A Letter from OSHA

In a letter the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration told Yale University officials that there were safety problems in the machine shop where Yale undergrad Michele Dufault was killed in April, reports the Associated Press. Dufault was working alone in the shop when her hair got caught in a lathe. According to the AP, OSHA found that the lathe, which was built in 1962, was missing a guard and an emergency stop button, and rules and warnings for using the equipment were not posted. Because Dufault was not an employee, OSHA lacks jurisdiction and has not fined Yale. "Normally when we see issues with machine guarding or machine safeguarding, they are in fact classified as serious violations," OSHA's Robert Kowalski tells the AP. In a statement, Yale said that the OSHA letter "contains a number of significant inaccuracies."