Trigger warning. The following article includes images of a man who underwent heavy exposure to radioactive compounds. Some may find the images used to tell this story upsetting. Reader’s discretion is advised.
adiation has always been a subject of great interest for many scientists. Since its discovery and weaponization, many have looked into its impact on living organisms, especially humans. As a result, many living beings suffered at the hands of those who sought to find the real impact of radiation on living beings. Throughout the years, this experimentation was mainly focused on animals as it would be unethical to test such a thing on humans.
Outside of major nuclear events such as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the meltdowns of nuclear facilities such as nuclear power plants, the effect of radiation on humans could not be tested. As such, after the 1999 Tokaimura nuclear accident, many scientists jumped at the opportunity to study the victims of such a high amount of explosion to radiation. Out of all the victims of the disaster, the case of Hisashi Ouchi stands out.
Hisashi Ouchi was one of three employees of the Tokaimura nuclear plant to be heavily impacted by the accident on 30 September 1999. Leading up to the 30th of the month, the staff at the Tokaimura nuclear plant were in charge of looking after the process of dissolving and mixing enriched uranium oxide with nitric acid to produce uranyl nitrate, a product that the bosses of the nuclear plant wanted to have ready by the 28th.
Due to the tight time constraints, the uranyl nitrate wasn’t prepared properly by the staff, with many shortcuts being used to achieve the tight deadline. One of these shortcuts was to handle the highly radioactive produce by hand. During their handling of the radioactive produce, while trying to convert it into nuclear fuel (uranyl nitrate is used as nuclear fuel) for transportation, the inexperienced three-man crew handling the operation made a mistake.
During the mixing process, a specific compound had to be added to the mixture, the inexperienced technicians added seven times the recommended amount of the compound to the mixture leading to an uncontrollable chain reaction being started in the solution. As soon as the Gamma radiation alarms sounded, the three technicians knew they made a mistake. All three were exposed to deadly levels of radiation; more specifically, Ouchi received 17 Sv of radiation due to his proximity to the reaction, Shinohara 10 Sv, and Yokokawa 3 Sv due to his placement at a desk several meters away from the accidents. When being exposed to radiation, it is said that anything over 10 Sv is deadly; this would prove to be true in this instance.
The fallout of radiation
Shinohara, the least affected out of the two who received a deadly dose of radiation, lasted 7 months in hospital until 27 April 2000. The technician died of lung and liver failure after a long battle against the effects of the radiation he endured. During his, 7-month stay at the University of Tokyo Hospital, several skin grafts, blood transfusions, and cancer treatments were performed on him with minimal success. Shinohara’s time at the University of Tokyo Hospital would be much less painful than Ouchi’s.
On Ouchi’s arrival at the University of Tokyo Hospital, he had radiation burns across his whole body, a near-zero white blood cell count, and severe damage to his internal organs. He was all but dead without the intervention of the staff at the hospital. He was under intensive care for his first week at the hospital, receiving revolutionary cancer treatment meant to boost his white blood cell count as well as many skin grafts and blood transfusions. After a week of treatment, he told the doctors, “I can’t take it anymore[…]. I am not a guinea pig.”
Even so, his treatment went on and on. On the 59th day of his admission, the now nearly lifeless body of Ouchi suffered three heart attacks in under an hour. The doctors of the hospital resuscitated him after every heart failure, prolonging his pain. Only on the 83rd day after his admission would the technician die of multiple organ failure.
The moral implications of keeping what could best be described as a husk of a man alive for 83 days do not need to be stated. By keeping Ouchi alive for 83 days, the doctors of the University of Tokyo Hospital did the opposite of what they are trained to do, limit human suffering. As a result, Ouchi’s case goes down in the history books as a show of cruelty for the sole reason of research.
Calin Aneculaesei
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Hisashi Ouchi, aged 35, died 12 weeks after the accident. He had lost most of his skin, and was kept alive for 83 days, according to his parents and wife will. Ouchi was closest to the tank when the accident occurred. He ended up as the first victim of this nuclear accident.
Kept in a special radiation ward to protect him from hospital-borne pathogens, Hisashi Ouchi leaked fluids and cried for his mother. He regularly flatlined from heart attacks, only to be revived at the insistence of his family. His only escape would be a final cardiac arrest — 83 long days later.
Hisashi Ouchi, 35, was transported and treated at the University of Tokyo Hospital for 83 days. Ouchi suffered serious radiation burns to most of his body, experienced severe damage to his internal organs, and had a near-zero white blood cell count.
According to doctors, two of the men were exposed to more than the 7 sieverts of radiation that is considered lethal: Hisashi Ouchi, aged 35, and Masato Shinohara, aged 29, received 17 sieverts and 10 sieverts respectively.
Hisashi Ouchi was exposed to about 17 sieverts and was kept alive for 83 days. In a freak nuclear accident that took place in September 1999, a man was introduced to the highest level of radioactive material.
Albert Stevens (1887–1966), also known as patient CAL-1 and most radioactive human ever, was a house painter from Ohio who was subjected to an involuntary human radiation experiment and survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human.
What caused the Chernobyl accident? On April 26, 1986, the Number Four RBMK reactor at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine, went out of control during a test at low-power, leading to an explosion and fire that demolished the reactor building and released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.
Ionizing radiation directly affects DNA structure by inducing DNA breaks, particularly, DSBs. Secondary effects are the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that oxidize proteins and lipids, and also induce several damages to DNA, like generation of abasic sites and single strand breaks (SSB).
Winsor consumed the radioactive material in 1986 and died in 2008, when he was of age 86. Winsor gave 77 lectures in which he tried to convince the audience by eating uranium. One of his most memorable moments was eating uranium during his 1985 educational film “The Nuclear Scare Scam".
The most critically ill of the workers, Hisashi Ouchi, 35, was exposed to about 17 sieverts of radiation, according to the Science and Technology Agency's National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba, near Tokyo.
Total body exposure of 50 to100 roentgens/rad or 0.5 to1 Gray unit (Gy), equal to 500 to1,000 mSv causes radiation sickness. Total body exposure of 400 roentgens/rad (or 4 Gy) causes radiation sickness and death in half of the individuals who are exposed.
Although radiation affects different people in different ways, it is generally believed that humans exposed to about 500 rem of radiation all at once will likely die without medical treatment.
Louis Slotin (1910-1946) was a Canadian physicist. Shortly after World War II, he died from radiation sickness contracted during a dangerous experiment conducted at Los Alamos. Slotin received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science from the University of Manitoba in 1932 and 1933, respectively.
Ouchi died of his wounds about 80 days after receiving a horrendously huge acute dose of gamma and neutrons. His exposure was due to the prompt criticality of uranium caused by a mixing tank mishap. He survived for the relatively long time of 80 days only because of “heroic" medical interventions.
A freak accident at a Japanese nuclear plant more than 20 years ago exposed a technician to the highest levels of radiation ever suffered by a human being. Hisashi Ouchi came to be known as the 'world's most radioactive man' after suffering the accident.
The accident was caused by bringing together too much uranium enriched to a relatively high level, causing a 'criticality' (a limited uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction), which continued intermittently for 20 hours.
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adiation has always been a subject of great interest for many scientists. Since its discovery and weaponization, many have looked into its impact on living organisms, especially humans. As a result, many living beings suffered at the hands of those who sought to find the real impact of radiation on living beings. Throughout the years, this experimentation was mainly focused on animals as it would be unethical to test such a thing on humans.
