Officials from Stanford’s Department of Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) met with University leadership Monday to present newly drafted, institution-wide machine shop safety guidelines. The move, a departure from the University’s hands-off policy, was prompted by the April 11 death of a Yale senior Michele Dufault and Saturday’s after-hours fire at the Product Realization Lab (PRL).

Dufault died from accidental asphyxia after her hair caught in a metal lathe. No one was hurt in the PRL fire.

According to EH&S Associate Vice Provost Larry Gibbs, the change aims to create a common safety standard for machine shops across campus and to increase student accountability.

While all campus machine shops operate under policies that match industry protocol — all of them mandate practices like tying back hair, removing jewelry, wearing closed-toe shoes and never working alone — they don’t have a consistent way of holding students accountable for following these regulations.

“We did a lot of review of what goes in an industry, and what we found is that in the industry if you don’t follow the rules, you no longer have employment,” Gibbs said. “Now, we don’t employ students, but we have to say there’s an accountability expectation that goes along with the use of these tools that have a potential for harming individuals.”

According to Gibbs, the proposed guidelines would establish a standard disciplinary procedure for students who are found noncompliant with the shop’s safety standards: they could be denied access to the University’s machine shops and, if they are taking an undergraduate machine shop class, their grade in the course could fall as well. In addition, he said the draft would standardize the safety policies of shops across campus.

“We want to allow a level of discretion locally,” Gibbs said. “At the same time, we want to make sure that people aren’t harmed by what takes place in the machine shops — either themselves or the people around them.”

Right now, safety guidelines vary slightly across the different machine shops.

Before using the PRL’s equipment, students are required to register online, attend an hour and 15-minute orientation and purchase a license, which ranges in price from $20 for a day pass to $300 for a yearlong pass.

PRL Co-Director Craig Milroy ’80 M.S. ’82 said the orientation isn’t a training class for students, but a way to “get them adjusted mentally to this kind of environment.”

During the orientation, supervisors go over safety rules with the students, explain potential hazards in the building and, during the last 20 minutes, take them on a walking tour of the facility. This tour includes three major areas: the model shop, the machine shop and the foundry.

Milroy said almost 900 students are licensed to work in the PRL each year, marking nearly a four-fold increase from the 250 users in 1992. He added that the growth in registrants is probably due to the fact that many of the campus’ machine shops have been closed down over the years.

The PRL is a teaching lab that employs student teaching assistants to be on duty whenever the facility is open. It’s normally open in three four-hour blocks throughout the day.

The co-directors of the lab select TAs for the upcoming year in April. After getting the job, the TAs must arrive at the Farm before the start of the autumn quarter for two weeks of training. The TAs help eliminate the risk of students operating equipment without supervision, Milroy said.

“Under our guidelines of operation, whenever the shop is open, there has to be someone on duty,” Milroy said. “So a person will never be working alone if that’s the case.”

However, a small subset of PRL users is part of an “extended use community” that is allowed to access the facility during off-hours. At these times, TAs are also off duty. Gibbs said one issue EH&S hopes to address with its new guidelines is shop use by individuals when no one else is there.

“The dilemma and the challenge that we know about is that graduate and undergraduate students prefer to use the shops when they have access, which is oftentimes after hours,” Gibbs said. “One of the main components of our program is to make sure nobody is using that when there’s not somebody else there.”

Unlike the PRL, the Physics Machine Shop is a research lab that focuses on supporting the physics community and building customized parts for other departments. According to the shop’s supervisor, Karlheinz Merkle, no one is allowed to use the equipment until they take an 18-hour training and certification course.

He said that while the shop has not experienced any accidents, it has been subtly affected by the recent events.

“Whenever there is anything as tragic as what happened at Yale, you take a step back and say, ‘How are we doing things? Is everybody as safe as we can make it safe?’” Merkle said.

Milroy agreed.

“Any time an event like that happens, of course it’s going to have an impact on how we operate,” he said.

In particular, Milroy said fire safety would be a major topic at this Friday’s weekly staff meeting, which is attended by the co-directors and TAs. He also said it was likely that they would add a few sentences to next year’s safety orientation about how to deal with and prevent fires.

EH&S has sent copies of the draft to the individual machine shops and is looking to get feedback, Gibbs said. He added that the policy would most likely be approved soon.

“We believe we have a good safety program,” he said. “We believe people here are attuned to, and certainly aware of, making sure we work in a safe environment. And we want to continue that.”