After a horrific incident at a uranium processing plant, Hisashi Ouchi spent 83 hellish days in hospital, enduring what is widely believed to have been the most painful death on record
The man who suffered the most painful death ever recorded spent his final days in agony, after a horrific accident left him “burned from the inside out”.
Hisashi Ouchi, from Japan, had been working at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, some 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, on September 30, 1999, when tragedy struck. Alongside two other colleagues, 35-year-old Hisashi had the responsibility of preparing uranium to be used as nuclear fuel.
Devastatingly, this ordinary working day descended into a catastrophe when Hisashi’s workmate Masato Shinohara and his supervisor Yutaka Yokokawa added 16kg of uranium into a processor – far exceeding the safe limit of 2.4kg.
Radiation alarms began to blare, and the three men became dangerously ill. Masato absorbed 10,000 mSv of radiation, while Yutaka, seated mere yards away at a desk, was struck by an estimated 3,000 mSv. The safety limit is 20 mSv per year, and anything above 5,000 mSv is considered deadly.
Hisashi was by far the worst affected, hit by 17,000 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation – the most absorbed by any person in one single incident on record.
The three men were rushed to hospital, beginning what would be a nightmarish period of deterioration for doomed Hisashi. Over 83 hellish days, Hisashi’s skin peeled away and his eyelids “fell off” causing him to “cry blood” as his body tissue died. Fluid building up in his lungs meant he required a medical ventilator to keep breathing, while the death of cells in his gut resulted in extreme stomach pains, and the production of three litres of diarrhoea every single day.
Following internal bleeding in his gut, Hisashi’s condition declined to the point where needed as many as 10 blood transfusions per day just to stay alive. As time went on, he began to lose skin at a more rapid pace, and would leak litres of fluids through his exposed flesh. Although medics desperately tried to help him with skin grafts and stem cell transplants, these unfortunately failed to help anguished Hisashi.
Even strong painkillers couldn’t keep Hisashi’s agony at bay and things became so unbearable that he even asked doctors to cease their treatment. On his 59th day in hospital, Hisashi’s heart gave out, with doctors resuscitating him three times. On December 21, his 83rd day in hospital, Hisashi’ died from multiple organ failure, after an ordeal widely recorded to be the most painful death on record.
A few months later in April 2000, Masato also died of multiple organ failure, aged just 40. Yutaka, the only one of the three men to survice, was released from hospital after three months. having suffered minor radiation sickness.
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