Man wearing metallic necklace dies after being sucked into MRI machine

Facility type and setting

• Street View suggests this was a small, freestanding “open MRI” shop, not a hospital radiology department.
• Several commenters find the setting “terrifying” and see it as evidence that low‑overhead outpatient centers may cut corners on staffing, training, and access control.
• Others push back, saying non‑hospital imaging centers are common, can be excellent at a single specialty, and provide cheaper, faster access than hospitals.

Access control, responsibility, and negligence

• Key point: the victim was not the patient but the patient’s husband, who entered the magnet room wearing a ~20 lb chain used for weight training.
• MRI staff are faulted for allowing any non‑patient into the room and for apparently lax control between “zones” that should screen and block access.
• Some argue the husband and wife share responsibility (ignoring warnings, treating it like a normal room), while others insist the burden is entirely on trained staff and facility design.
• Several commenters note that in many units there are strong policies: locked doors, metal detectors or wands, stripping patients to undergarments, and no visitors in Zone IV.

Why “turning it off” isn’t simple

• Multiple explanations: MRI magnets are superconducting coils with persistent current; “off” requires a “quench” that boils off liquid helium, costs tens of thousands of dollars, and takes tens of seconds to minutes for the field to decay.
• Powering down like a normal electromagnet isn’t possible; the current loops indefinitely as long as it’s cold.
• A side debate covers whether all modern MRIs have emergency quench buttons (most do) and how fast the field actually falls.

Should they have quenched immediately?

• One camp: the moment a person is pinned to the magnet, cost and downtime are irrelevant; you hit the quench and do everything possible to save them (and you must shut down anyway to remove the chain/body).
• Others note that damage from a 20 lb chain being yanked by thousands of pounds of force is likely catastrophic within milliseconds, so quenching may not change the outcome, though staff can’t know that in the moment.
• Some worry about “trolley‑problem” tradeoffs (weeks of lost MRI capacity), but most respondents reject this as irrelevant once a life‑threatening accident is happening.

MRI hazards and safety culture

• Commenters share examples of objects flying into magnets: pens, tools, oxygen tanks; even “safe” metals can heat from RF energy and cause burns.
• MRI technologists describe complex screening: implants, clips, masks, joint hardware, etc., with many items “conditionally safe” depending on field strength.
• Metal‑detector gates are widely proposed; MR techs reply that detectors are already used but generate constant alarms from small, usually safe metals, which can normalize ignoring alerts.
• Several healthcare workers emphasize that most MRI suites follow strict protocols and that such lethal incidents are extraordinarily rare compared with the volume of scans.

Risk perception and communication

• Many admit they did not realize the magnet is “always on.” Some recall minimal verbal explanation when scanned.
• There is criticism of media framing (calling it a “necklace,” vague about “medical episode”) and missed opportunities to explain why the machine could not simply be “turned off.”
• Broader point: humans intuitively fear snakes and heights, not invisible 3‑tesla fields; warnings need to be concrete (e.g., “this will rip your keys out of your pocket”) rather than abstract.