Was there ever a time in your life when you accidentally (or on purpose) ate something you shouldn’t have eaten? Toys? Small pieces? Bugs?

If you have, then good luck scaling against this man who accidentally swallowed plutonium.

Donald Mastick (1920-2007) was a scientist who worked with the Manhattan Project (the project that dropped the bombs on Japan), and there’s some to be said about his life. He was born in St. Helena, California, and grew up in the famed Napa Valley. When he graduated from college at Berkley, the US was in World War II, and so, after a short commission in the Navy, he was recruited by Oppenheimer to help with the Manhattan Project. He was supposed to get the equipment needed for the labs at Los Alamos Laboratory. He then studied plutonium, a relatively new and strange material at the time.

That last line would lead to what made him famous.

On August 1, 1944, Mastick and his lab partner were working with a 10 mg. (milligram) vial of plutonium chloride dissolved in an acid solution when the vial suddenly exploded. Gases built up in the vial overnight, which caused it to explode, but that’s not the important part. The important part is that Mastick tasted something funny in his mouth, like acid, which must have meant that he ate plutonium!

Mastick then replaced the vial in its wooden container and saw the local Los Alamos Laboratory Health Group director. The director then actually phoned the Manhattan Project medical director, which means that this must’ve been serious if you had to phone the top medical director!

Mastick’s face was cleaned, though he had just a tiny bit of plutonium still remaining. To combat the whole “plutonium’s in your stomach” thing, he was given mouthwash made up of two chemicals that would combine the plutonium with a chemical and make it solid again. This eradicated most of the plutonium. However, for days later, he had what may be one of the worst cases of halitosis (bad breath) EVER. His breath could make the needle on an ionization chamber go up even from 6 ft. away! I don’t know what an ionization chamber is, but if breath can cause something from 6 feet away, that’s pretty severe! Mastick used a stomach pump to help remove the swallowed plutonium, but he still had some 30 years later!

He then worked as an assistant to a commander, but then went into dropping bombs into the Salton Sea. He was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for his Manhattan Project efforts, and even got an accolade from Nancy Reagan! Mastick passed away in Santa Barbara on September 8, 2007 (87 years?! That’s long for someone who ate plutonium!)

What do you suppose was going through the mind of Mastick when the incident happened? “Oh my God, the vial exploded! Wait, why do I taste something acid-like? Oh no…”