Last week, a senior died in a workshop at a Yale University chemistry building. Michele Dufault, who was working on her senior project, had been using a lathe late at night when her hair got caught and died of "asphyxia due to neck compression." The school has launched an investigation and review into its safety practices as some wonder whether Yale students should be allowed 24-hour access to shops and whether they should be working without supervision.
According to the Yale Daily News, students can access the Sterling Chemistry Laboratory machine shop, where Dufault was working, 24 hours a day after completing a metalworking class, "[A] student, who asked to remain anonymous because she was not acquainted with Dufault, said her main work in the shop involves the lathe where Dufault died. She said students stay at the Sterling Laboratory’s machine shop well into the night, and often work unsupervised. She also said that her safety training class has taught personal safety measures — in particular, tying back hair and wearing tight-fitting clothing — but that the buddy system is not emphasized."
U.S. Department of Labor area director Robert Kowalski said that OSHA's investigation will be thorough. He told the New Haven Register that "it will look to see where the danger areas are on the equipment, how it was powered and whether there were safeguards to protect the user. These could range from a physical shield that covers a rotating part, to 'barrier' guards that keep the user at a distance, to sophisticated photoelectrical devices and power kill switches, which are more common on newer equipment, he said."
While it hasn't been disclosed whether Dufault was working alone, an Arizona State University student shop managed told the Yale Daily News, “You never, ever let someone work by themselves. I don’t care if they have 25 years of experience or not. There are simply too many things that can go wrong," while a University of California at Berkeley machine shop supervisor said, "Students don’t have enough experience to work safely — they need to be monitored at all times. If [Yale’s] policy is 24-hour access for students, then that scares me. I do not like that at all."
