Keith McAllister’s death at a Long Island imaging center reopened sharp questions regarding the safety procedures involving MRI machines, in relation to the fatal effect of when metal are brought into strong magnetic fields that speed infinitesimal items to harmful velocities and turn everyday items into fatal projectiles.
The fatal incident that shocked the medical community
On July 16, 2025, a routine MRI scan at Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, New York, became a gruesome tragedy that would underscore the potentially deadly risks of magnetic resonance imaging rooms. Keith McAllister, a 61-year-old man, was killed after he was yanked forcefully into an MRI machine by a huge 20-pound (9kg) metal chain around his neck.
The accident occurred while Adrienne Jones-McAllister, the wife of McAllister, was undergoing an MRI of her knee. After the scan, she asked the technologist to page her husband to help her get off the exam table – a standard service she relied upon during her medical appointments. McAllister, wearing the heavy metal weight-training chain, was allowed into the scanner room with the powerful magnet still active.
“I watched as the machine grab him and drag him into the machine,” Jones-McAllister remembered crying to News 12 Long Island. “He died, he lost, he went limp in my arms.” The technologist was so strong that neither she nor the technologist could fight him loose from the scanner’s hold. Emergency responders were summoned, but McAllister had several heart attacks as a result of the accident and was declared dead the following day at 2:36 p.m.
How the science behind MRI’s lethal “Projectile Effect” functioning
MRI machines function with magnetic fields much stronger than people’s daily magnetic encounters. A typical clinical MRI scanner produces a magnetic field of 1.5 to 3 Tesla, 60,000 times Earth’s normal magnetic field. Compare this to junkyard magnets capable of lifting entire cars, which only work at 1 Tesla.
The static magnetic field generated by MRI machines is always present, regardless of whether the machines are actively scanning subjects or not. The constant presence of magnet results in what experts refer to as the “missile effect” or “projectile effect” – an effect by which ferromagnetic items are propelled towards the center of the magnet with incredible strength.
The physics of fatal attraction
When ferromagnetic substances such as iron, steel, nickel, or cobalt are placed within the magnetic field of an MRI, they undergo both rotational and translational forces. Such small items as paperclips and hairpins can achieve terminal velocities of 40 mph when pulled into a 1.5T magnet. Large objects can be even more lethal projectiles, with forces sufficient to crush victims or cause fatal trauma.
“It would be a torpedo trying to make its way into the center of the center of the magnet,” said Charles Winterfeldt, director of imaging services at North Shore University Hospital. The American College of Radiology’s safety guidelines point out that “the projectile effect can make a metal object travel like a missile, striking with sufficient force to impale or kill someone.”
McAllister’s is the newest in an unsettling decades-long, continent-wide pattern of MRI-induced deaths. All are similar in their basic regard for safety failures – ferromagnetic items entering active magnetic fields with deadly results.
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