Posted on 07/10/2017 11:11:01 PM PDT by nickcarraway
I have my iPhone in a LifeProof case that is water resistant. It has an o-ring that makes it pretty water tight.
The charger cord attaches through the case but where you would normally pick up the phone is farely far from the cord and the contacts on the charger cord would be inside the case. As long as your hand is not dripping wet I think you would be well insulated from the electrical cord.
I wonder if the LifeProof case would have saved her life.
They are expensive, about $45, but my phone has taken a few drops with no problem and having dropped my pager in toilet I wanted to protect my $500 iPhone from a similar fate.
I am on my second iPhone with LifeProof cases at trade in the phone looks like the day it went in.
It saves a phone maybe it would save a teenage girl.
Ops! Yeah, I would not do that. But, what about just an iPhone or Android ... not plugged in?
I did a little more reading and got the full picture.
Most phone chargers are 5v (at the least iPhone is), and draw current at up to 1A.
The 1A is most definitely capable of killing you, but it takes a lot of voltage to “push” that 1A past the natural resistance of the skin.
Ohm’s Law states:
I = E/R, where I is current, E is voltage and R is resistance.
Wet skin is said to have 1,000 ohm resistance.
So in the case of this girl, and assuming the worst case scenario of soaking wet hand grabbing the phone, we get:
0.005A = 5 Volts / 1,000 Ohms.
This isn’t anywhere near enough voltage and current to kill by a factor of 6,
0.005A = 5V / 1,000A * 6 = 0.03A (high end of the deadly amperage)
0.005A = 5V / 1,000A * 2 = 0.01A (the low end of the deadly amperage)
but it’s within reason that it could be deadly even from your cute little innocent little 5v/1A iPhone cube in the right circumstances. So be very careful around electricity, no matter how small, when also around wet areas.
(Someone let me know if I got this all right, I just poked around a little bit and did the math and it appears to be bad idea at even 5v when soaking wet)
Perfectly safe.
Unless the battery explodes. In 2009 in China, there was a case where an exploding cell phone battery killed a guy:
The shop worker from Guangzhou, China, died moments after he put a new battery in his phone, it has been claimed.It was believed that he may have just finished charging the battery and had put the phone in his breast pocket when it exploded.
An employee at the shop told local media that she heard a loud bang and saw her colleague lying on the floor of the shop in a pool of blood. The employee said the victim had recently changed the battery in his mobile phone.
I bet the 5 volts part has nothing to do with it. She was of course about as grounded as one could be - in the water, through the copper drain pipe. Next the cellphone was plugged in, somehow there was a 120 VAC “hot” leg potential somewhere from the line riding on the metal case of the phone? There’s lots of defective or counterfeit stuff out there too.
Next thing, while GFCI outlets are required for new code construction, it’s long been practice to keep outlets far away from the tub. Maybe it was a small bathroom, but the idea is there’s no way to reach an item. Very very sad story.
In any other case we would all be calling this a “Darwin” award. But because she was a good kid and doing all the right stuff in school and her life, we forget how snarky we Freepers can be sometimes.
On the other hand, if I was the father, I would be asking what the hell she was doing in the bathtub with the iphone?
And yes, I am passing this on to my children as a life lesson. learn from other peoples stupid mistakes, do not make them yourself.
I think I’m off my a factor of 10 again regarding the lethality of the current even when soaked to bone with a voltage of only 5A, but it looks like the charger would have to be defective or she pulled an extension cord into the tub too, and the bathroom didn’t have GFCI outlets for this to be a lethal combination.
More likely, the spec is, the charger supplies 5v at 1a. Harmless to you, but nourishing to your phone.
That would imply the charger draws 42ma at 120v from the wall.
It's likely, in the current case, the girl's charger somehow exposed her to its 120v input, not its 5v output.
In another case:
Mother-of-two Sheryl Aldeguer [aged 28] was electrocuted and killed by a faulty charger on April 23 [2014].Her husband Luigi Aldeguer told The Daily Telegraph his wife was speaking to a friend who was in Dubai when the incident happened.
The charger, which did not meet Australian safety regulations, had inadequate shielding causing 240 volts [this is Australia, where house voltage is 240v] to 'arc' and pass from the charger through the phone into her body.
It is believed that Mrs Aldeguer died instantly and her body, which had burns to the chest and ears, was found the following day by friends and her landlord.
She was a smart, pretty girl with a bright future who made a stupid, absent-minded mistake that cost her her life. Using their smartphones is like breathing to them, seldom detached from their bodies. No need to second guess what happened or why, it was tragic and a real loss. Prayers for her parents, I’m sure they’re beside themselves with grief. Don’t make them feel at fault.
Ground-fault interrupters in the bathroom. Lifesavers
Yup. They’ve been available for decades. GFCIs will even work on older wiring systems which lack a dedicated ground.
Well I suppose there are exceptions to every rule but I hope most of us Freepers would not be so snarky that we would bash on a 14 year old that accidentally offed themselves.
Anyone who remembers their teen years ought to have a little sympathy for a teen that does something stupid. Any teen that gets through those years without doing something that could have been fatal had a pretty boring life.
Life is inherently dangerous. Teenagers seem to be genetically programmed to believe they are immortal and so take no time to consider the dangers of some of the things they do. Hence what happened to this girl.
One could almost think that cellphones were invented to kill teenagers. Texting while driving, texting while walking, using the cellphone in the bathtub.
Yeah.. If the output of the charger were floating, no shock. But if leakage occurred to the hot side of the line there was danger.
I doubt it’s the 5 volts causing these electrocutions (there have been others).
The chargers don’t use transformers, so you end up with a difference of line voltage (120 VAC) between the charging connector and ground.
Yes there is only 5 volts across the contacts of the charger which is what the phone needs to see but what people don’t realize (and as far as I am concerned is a design flaw) is that some of these chargers are “hot” in relation to ground.
It is wise to avoid cheap chineese knock-off USB chargers.
And do not use devices while they are charging.
Please do not misunderstand, but this is a parental thing. There is more to this than just dropping a phone into a bathtub.
I talk to my children a lot about the common every day things which can get them killed.
I change a tire, I chock the wheel.
I check a light switch or bulb, I turn off the power.
I use a ladder, I make sure of the footings.
I do all of this with my children watching, so they understand why.
I am not their friend, I do not ask to be their confidant, I am their father. The world is dangerous and wants to kill you, so you teach them that burners are hot and CO2 in a closed garage kills.
And incredibly, they listen. And they watch in stunned silence as other people do stupid things and pay for it, with car wrecks or lost items or sometimes their life.
And when I gave cell phones to my children, I told them about all the dangers of the cell phone and the camera, and that anything you post is forever and never goes away. And they all understand that. They understand that other people can hack into your camera, so do not have it around if you do not want to be photographed. (I did that myself and showed them how I could hack into all of their laptops. That was an interesting conversation.)
If this girl did not know enough to NOT have live electrical appliances in the bathtub, then I do blame the parents. If the line was not on a GFI then I DO blame the father. If she brought it in on an extension cord, then I would have to question what the hell she needed her phone in her bath with it hooked up to a long cord, because I do not know anybody who texts while in a tub with a phone that needs a good source of power. Most have batteries.
I feel for the parents. I understand the deep grief they must have. I have five children and would be devastated to lose one of them that way. But I would take the other four into a private room and explain to them how stupid this was and that I would expect them to never do something that stupid.
Writing this might make you feel better but families do have a way of finding out about and reading these posts. Don’t take this any further, really. You’ll be pouring salt in an open wound.
That sounds likely to me too. In fact, aren't plugs in bathrooms usually placed farther away from the bathtub than the length of most razor and cell phone cords?
Even though the phone charger transformer isolates the 120 VAC from the charging output, there can be malfunctions and higher than necessary output currents that are dangerous in wet situations. Cheap knock-off third-party counterfeit phone chargers can be shock hazards. The iPhone charger, which has a current of 1 amp and also a voltage of 5 volts, will not electrocute a person. However, it has been found that water will lower a person’s body resistance enough so that even 7 milliamps for three seconds is a lethal dose. A counterfeit phone charger might have a higher 2 amps output at 5 volts. The higher current increases the danger even more. Of course, a bathroom equipped with modern ground-fault circuit interrupter outlets would have prevented the shock in the first place.
You are right. No need to hurt anybodies feelings. That is by far more important than anything else in the world.
Yes there is only 5 volts across the contacts of the charger which is what the phone needs to see but what people don’t realize (and as far as I am concerned is a design flaw) is that some of these chargers are “hot” in relation to ground.
Bingo.
It was proved that only 7 milliamps for three seconds is a lethal dose because of the low resistance—1000 ohms—of a wet body. That is certainly more than the 5 milliamps you calculated. Maybe there was bath salts in the water that lowered the water resistance. Or, maybe the phone charger was a counterfeit knock-off that had a current output more than the standard 1 Amp. Both conditions could have caused the lethal dose. In any case, it is smart to be careful of electric devices connected to house power in wet situations.
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