Hisashi Ouchi, 35, from Japan, was exposed to a record-breaking amount of radiation after working at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, 70 miles northeast of Tokyo.
Horrific details have emerged of a man who “burned from the inside out” for 83 days in one of the most painful deaths ever recorded.
Hisashi Ouchi, 35, from Japan, was exposed to a record-breaking amount of radiation after working at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, 70 miles northeast of Tokyo. He, along with two other colleagues, were responsible for preparing uranium to be used as nuclear fuel on September 30, 1999.
But a fatal mistake saw his workmate Masato Shinohara and supervisor Yutaka Yokokawa add 16kg of uranium into a processor, which is significantly higher than the safe limit of 2.4kg. Moments later, radiation alarms started going off as they quickly became sick.
Ouchi was exposed to a staggering 17,000 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation, the most recorded by any person at a single time. Meanwhile, Shinohara absorbed 10,000 mSv, while Yokokawa, who was just yards away at a desk, was hit by an estimated 3,000 mSv, The safety limit is 20 mSv per year, with 5,000 mSv considered deadly, as the men were all rushed to a local hospital.
During that time, Ouchi deteriorated over a course of 83 days, as the radiation slowly saw his skin peel away, and his eyelids ‘fall off’ as the tissues in his body died. He soon began to have breathing problems as fluid built up in his lungs and he needed a medical ventilator to breathe for him. The cells in his gut that help absorb food and medication also died, which led to horrific stomach pains, and him producing a staggering three litres of diarrhoea each day.
He was so sick he needed up to 10 blood transfusions per day just to keep him alive following internal bleeding in his gut. As his skin loss became more rapid, he would leak litres of bodily fluids through his exposed flesh, with medics trying skin grafts and stem cell transplants to replace them, but they were sadly making no difference.
Despite being issued with very strong painkillers, it failed to keep the pain away. His eyelids fell off which caused the eyes to “cry blood”. He even requested medics stopped treating him as the pain got so bad. Ouchi’s heart eventually gave way on his 59th day in hospital but he was resuscitated three times.
But on December 21, on his 83rd day in hospital, he died from multiple organ failure. Just a few months later in April 2000, Shinohara also died of multiple organ failure at just 40. Yokokawa was hospitalised but was released after three months with minor radiation sickness.