Oh wow...hopefully someone will donate some prosthetics or something to allow her to better cope/function with her new hands?
Also, not to lay blame on the victim (is that too strong a word?) but didn't she not follow directions?

by failing to report it as required the school shares some responsibility and a fine is reasonable and completely justified yet the the school did not breach any health or safety rules. The 16 year old failed to follow instructions or for that matter to do what everyone else was doing. The school might be slightly at fault because they didn't treat the 16 year old as a 6-year old and held her hand while making the mold, but she is largely responsible for the "accident" herself unless there is more to the story.

It is a horrible tragedy no doubt. Just saying that the school's only fault is failing to report it.

Funny kids have been doing this all over the world for a very very very long time, yet such incidents are extremely rare, almost unheard of. You may say that the school didn't follow safety measures yet their method has worked 1,991,579,882,260,527,268,925 times before.

Kids in thirdworld countries don't make the news when they are injured, they are just replaced by another set of hands.

true they are used from everything to make fire-crackers to other cheap repetitive labour here :-(

I'm just wondering why no-one said anything about the obviously wrong "hands-in-plaster" thing.
How many kids were there in this class?

I'ts not like plaster sets the moment you stick your hands in, that takes time....
according to the article ten minutes, which sounds awfully quick for plaster, but it also sounds like an awfully long time for someone to open their mouth

All I can say is OUCH. Regardless of who's at fault, her life will never be the same.

This story is extremely shaky. 60 degrees celsius does NOT cause that damage, ever. You dont burn away bones and ligaments like that with setting plaster. And if it was hot (60 degress will stil burn you immediately) then why the hell did'nt she shake/scrape it off her hands when it was still in liquid form.

I feel very sorry for this child but must wonder what really went down?

I have more than the usual amount of experience making plaster casts and can't help to think that there is more to the story. If the report came from just about anybody but the BBC I would have dismissed it.

This all being said, whomever the hands, for whatever the reasons, I'm saddened that this has happened.

very sad. a pretty foolish mistake, but to lose ten fingers because of it... that i can't imagine. as an amateur artist, if this happened to me i would be devastated.

What a horrible accident. If this was the first time the class was doing this, the students should have been more closely supervised.

Good that she is getting on with her life. But one wonders, what might have been.

plaster releases heat as it sets, and does so gradually.. i'm guessing that the plaster set before it became 60 degrees Celsius.

That temperature can cause severe burns if it is constant on your hands.

Good point but it still wouldn't burn more than some skin. It just doesn't add up if you look at the photo in the article. Also, I found research stating that the temperature won't go over 50 degrees.

The part I had the most trouble with is that no one from the response team could get the plaster off? Smash the damn stuff. It takes 12 hours or more to set after the hot phase. It's in a semi-solid state while the chemical reaction is going on and any hard blow would have fractured the hardening plaster. A chisel a hammer or even a pointy shoe could have chipped off the mass. I'm on the WTF? side of this story.

the picture looks a bit strange to me too. why would she put both hands in, anyway? and why could they save those 2 fingers that look pretty normal in comparision to the rest of the hands?

Poor girl.
Must be pretty hard to do anything useful with only 2 fingers.

It's not the burns that caused massive tissue/bone loss, but likely subsequent infections and 12 surgeries to try and get them under control so she didn't lose her hands at the wrist. Infection is probably the number one complication for burn survivors, and once it migrates into joints (which hands have a lot of) treatment is especially difficult, and amputation often becomes the only option. 60-degree water can give you 3rd-degree burns in a few seconds. This would be like plunging your hands into 60-degree water for minutes.

And for anyone saying the school is only at fault for not reporting the incident:

From the article:

And from Health and Safety:

So I don't know where that argument is coming from. Clearly, she wasn't informed of the danger, or she wouldn't have done it. More than likely, the teacher didn't know the danger either, which puts the blame on the school for failure to disseminate and follow H&S procedures.

Also, Salvator, if you "found research" about plaster heating up to only 50 degrees, where is it? And then why the warning labels on bags of plaster, and OSHA's (American H&S) listing of plaster of Paris as "toxic and dangerous"? Not that it really matters in the girl's case, even if it were true: