around a plutonium core on August 21, 1945. He accidentally added an extra brick to the assembly, which resulted in a criticality accident. Daghlian received a lethal dose of radiation and died 25 days later after falling into a coma. Louis Slotin, a Canadian physicist in the Manhattan Project, accidentally dropped the shield on the plutonium ball (the so-called "demon core") causing a strong burst of radiation, as he was showing his colleagues how to bring the exposed core of a nuclear weapon nearly to the point of criticality on May 21, 1946. The dose of radiation he received as a result was so high that he died within 25 days of the accident.
1950s March 1957 – No INES level – Houston, Texas, USA – exposure of workers Two employees of a company licensed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to encapsulate sources for radiographic cameras received radiation burns after being exposed to 192Ir powder. The incident was reported in Look Magazine in 1961, but investigations published by the Mayo Clinic that same year found few of the radiological injuries claimed in widespread press reports. 10 October 1957 – The Windscale fire at the facility in Cumberland, Northern England (now Sellafield, Cumbria), UK. It lasted for three days and spread significant quantities of radioactive isotopes across the UK and Europe. Modern assessment of historical data rated the event a 5 on the INES, indicating an accident with widespread consequences. 2 July 1956 – Sylvania Electric Products explosion in Queens, New York City, USA. Explosions of thorium slugs resulted in the death by toxic heavy metal poisoning of one plant employee.Mark Harrington, "Sad Memories of '56 Sylvania Explosion", New York Newsday, August 17, 2003, archived at the Wayback Machine, February 4, 2012. June 1958 – Y-12 National Security Complex criticality incident in the USA – Eight workers injured in the incident. July 1959 The Sodium Reactor Experiment, an experimental reactor at work from 1957 to 1964 and part of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, suffered a partial meltdown when 13 of its 43 fuel rods partially melted, releasing radioctive gas to the atmosphere.
1960s In the 1962 Mexico City radiation accident, a boy found a 5-curie cobalt-60 lost source in Mexico City and brought it home. Prolonged exposure to the source caused the death of the boy and three other members of his family.
In 1964, Robert Peabody died after an accident at the United Nuclear Corporation Fuels Recovery Plant in Wood River Junction, Rhode Island, USA.
1970s 1975 – Brescia, Italy, at a cereal irradiation facility with four cobalt-60 sources, a worker entered the irradiation room by climbing onto the conveyor belt. His first symptoms of exposure (nausea, vomiting, headache, and erythema) were attributed to insecticides. For more than two days, his exposure to an unshielded 500-TBq source remained unknown to the physicians. He died 13 days after exposure; his whole-body dose was evaluated at 12 Gy, non-uniform. 1977 – Dounreay, United Kingdom – release of nuclear material An explosion at the Dounreay Nuclear Power Development Establishment caused a mixture of unrecorded waste to be leaked from a waste disposal shaft.
July 13, 1978 – Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, Russia – Anatoli Bugorski survived high-energy proton beam from a particle accelerator passing through his brain. July 16, 1979 – Church Rock uranium mill spill in the USA – release of radioactive mine tailings An earth/clay dike of a United Nuclear Corporation uranium mill settling/evaporating pond failed. The broken dam released 100 million U.S. gallons (380,000 m3) of radioactive liquids and 1,100 short tons (1,000 t) of solid wastes, which settled out up to 70 miles (100 km) down the Puerco RiverHarvey Wasserman & Norman Solomon Killing Our Own (Chapter 9 – Uranium Milling and the Church Rock Disaster) A Delta Book, 1982 and also near a Navajo farming community that uses surface waters. As a result, the Navajo community suffered serious health implications.United States. Congress. House. Committee on Oversight Government Reform. (2008). The health and environmental impacts of uranium contamination in the Navajo Nation: Hearing before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, first session, October 23, 2007. Washington: U.S. G.P.O.: For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O. The pond was past its planned and licensed life and had been filled two feet (60 cm) deeper than design, despite evident cracking.
September 29, 1979 – Tritium leak at American Atomics in Tucson, Arizona, USA. At the public school across the street from the plant, $300,000 worth of food was found to be contaminated. The chocolate cake had 56 nCi/L (2,100 Bq/L) of tritium.Thomas E. McKone and Kevin Brand Environmental Health-Risk Assessment for Tritium Releases at the NTLF at LBNL (Questions and Answers About Tritium) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, April 1997Let the Facts Speak 1975–1979 prop1.orgHarvey Wasserman & Norman Solomon Killing Our Own (Chapter 10) A Delta Book, 1982Possible Leakage of Tubes of Tritium Gas Used in Timepieces for Luminosity United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, September 5, 1979
1980s Early 1981 – Douglas Crofut, an unemployed industrial radiographer, was injured by an unknown source of radiation, suffering severe radiation burns from which he would ultimately die. Although the source of radiation was never conclusively determined, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission strongly suspected that the source was an 192Ir industrial radiographic source which had temporarily gone missing and had been in the care of a fellow industrial radiographer living near Crofut. At the time of his injury and death, Crofut was reported to have been the first such death in the US since the Manhattan Project. Crofut's death is notable for being the only US death attributable to an unknown source of radiation, along with being the only known case in the US of a suspected suicide undertaken via radiation exposure. July 1981 – Lycoming, Nine Mile Point, New York, USA. An overloaded wastewater tank was deliberately flushed into a building subbasement, resulting in a pool four feet deep. This caused a number of the approximately 150 55-gallon drums stored there to overturn and spill their contents. Fifty thousand U.S. gallons (190 m3) of contaminated water was discharged into Lake Ontario.David Lochbaum Everything You Know Is Wrong The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies The Disinformation Company, May 18, 2002 (NRC Region 1 augmented inspection team (AIT) inspection report# (50-220/89-90) of the use of the Radwaste building sub-basement as a long term liquid retention facility at Nine Mile Point unit 1.) 1982 – International Nutronics of Dover, New Jersey USA spilled an unknown quantity of 60Co solution used to treat gems, modify chemicals, and sterilize food and medical supplies. The solution spilled into the Dover sewer system and forced shutdown of the plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was not informed of the accident until ten months later by a whistleblower. 1982 – Cobalt-60 (possibly from a radiotherapy source) became recycled into steel rebar and used in the construction of buildings in northern Taiwan, principally in Taipei, from 1982 through 1984. Over 200 residential and other buildings were found to have been built using the material. About 7000 people are believed to have been exposed to long-term low-level radiation as a result. In the summer of 1992, a utility worker for the Taiwanese state-run electric utility Taipower brought a Geiger counter to his apartment to learn more about the device, and discovered that his apartment was contaminated. Despite awareness of the problem, owners of some of the buildings suspected to be contaminated have continued to rent apartments out to tenants (in part because selling the units is illegal). Some research has found that the radiation has had an apparent "beneficial" effect upon the health of the tenants based on the death rate from cancers. (ecolo.org and authors of the paper are not associated with one another.) Another study looking at the incidence of cancer found that although the overall risk of cancer was sharply reduced (SIR = 0.6, 95% CI 0.5 – 0.7), the incidence of certain leukemias in men (n = 6, SIR = 3.4, 95% CI 1.2 – 7.4) and thyroid cancer in women (n = 6, SIR = 2.6, 95% CI 1.0 – 5.7) was greater.