Man Dead After Being Sucked Into MRI Machine While Wearing Metal Necklace

You’d think the world’s strongest magnet would inspire a little more respect. But somehow, people keep wandering into MRI rooms clad in metal.

The New York Times reports that a 61-year-old man from Long Island was critically injured after getting sucked into an MRI machine. He was pronounced dead the following day. According to Nassau County police, the man defied repeated warnings to stay out of the MRI room, but ran in anyway after a relative inside the machine started screaming.

His concern took a frightening turn when a metal necklace around his neck got caught in the machine’s magnetic field and yanked him across the room with frightening speed, like he was getting Force-pulled by Darth Vader.

Experts at North Shore University Hospital weren’t shocked. MRI technicians remind patients how deadly these accidents can be when safety protocols are ignored. “The dangers could be catastrophic,” Dr. Payal Sud told CBS News. MRI machines don’t play. Any metallic object on you, inside of you, around you, can instantly become a deadly projectile when the machine flips on. Hospital imaging director Charles Winterfeldt described the physics bluntly: “It would act like a torpedo trying to get into the middle of the center of the magnet.”

MRI Related Injuries

MRI-related injuries happen more often than you’d think, and when they do, they are usually horrifying, bizarre, and 100% preventable.

Maybe the most horrifying I’ve come across happened in April 2023, when a woman forgot she had a metallic butt plug inside her when she entered an MRI machine. The results were exactly as awful as you’re picturing—her insides were wrecked as the butt plug was dragged through her body. In February 2023, a nurse was crushed and needed emergency surgery when a nearby hospital bed got caught in the MRI machine’s magnetic field, pinning her between the machine and the bed.

You’ve got to respect the MRI’s magnetic power. Injuries and even deaths, while rare, are well-documented. The machines themselves are wonders of medicine, allowing us to peer inside the body to diagnose health issues like never before. But if you don’t follow the proper protocols, the thing designed to save your life could very easily stab you with a nearby loose object or suck you into it via necklace.