Texas Teen Electrocuted After Cell Phone Accidentally Falls in Bathtub

KCBD ^ | Monday, July 10th | Amber Stegall, Presley Fowler

[jonrick46]

You are most correct. Does the frequency control the “on” time of the switching transistor; especially if the frequency is a square wave? I think so. This would point to the malfunction which could have applied a lethal current to the wet girl. I suspect the controller IC caused the charger to send out a high voltage when something caused to create an abnormally long “on” time. You don’t want such a malfunction to happen in an wet environment.

Back to the subject. What was cause of the electrocution due to a circuit failure, a circuit design flaw causing the non-isolation from the line voltage input, or a matter of the wet girl getting that lethal 7 milliamps current from a charger that was putting out more than 1 amp?

There is another matter. It was said that the cell phone charger was connected to an extension cord in the bathroom. That extension cords could have been plugged into an outlet without a ground fault interrupter. It could have been been plugged in with the polarity of the input voltage reversed, causing a hot ground plane. She was hit with sufficient current to burn her hand from the accident. This should be a warning not to charge a cell phone in a wet area.

[wardaddy]

That’s incredible and so sad

Poor thing

I was in an old tile bathroom tub in gunnison colorado last summer and used my apple 6+ which was on a USB charge line while I was chest deep in tub

It tingled in my hand a bit but that was all

Again so sad.

[E.Allen]

“I remodeled my bathroom and put in a new outlet. There was no place to ground it so I ran a wire through the wall to a pipe going down into the ground, It hasn’t sizzled yet! My friend advised me; He is an electrical engineer but he also smokes a lot of pot, so I’m sorta dubious”

Ground rod would work, to provide a little safety as long as breaker box also has a ground rod, could also help with major overloads or shorts, possibly prevent fires.
A GFCI would protect PEOPLE. The GFCI breaker feeding the bath, or a GFCI outlet (wall receptacle has a little GFCI breaker in it) would be much preferable.

[E.Allen]

You are correct that peak to peak voltage would be 120v x 1.414 (170 V) to correct from RMS voltage. I agree that there would have to be some kind of fault in the charger to let line voltage get to the cell phone, but that should have fried the phone battery and probably the phone the first time it was plugged in.

I allowed that skin resistance is markedly lower when wet, but 5 V should not be enough to be fatal, a 9 V transistor battery won’t kill you if you handle it in water. You can stick it on your tongue, to see if it’s dead (if you are in a hurry, don’t have a VOM, and don’t mind a little tingle).

I just think that situation with the poor teenager is very suspicious. At the least, if it is an equipment problem, it needs to be solved, and chargers recalled, before some one else is killed.

[Do_Tar]

Just an update.
It’s now been concluded that the charger was plugged in to a frayed extension cord. Apparently she grabbed/touched the 110v cord at the frayed area. The outlet was not GFCI.