An update on three radiation accidents in South America.

This paper revisits three major accidents that occurred in South America. The main purpose of this review is to analyze the long term health and other effects of accidental exposures to ionizing radiation in order to extract lessons from these radiological emergencies that might be useful for avoiding similar events (primary prevention) and for preparing the overall response to radiation accidents to mitigate their different impacts (secondary prevention). For that, consults were made on the pertinent literature and use was made of personal information of the authors.