The majority of electric shocks are painful and surprising, but not fatal. It takes a good electrical contact between two parts of your body between a live source and a return path to allow high current to flow through your body. By understanding electricity and how it flows in differing quantities through many paths of resistance you can avoid putting yourself at risk of a fatal shock.
The safety industry implies that all electrical equipment should be locked out and tagged out before working on it, but in reality that is not always possible, although definitely a better option in the case of easily identified faults.
Much of the current wall of "one size fits all" safety legislation has come about due to the rise of all-trade building and facilities maintenance companies and their use of unskilled labour for economy. They often do minimalist in-house training before making their new "experts" sign liability waivers to avoid any legal repercussions.
Electrocution is normally a result of high current flow through your body. The most common mode of death is fibrillation of the heart. Your heart is actually composed of a large group of muscles that all contract in sync to deliver blood around your body. If they are knocked out of sync by the flow of current causing involuntary contraction of a portion of the heart, then they may not be able to re-sync and the heart will then function incorrectly and fail to deliver blood around the body, resulting in the potential for death.
The best way to defibrillate the heart is to use an AED Automatic External Defibrillator. These have evolved from the big scary hospital machines to sophisticated, affordable and compact units that can openly be bought for home use online and used by people with no previous training in their use due to the full automation and spoken instructions.
A defibrillator is applied across the victims heart by the use of two external electrodes. It then uses very advanced digital signal processing to make one of three decisions. It will NOT attempt to shock a healthy heart or one that is showing no residual activity (flat-lining). If it detects a heart rhythm indicative of a heart in a fibrillated state then it will advise a shock, charge it's capacitor, tell people to stand clear and then authorise the user to press the button. The resultant pulse of high current causes the heart to contract into a known and synchronised state, whereupon externally applied compressions (CPR) can then be used to help establish synchronised beating again as the machine continues to monitor the situation and make further attempts if needed.
It's somewhat ironic that the defibrillator was first developed to try and curb the high fatality rate of linemen in the American power distribution industry. And that now they have evolved to the point they can affordably be put into their trucks as part of their medical kits, the majority still don't have them. This situation is made even more incredulous by the high fatality rate that is ongoing in that particular industry due to their routine work in the vicinity of live power lines. (Isn't this what their union is supposed to deal with?)
The safety industry implies that all electrical equipment should be locked out and tagged out before working on it, but in reality that is not always possible, although definitely a better option in the case of easily identified faults.
Much of the current wall of "one size fits all" safety legislation has come about due to the rise of all-trade building and facilities maintenance companies and their use of unskilled labour for economy. They often do minimalist in-house training before making their new "experts" sign liability waivers to avoid any legal repercussions.
Electrocution is normally a result of high current flow through your body. The most common mode of death is fibrillation of the heart. Your heart is actually composed of a large group of muscles that all contract in sync to deliver blood around your body. If they are knocked out of sync by the flow of current causing involuntary contraction of a portion of the heart, then they may not be able to re-sync and the heart will then function incorrectly and fail to deliver blood around the body, resulting in the potential for death.
The best way to defibrillate the heart is to use an AED Automatic External Defibrillator. These have evolved from the big scary hospital machines to sophisticated, affordable and compact units that can openly be bought for home use online and used by people with no previous training in their use due to the full automation and spoken instructions.
A defibrillator is applied across the victims heart by the use of two external electrodes. It then uses very advanced digital signal processing to make one of three decisions. It will NOT attempt to shock a healthy heart or one that is showing no residual activity (flat-lining). If it detects a heart rhythm indicative of a heart in a fibrillated state then it will advise a shock, charge it's capacitor, tell people to stand clear and then authorise the user to press the button. The resultant pulse of high current causes the heart to contract into a known and synchronised state, whereupon externally applied compressions (CPR) can then be used to help establish synchronised beating again as the machine continues to monitor the situation and make further attempts if needed.
It's somewhat ironic that the defibrillator was first developed to try and curb the high fatality rate of linemen in the American power distribution industry. And that now they have evolved to the point they can affordably be put into their trucks as part of their medical kits, the majority still don't have them. This situation is made even more incredulous by the high fatality rate that is ongoing in that particular industry due to their routine work in the vicinity of live power lines. (Isn't this what their union is supposed to deal with?)
Alanis Morissette ….whenever possible
$16.00 Amazon rubber gloves. Best to buy good rubber electrical insulated goves. Today the gloves are inexpensive. Anybody can afford them.
Use only ONE HAND if near live wire.
I always stand on dry wood, if I need to be near a live wire. Keeps my shoes from direct contact to earth.
OLD PHONES, LAND LINES… I was also shocked installing a line for a phone. I guess it might have be a 50 volt shock. I was very surprised how the low voltage zapped me hard.
THE DEATH GRIP… I have been shocked in the past so bad, that my HANDS LOCKED UP ONTO THE WIRE at 120 volts. Luckily, I thought fast. I intentionaly fell off a low ladder. The fall forced the wire from my hand. I think that saved my life that day.
Zzzzzzap
I will never forget, I used to revamp Pizza Hut Point of Sale. That included installing all new ethernet cable throughout the building. In one attic, down in Ridgeland, MS, there were no crawl boards, so you just had to crawl from joist to joist, which can be a little teetering at times. You need to reach out and touch a brace to keep your balance. Well, I was in open space and needed to steady myself and saw a conduit right near me. So, like many times in the past – I just touched it to balance myself and immediately locked up. Somehow, someone had wired things wrong, or something had shorted somewhere, and the conduit itself was hot. I just remember for the probably few moments that seemed like minutes I couldn't let go, and the world started closing down to tunnel vision, I thought "holy sh*t, I'm going to die in a friggin' Pizza Hut attic…. this can't be happening" LOL – fortunately for me I woke up about an hour later all sideways and sore across a couple of joist with a nice coating of nasty old insulation glued to me, all sweaty and nearly overheated. Somebody was watching over me that night! 🙂 I just don't know how it locked me down that hard. I've been bit by 120 before and it's just a "dangit!' experience. This must have been 240 or something was really wrong.
An American GFCI trips at 5mA, which is a non lethal current, and your RCDs trip at 30mA, which is almost a lethal current, so why do your RCDs trip at 30mA and not 5?
Don't know how universal this is but in Finland I've worked in three different electric workshop and eachs had a wooden oar with words "newbie extractor" written on them. Of course not in english but in finnish with the same meaning. Although I've never seen a newbie to test if wire is live by hand they've always been veterans. Taught me how to do it, even though I've never done it. Use back of your hand.
I learned a few things working on broadcast transmitters (3 phase 208 line side, 5-12kv inside) from my mentors first day. Always check the disconnects before opening anything even if you threw the disconnects, use the jesus (ground/discharge) stick early and often, work with one hand in your pocket especially if you got to energize something, don't stand directly in front of whatever you are powering up including circuit breaker and fuse disconnects. It becomes routine and you find yourself standing aside when you turn on a light switch or plug into a wall outlet at home. A lot of times we would be there because of a lightning strike and you never know what else you might not see might be damaged and blow up when you turn the power back on.. if your hair stands up and things start popping just hit the deck.. another storm cloud has come up and your in a building connected to a 450ft lightning rod.
👻