One day in 1992, mason Zhang Youchang came to the construction site to work as usual, this time the work was the expansion of the environmental monitoring station in Xinzhou, similar work Zhang Youchang often encountered, and many workers are also familiar with it.
On this day, he and his co-workers needed to transform a deep well, and in the process of transformation, the co-workers had uncomfortable symptoms one after another, and Zhang Youchang also had this problem, but like the co-workers, they were all insisting on working. In the process of work, Zhang Youchang found a "cylindrical" like metal, and asked the people around him if they wanted to play with the children at home, the workers rejected him, Zhang Youchang did not take it seriously, and conveniently put it in the pocket of his jacket. After Zhang Youchang picked up the unknown metal, he found himself more and more uncomfortable, even if he had to endure the discomfort, but the pain had crushed him, so he had to put down his work and go home to rest.
Originally thought that a rest at home can relieve the pain, but after returning home, the condition is deteriorating, seeing this scene, the wife called Zhang Youchang's father and brother to take him to the hospital together, because the wife was inconvenient to get pregnant, so she did not take care of him for too long, but was accompanied by Zhang Youchang's father and brother.
On the other hand, Wei Meirong was slightly injured in a traffic accident and came to the hospital for treatment, just in the same ward as Zhang Youchang. During Zhang Youchang's hospitalization, Zhang Youchang's father took off his shirt and hung it on the hook of the ward, very close to Wei Meirong.
During Zhang Youchang's period, strange things in the ward continued, Zhang Youchang did not gradually improve under the treatment of doctors, but the situation continued to deteriorate; on the other hand, the father and brother who accompanied Zhang Youchang also fell ill one after another, and the symptoms were the same as Zhang Youchang, first uncomfortable, bruises on the legs, swelling of the face, etc., even Wei Meirong in the next ward also had symptoms of physical discomfort.
There were patients with similar conditions to Zhang Youchang in the ward one after another, which made the doctors of the hospital feel the crisis, but they could not detect what disease he was suffering from, so they had to transfer him to the Affiliated Hospital of Shanxi Medical College of the Provincial City University Hospital, but the hospital could not be diagnosed, and finally Zhang Youchang died in high fever, general ulceration, and pain, and then Zhang Youchang's brother and father also died with the same symptoms.
Although Zhang Youchang's wife Zhang Fang did not go to the hospital to accompany her, she also had symptoms, and her father-in-law saw that his daughter was abnormal and worried that her daughter would repeat the mistakes of her son-in-law, so she rushed to Beijing with her daughter overnight.
After several hospitals, it was impossible to diagnose what kind of disease she had, and finally Peking University People's Hospital accepted Zhang Fang, and Lou Bincheng, director of the emergency department of Peking University People's Hospital at that time, received Zhang Fang, according to the blood results, combined with her husband, father-in-law and husband's brother have died of sudden illness, so the hospital at that time was highly suspected of radiation sickness.
After the experts examined Zhang Fang's chromosomes, they found that there were 134 malformations in the 300 cells that Zhang Fang examined, and it should be known that there were not so many deformed cells in normal people, and this examination almost determined that she was suffering from radiation sickness, and she must have been exposed to excessive ionizing radiation to cause such a serious radiation disease.
However, at that time, Zhang Fang's family could not afford Zhang Fang's medical expenses because of the treatment and death of 3 relatives, and was preparing to give up treatment and go home, Lou Bincheng stopped her and told her not to worry about money, no matter what, the hospital will do its best to save her. With the help of the hospital, Zhang Fang was eventually discharged after 7 days of admission.
However, Wei Meirong was not so lucky, she was hospitalized for a minor car accident, and eventually suffered from high radiation sickness, although she was also treated, but she fell into a lifelong sequelae.
Not only Wei Meirong, but also the doctors, nurses, patients and family members of Zhang Youchang when he was hospitalized were more or less affected by nuclear radiation, and radiation diseases of varying severity occurred.
The root cause of radiation sickness is the cylindrical metal that Zhang Youchang picked up, so what is this metal and why does it cause so many people to suffer from radiation disease?
It turned out that the metal was not an ordinary metal at all, but cobalt-60.
Cobalt-60 is a highly penetrating nuclear radiation element, but on the other hand, cobalt-60 is widely used, including but not limited to hospital radiotherapy, killing cancer cells; crop breeding and non-damage detection of other materials.
(Nuclear radiation breeding)
The cobalt 60 that Zhang Youchang picked up was a radiation chamber built by the local government in order to develop crop breeding, specially storing 6 cobalt 60 pieces, and has been used in accordance with the regulations during use, and there has never been a leak. However, with the migration of time, the radiation chamber needs to be demolished, and before the demolition, the abandoned cobalt 60 is also dismantled and safely stored, but in the process of demolition, due to negligence, a cobalt source was left in the waste well, and the cobalt source did not have any protective measures, so that people who worked down the well felt uncomfortable. Later, the source of cobalt was picked up by Zhang Youchang and caused his death.
After Zhang Fang was diagnosed with radiation disease, the relevant medical staff reported it layer by layer, and the central government attached great importance to it, in order to avoid more people from experiencing nuclear radiation, it was necessary to find cobalt 60 at the first time.
After the memories of the doctor and Zhang Fang's father, Zhang Youchang's father once shook off a piece of metal from his son's jacket and then discarded it in the garbage can, which was dumped into the municipal garbage disposal plant, but the source of cobalt was not found in the municipal garbage dump. Eventually the garbage transporter told the truth: for convenience, he smuggled the garbage into the side of the road, and this time the experts set out again and finally found the radioactive material cobalt-60.
A small piece of metal that killed 3 people in just one month, and hundreds of people suffered from radiation sickness of varying severity, shows how important it is to use nuclear energy safely.