Two men seriously ill in radiation alert

BANGKOK (AFP) – Two Thai men are seriously ill in hospital with radiation sickness after being exposed to a highly radioactive substance in a Bangkok shop, health officials said this afternoon. “These two people are suffering seriously from burns to the hands. They are losing their hair and have very low white blood cell counts,” a public health ministry spokesman told AFP. Police have evacuated people from a 150 metre radius around the shop in Samut Prakarn, on the outskirts of Bangkok, where the unidentified substance was found. Experts from the Office of Atomic Energy for Peace have been called in to identify the radioactive substance which officials say was found by a garbage collector who sold it to a second-hand shop. It is thought the substance may have been discarded from a hospital or an industrial plant. The two sick men have been taken to a hospital in Bangkok which is equipped to treat radiation sickness.