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Comment by Jabbles | Hacker News Reader

There has been one reported event of an explosion in 22 years of use. There have been no reports of injury or death.

I wonder what the total negative health consequences of not being able to use all those MRI machines until they are serviced will be.

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Also doesn’t say it happened to a Phillips machine, my read is that’s for any MRI machine - ever.

So, yeah, a recall, but nothing ominous about it. Things get recalled all the time.

Yet the press this is getting is, like the article said, a black mark on Philips. They were a very diverse company, until they chose a few specific markets in which not to divest, healthcare being one of them. This must be quite the chill at headquarters.

The fact that nobody was injured in the previous incident is fortunate for anybody who might have been injured then, but doesn't diminish the importance of addressing whatever flaw caused the explosion. Considering that we're talking about a lot of liquid helium being improperly vented, the next time something goes wrong it could end up asphyxiating a hundred people.

Just because nobody was in the danger zone the first time it exploded doesn't mean you should count on nobody being in the danger zone the second or third time it might explode. This is the reason work site safety officers yell at people to report all near-miss incidents, not only the accidents that get people hurt. If something went wrong and nobody got hurt by chance coincidence, it might happen again when people are actually near it. Therefore a near miss incident needs to be addressed with the same seriousness as an accident that actually caused injury.

Even if it doesn't suffocate you, helium leaks can be pretty bad since they'll temporarily brick any modern phone with a MEMS oscillator (like a quartz time crystal, but smaller) in it. Not great if you need assistance.

As far as i know, you shouldn't bring your phone near a MRI machine.

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