Yale University Student Killed in Lab Machine Shop Accident

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: ABC News

By ELICIA DOVER
April 13, 2011

A star Yale University science student was killed early today in an industrial accident at a campus machine shop where equipment for experiments was constructed.

Yale Vice President Linda Koch said the student, Michele Dufault of Scituate, Mass., died after a "terrible accident involving a piece of equipment in the student machine shop."

Sources told the New Haven Register that the student's hair got caught in a spinning lathe and it pulled her in.

The university said in a statement that the accident occurred at the Sterling Chemistry Laboratory, but provided no details of what happened. Dufault was an astronomy and physics major who was expected to graduate with a bachelor's of science degree this spring.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/yale-university-student-michele-dufault-killed-machine-shop/story?id=13366121

[Renew Deal]

1. Here's a video of a spinning lathe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alb0Bae5E1c

[Ptah]

4. I think it was a lathe that was spinning rather than a spinning lathe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJ86DHI4w8&playnext=1&list=PLA770A69D8864DD45

[hedgehog]

5. Grabbing a spinning piece of metal to stop it - that's a good way to send your

fingers flying across the room! And please, please, please tell me I did not see a wedding ring on his left hand!

[usrname]

8. Goggles?

And he wasn't wearing safety goggles either. No glove, no safety goggle, no nothing. Amazing.

[hedgehog]

14. Good grief ! I was so focused on his hands, I missed the lack of safety glasses!

No hearing protection, either!

[hedgehog]

2. Oh, God! It reminds me of the time I walked into a work place and saw

someone leaning over a conveyor belt, sorting onions, with a dangling scarf!

My kids grew up with industrial safety procedures in their DNA - both sides of the family are tied into farming and heavy manufacturing. Most people these days don't hear that kid of talk around their dinner table, so most people have no idea of how to work safely around machines!

How terrible for this girl and her family!

[Ian David]

6. In our summer camp wood shop, a kid once stole an un-fired .22 bullet from the rifle range...

... and brought it to wood shop, put it in the drill press, and started trying to turn it into a hollow-point.

That could have ended badly.

[timo]

16. nail on the head

I don't wear a wedding ring because as a kid I saw way to many ring fingers caught by fan blades,pulleys and various moving parts....all the book smarts in the world and no walking around sense will get a person dead quick when it comes to equipment!!

[Taverner]

3. What a horrific way to go!

[slackmaster]

7. Basic shop safety used to be taught in public schools

I had wood shop and metal shop classes in 7th and 8th grade respectively.

[theHandpuppet]

9. Having been a machinist

No way would anyone be allowed in a machine shop who hadn't had proper training. That also includes MANDATORY safety procedures -- no long hair (including braids or ponytails), no rings, and goggles should always be worn. People don't realize that once these rotating machines grab you, there won't be time for you or anyone else to hit the stop button.

[ngant17]

19. you have to respect the machines

and part of that is to be trained in safety.

I worked in a grind shop for 2 years, always wore safety glasses. But occasionally some metal shards would bounce off my nose and richochet behind my safety glasses and hit into my eye. I had to go to a doctor once, to remove a small sliver of metal in my eye. Even basic safety is sometimes not safe enough!

[Arctic Dave]

10. Back when I was on the fire department we had to extricate a kid from

an auger. Terrible damage but he lived.

[Javaman]

11. They weren't required to wear hair nets when operating the machines?

holy crap!

[haele]

12. Probably broke her neck if it caught a braid or a pony tail.

That happened on one of the carriers I was working on; a shipyard worker with a long pony-tail got it caught in some elevator machinery being tested in the same space he was doing last minute welding in, and it just swung him around and snapped his neck before anyone could stop it.
Moving parts on a machine are dangerous, and it doesn't matter if it's just an office shredder or a heavy duty hoist and crane unit.

Haele

[struggle4progress]

13. This isn't one of those accidents that nobody ever heard of: it's a well-known hazard.

It's a reason short hair became standard for workers at the time of the industrial revolution

When my longhair friends and I did some simple machine work decades ago, we got some good long graphic lectures about the dead-serious importance of controlling your hair so it doesn't tumble into a spinning shaft: you're gonna pretty much think it sucks if your face gets yanked into a grinder wheel or saw blade

Somebody didn't get basic safety training here

[hunter]

15. That's really sad.

I had shop class twice in middle school and twice again in high school, wood & metal. Those shop teachers meant business. If they caught you doing ANYTHING unsafe around the power tools, that was it, you had to do everything by hand for the rest of the semester.

Here's a file and a hacksaw kid. Have fun...

And then it would take an entire week to do what the other kids were doing in twelve minutes. Worse your arms get sore.

If you were really bad you had to sort wood, sweep the floors, or pick up trash on the playground. Nevertheless, in high school, we had one kid tear a chunk out of his scalp in the drill press. We had a substitute teacher who'd explicitly told us we were not to touch any power tools because he wasn't a shop teacher. The vice principal rushed in when the sub hit the panic button and he was not happy. He thought it was just plain wrong for any boy to have long hair. Damned Future Draft Dodging Hippies! The blood everywhere made a big impression on everyone. Personally, I really didn't need the lesson because my grandfather was missing some fingers from a shop accident. But that was in the days before big STOP buttons and safety locks and bosses that insist anyone can stop the line for any reason.

I'm pretty sure kids on their way to ivy league universities don't have those opportunities any more.

:cry:

My kids didn't have shop classes. For them it was all honors classes because they wanted to get in "good" schools. They succeeded at that, but I think they missed out on something important.

[saras]

17. Really unfortunate. Completely preventable.

Back when I was in high school, I learned all the safety rules, but I didn't always keep my shirts tucked in. One day I was watching someone else use a lathe when my shirt started getting tighter and tighter and pulling me into the lathe. We got it stopped in time, because my shirt had tangled in the slow-turning lead screw and not the fast-spinning parts, but it still tore the buttons off the shirt and scared the royal crap out of me. It was a really good lesson in understanding what the safety rules are trying to accomplish and not so much relying on mindless obedience to some fixed rules.

[Odin2005]

18. Oh no!!!

:-(

[Baclava]

20. Medical Examiner: "cause of death was asphyxia due to neck compression"

per CNN


Strangled by hair caught in a machine. Sounds gruesome.