A man suffered one of the most painful deaths possible after he was exposed to record-breaking levels of radiation at work. His ordeal lasted 83 days and started with one terrifying symptom
A man who was exposed to record-breakingly high levels of radiation while he was working died over 83 agonising days, in what was one of the most painful deaths ever recorded.
Hisashi Ouchi, 35, was working in a uranium processing plant 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, in Tokaimura, when a fatal error made by his colleagues saw over six times the safe amount of uranium placed in the processor – causing him to “burn from the inside out”.
The horrifying mistake saw Ouchi exposed to more radiation than any human being has ever been recorded to be in one go – and he was rushed to hospital amid radiation alarms going off, where the first terrifying symptom of his illness began to show: his skin peeling away.
Ouchi, had been working with colleague Masato Shinohara and supervisor Yutaka Yokokawa to turn uranium into nuclear fuel when the accident occurred on September 30, 1999. His two workmates placed 16kg of uranium into the processor – the safe limit for which was only 2.4kg.
All three quickly became ill, with Ouchi exposed to the most radiation at 17,000 millisieverts (mSv), and Shinohara absorbed 10,000 mSv. Their supervisor, Yokokawa, was a little further away, working a desk some yards off, and was exposed to around 3,000 mSv.
5000 mSv is considered to be a fatal level of radiation to be exposed to, with the safety limit at just 20 mSv each year.
With Ouchi skin’s slowly peeling away, a myriad of other horrifying symptoms began that saw him deteriorate over 83 painful days. The 35-year-old developed breathing problems as fluids built up in his lungs and had to be placed on a ventilator to breathe.
The level of radiation he had been exposed to meant that the cells inside his gut died, rendering him unable to absorb food or the medications prescribed to him by his medical team – and leaving him with intense stomach pain and producing near-constant three-litres of diarrhoea every day.
The internal bleeding he suffered from in his stomach meant his medical team had to give him 10 blood transfusions every day just to keep him alive. With his skin falling away with increasing speed, his doctors tried everything from stem cell transplants to skin grafts in an attempt to stop litres of bodily fluid from escaping through the exposed flesh.
However, these attempts were unsuccessful, and eventually, Ouchi’s eyelids fell off, causing him to “cry blood” and beg his doctors to stop their treatment. The strong painkillers he was prescribed did little to alleviate his agony, and on the 59th day he had spent in hospital after the radiation exposure, his heart stopped – leaving him to be resuscitated three times.
24 days later, when Ouchi had been in hospital for a total of 83 days, he eventually died from multiple organ failure on 21 December 1999.
His colleague Shinohara who had been exposed to 10000 mSv of radiation died of multiple organ failure too a few months later in April 2000 – luckily their supervisor, Yokokawa, survived and after three months in hospital being treated for radiation sickness was able to go home.
