Highest contamination with radioactive material survived

In 1976, an accident at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a Plutonium production plant in Washington State, exposed worker Harold McCluskey to 500 times the safe lifetime dose of radioactive material. McCluskey was working to extract the radioactive element Americium from a sample of Plutonium when the sample exploded, tearing off his protective facemask and peppering his face with shards of radioactive glass and steel. For a time, McCluskey was so radioactive that he could set off a Geiger counter from a distance of 15 m (50 ft). The radiation doses absorbed by his own bone, bone surface, liver, and lung were, respectively, 18, 520, 8, and 1.6 grays. McCluskey was 64 at the time of the accident. Yet, incredibly, he lived for another 12 years – and when he did ultimately die, in 1987, it wasn’t from any radiation-related illness, but coronary heart disease. McCluskey became known as the "Atomic Man". He was so radioactive when he arrived at hospital that he had to be removed from the ambulance by remote control. Even after his hospital discharge in 1977, many former friends and acquaintances avoided him for fear that they, too, would become contaminated or irradiated.