Woman Suffers Severe Injury from Pressure Cooker

An Indian woman suffered a severe injury as the whistle (or pressure relief) from a pressure cooker shot off the canner into her eye and lodged into her scull.

These issues are rare, but serves as a reminder for those using pressure cookers or canners to pay attention when heating under pressure to prevent excess pressure from building up in the canner.  In this case, the woman was doing something else and had ignored the whistling sound generated by the canner and then tried to move the canner rather than just turning off the heat.

Other important measures to take..make sure your canner is clean and in good working condition, including the pressure canner/cooker pressure relief/whistler/giggler value is free of build up and the pressure monitoring gauge is working.  Be sure pressures are within the range called for in the recipe, and take corrective action such as reducing heat if the pressure goes a few pounds above that pressure.  If excessive pressures are reached, turn off the heat completely, and stay away from unit until pressure dissipates.

Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/health/pressure-cooker-whistle-skull
Pressure cooker whistle shoots off, lodges into woman's skull
By Madeline Farber | Fox News
9/9/19

An Indian woman is blinded in one eye after the whistle attached to a pressure cooker shot off the cooking device and lodged into her skull.

The horrific accident happened as Munda Birsi, 57, was making a meal with her pressure cooker on Sept. 4. She set the cooker on the gas stove in her home and went outside to cut hay, according to SWNS.

The woman, who could not hear the whistle screaming over the hay-cutter, went back inside roughly an hour later to remove the cooker from the stovetop. As she did, the steam reportedly caused the whistle to burst and shoot into her face. The nearly 3-inch object pierced “the skull bone separating her eyes from her brain,” per SWNS.

Birsi was rushed to a local hospital where a CT scan revealed the whistle was jammed into her skull near her brain. The object was lodged so deeply it was not fully visible from the outside, photos show.

More of the article including graphic pictures....https://www.foxnews.com/health/pressure-cooker-whistle-skull