Office Worker Hospitalised by Desk Fan
(London, UK) A female office worker had to be rushed to hospital when her hair got caught up in the rotating blades of a desk fan, leading to servere blood loss and lacerations to the scalp. 24 year old admin assistant Emily Hutnyk, employed by a large tele-communications corporation in the center of London, used the fan to try and cope with the heatwave that recently hit 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. Ms Hutnyk, like thousands of others, placed a cooling fan on her desk to help her cool down whilst working. So hot and humid was it that day that the young lady kept moving the desk fan closer to her face to try and cool down as much as possible. 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. My colleagues told me later there was a lot of blood around – I think it was more traumatic for them to be honest.” An ambulance was called and she was rushed to hospital, where she required 12 stitches on her scalp. Doctors are said to be considering hair implants to repair the damaged scalp once the wound has healed fully.
“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 overhead ceiling fans and banning the use of desk fans to prevent these kinds of incidents in the future.” For general workers union GMB, however, this response was completely inadequate. “Essentially the cause of these kinds of problems is that our workplaces in the UK are simply not set up to deal with hot weather – and to be honest a ceiling fan is not enough. We are demanding that every office in the UK be fitted with proper air conditioners both to help people concentrate on their work and ensure this kind of tragedy never happens again.” The union is advising Ms Hutnyk to consider taking legal action against the company for breach of health and safety regulations.
