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How one small object destroyed a family's future
By Zhang Xuanchen |
March 29, 2011, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
An accidental leakage of radiation almost 9 years ago continues to have a devastating effect on Zhang Fang and her family.
It took her husband, brother and father-in-law, who all died in 1992, and left her to care for a mentally-disabled daughter on her own.
The 42-year-old from north China's Shanxi Province said she gave birth to her daughter, who has an IQ of just 46, as she wanted to "have something" of her husband, the Beijing-based Century Weekly magazine reported yesterday.
Her husband, Zhang Youchang, came home with a shiny metal cylinder he had picked up near a construction site belonging to the Xinzhou Environmental Monitoring Station on November 19, 1992.
It never crossed his mind that such a little object, similar to a lighter, would destroy his life and his family.
He began vomiting as soon as he got home. His hair started to fall out and the skin on his stomach and legs turned purple. Two weeks later, he was dead, and the same symptoms appeared on his brother and his father. They survived for just another week, Zhang Fang's father told the magazine.
The three had received treatment but died before it could take effect.
Zhang Fang, who was 19 weeks pregnant, didn't escape either. When her hair started falling out, her father took her to the People's Hospital under Peking University in Beijing in a desperate search for a cure.
Zhang Fang was told she was suffering from acute myelocytic radiation disease caused by exposure to cobalt-60, but she survived.
The substance was later confirmed to belong to the Science and Technology Commission of Xinzhou City. The commission stored the substance in its building, but lost track of one piece when it moved its office elsewhere in 1991.
The leftover piece was finally found in a dump after it fell out of Zhang's pocket while he was in hospital and was thrown away by a cleaner. Authorities immediately collected it and ensured it was safely contained.
Some 100 people apart from Zhang's family were said to have been affected by the material, the Century Weekly reported.
It took her husband, brother and father-in-law, who all died in 1992, and left her to care for a mentally-disabled daughter on her own.
The 42-year-old from north China's Shanxi Province said she gave birth to her daughter, who has an IQ of just 46, as she wanted to "have something" of her husband, the Beijing-based Century Weekly magazine reported yesterday.
Her husband, Zhang Youchang, came home with a shiny metal cylinder he had picked up near a construction site belonging to the Xinzhou Environmental Monitoring Station on November 19, 1992.
It never crossed his mind that such a little object, similar to a lighter, would destroy his life and his family.
He began vomiting as soon as he got home. His hair started to fall out and the skin on his stomach and legs turned purple. Two weeks later, he was dead, and the same symptoms appeared on his brother and his father. They survived for just another week, Zhang Fang's father told the magazine.
The three had received treatment but died before it could take effect.
Zhang Fang, who was 19 weeks pregnant, didn't escape either. When her hair started falling out, her father took her to the People's Hospital under Peking University in Beijing in a desperate search for a cure.
Zhang Fang was told she was suffering from acute myelocytic radiation disease caused by exposure to cobalt-60, but she survived.
The substance was later confirmed to belong to the Science and Technology Commission of Xinzhou City. The commission stored the substance in its building, but lost track of one piece when it moved its office elsewhere in 1991.
The leftover piece was finally found in a dump after it fell out of Zhang's pocket while he was in hospital and was thrown away by a cleaner. Authorities immediately collected it and ensured it was safely contained.
Some 100 people apart from Zhang's family were said to have been affected by the material, the Century Weekly reported.
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