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Posts Tagged ‘workplace injury’

A young British woman working in an office in London was seriously injured recently when her hair was trapped by the blades of a desk fan, leading to servere blood loss and lacerations to the scalp. Emily Hutnyk, 24, an administrative assistant at a major telecommunications firm in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, was trying to cope with the recent heatwave in the UK . Thermometers in the captial city rose to as high as 35 Centigrade (95 F) on July 1st, which meant if you worked in an office in London the conditions could become rather unbearable. Just like many other office workers, Miss Hutnyk put a small fan on her desktop in order to stay cool while trying to work. Since desk fans are notoriously inneficient at cooling in very high temperatures, she repeatedly moved the appliance closer to her face. However her long hair, swept around by the wind caused by the fan, swept in between the grilles and got caught in its whirling blades. It only took seconds for a large amount of hair and skin to be forcefully torn out of the girl’s head by the rotating blades of the fan. “I hardly remember it to be honest”, admitted Miss Hutnyk when interviewed later, “I think I passed out within seconds – it was my poor colleagues who had to watch it happen. I think my co-workers were acutally the traumatised ones – apparently my blood went everywhere.” She was rushed to the nearest hospital by ambulance, where she was treated for blood loss, scalp wounds and shock. Once her head wounds have fully recovered Miss Hutnyk may consider hair implant surgery, as some of the hair that was pulled out may never grow back.

“This was a terrible accident,” said a company spokesman later. “It is something we want to avoid happening again and we’ll be reviewing the provision of cooling appliances in the office. We will be fitting each office with a ceiling fan and banning the use of desk fans to prevent these kinds of incidents in the future.” Office and general workers trade union GMB scoffed at this response from the company, calling it “far short of the mark”. “The root cause of such disasters is that we don’t have equipment or laws in place in workplaces to help us cope with hot weather – ceiling fans aren’t enough. We are demanding that every office in the UK be fitted with at least a portable air conditioner both to help people concentrate on their work and ensure this kind of tragedy never happens again.” Miss Hutnyk, at the unions advice, is currently considering whether to pursue legal action against the company, which could be a landmark case in health and safety and employment law.