Cell phone electrocution

On Thursday, July 13, 2017 at 9:37:46 AM UTC-7, Mike Easter wrote:
Jasen Betts wrote:
"Big Clive" has reveiwed some chargers that are compatible with that
scenario (and with no safety standards)

I 'hate it' when some info source is only found on youtube such as
bigclivedotcom's vids. There's a website, but...

--
Mike Easter
Click to expand...

And then I got totally distracted with his article on how to build a GPS tracker. Cool site! Oh wait, I went there searching for defective chargers! Oh yeah. Oops.

Michael
 
mrdarrett@gmail.com wrote:
And then I got totally distracted with his article on how to build a
GPS tracker. Cool site! Oh wait, I went there searching for
defective chargers! Oh yeah. Oops.
Click to expand...

I was looking for something just now in the wp and somehow ran into an
article there about animal prostitution. Whaaaa?

Adelie female penguins for nest stones; female chimps for food (meat) -
refuted; female capuchin monkeys in a devised economics study for study
tokens.

All because I wanted to know something about the penguins when they
cropped up in a recent xword puz.


--
Mike Easter
 
On Thursday, July 13, 2017 at 1:29:27 PM UTC-7, Mike Easter wrote:
mrdarrett@gmail.com wrote:
And then I got totally distracted with his article on how to build a
GPS tracker. Cool site! Oh wait, I went there searching for
defective chargers! Oh yeah. Oops.

I was looking for something just now in the wp and somehow ran into an
article there about animal prostitution. Whaaaa?

Adelie female penguins for nest stones; female chimps for food (meat) -
refuted; female capuchin monkeys in a devised economics study for study
tokens.

All because I wanted to know something about the penguins when they
cropped up in a recent xword puz.


--
Mike Easter
Click to expand...

Animal pimps? What? :)

Have you seen this, about monkeys and equal pay?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dMoK48QGL8

Michael
 
mrdarrett@gmail.com wrote:
> Have you seen this, about monkeys and equal pay?

<from Frans de Waal's TED talk vid>

FdW (also) wrote a book in 2013 called _The Bonobo and the Atheist_.
Scientific American did a very brief review of that book here:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mind-reviews-bonobo-and-atheist/

FdW has a nice man/animal approach to understanding some important
fundamentals.

--
Mike Easter
 
On Wednesday, July 12, 2017 at 12:42:44 AM UTC-7, Helmut Wabnig wrote:
On Tue, 11 Jul 2017 08:29:36 -0700 (PDT), mrdarrett@gmail.com wrote:

Apparently she reached for her phone while she was in the bath, and it was charging... but still... ?!

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/07/11/teen-dies-from-using-cellphone-while-taking-bath.html


USA has the lowest electrical safety standards worldwide,
equivalent to Bangla Desh, Ahghanistan and Iraq war zones:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/08/02/128936546/iraq-an-electrician-s-nightmare


w.
Click to expand...

I bet the charger was not built in the USA. China comes to mind?
G²
 
stratus46@yahoo.com wrote:
> I bet the charger was not built in the USA. China comes to mind?

The phone was .kr Samsung, but they have mfr/ing plants all over the
world besides .kr.

Samsung OEM chargers are '2 piece' composed of a body which plugs into
the AC and a cord which is USB.

Jul 14 article sez electrocution confirmed by ME, father reports 'so
much' water in the lungs (nurse & fireman attempting CPR), victim
previously asserting she routinely left the phone outside the tub, AC
extension cord use again confirmed.

http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/24466-father-of-teen-who-died-after-taking-cell-phone-into-bathtub-my-world-just-came

--
Mike Easter
 
Mike Easter wrote:
> AC extension cord use again confirmed.

In the vid is the bathroom; I see a GFIC outlet the extension cord was
plugged into.

--
Mike Easter
 
On Sat, 15 Jul 2017 12:06:45 -0700, Mike Easter wrote:

> AC extension cord use again confirmed.

When will people ever learn?
 
Cursitor Doom wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:

AC extension cord use again confirmed.

When will people ever learn?
Click to expand...
Given the choice of not doing an activity and doing the activity by
using an extension cord, people will use an extension cord about 100% of
the time.

"That's what they are for."

--
Mike Easter
 
This accident just seems 'too freaky' for me.

Burn marks on the hand, electrocuted to death by a cell phone plugged
into a charger accessing a GFCI circuit. How can all that be?

The GFCI doesn't work/interrupt at all; AND the b0rken charger sends AC
mains juice down the tiny little USB milliamp wire that can burn your
hand and electrocute you. Wow. Unbelievable until I hear more.

--
Mike Easter
 
Mike Easter wrote:
> This accident just seems 'too freaky' for me.

I'm cooking up another scenario that only requires the GFCI not working,
which apparently isn't all that rare.

Because her parents have told her twice now to get out of the tub, she
gets out and reaches down to unplug the cell's charger because she also
uses it to hang on her upper bunk bed post at night, also plugged into
an extension cord. That scene is described by her little sister in the vid.

Bang! She get zapped by wet hands and the AC cord connection to the
charger body -- no necessity of freaky AC juice getting past the charger
into the USB wire or traveling toward the phone, and she falls back into
the tub which is still full of water. She could have been electrocuted
or she could be impaired and drown there to account for the father's
impression of 'lungs full of water'.

In that scenario, we only need one unusual electrical problem, the GFCI
failure. That is why we are supposed to test them every month. Whoever
does that?

--
Mike Easter
 
Mike Easter wrote:
My personal theory so far is that the phone/charger wasn't actually the
cause of death/electrocution.
Click to expand...

How sad and ironic:

- Madison took a picture of the extension cord and commented on it
before she accidentally electrocuted herself with it

- she was electrocuted by the frayed extension cord the charger was
plugged into, not the phone or charger

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/accidental-death/2017/07/11/lubbock-teen-electrocuted-using-cellphone-bathtub
Police release last text Lubbock teen sent before she was electrocuted
in tub ... She came in contact with the area of the fraying on the
extension cord while she was still in the bathtub, police said.

--
Mike Easter
 
On Friday, July 21, 2017 at 5:16:00 PM UTC-7, Mike Easter wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:
My personal theory so far is that the phone/charger wasn't actually the
cause of death/electrocution.

How sad and ironic:

- Madison took a picture of the extension cord and commented on it
before she accidentally electrocuted herself with it

- she was electrocuted by the frayed extension cord the charger was
plugged into, not the phone or charger

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/accidental-death/2017/07/11/lubbock-teen-electrocuted-using-cellphone-bathtub
Police release last text Lubbock teen sent before she was electrocuted
in tub ... She came in contact with the area of the fraying on the
extension cord while she was still in the bathtub, police said.

--
Mike Easter
Click to expand...

Ooh oww.

Michael
 
mrdarrett@gmail.com wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:

- she was electrocuted by the frayed extension cord the charger was
plugged into, not the phone or charger

Ooh oww.
Click to expand...

I was having a discussion about this with a fellow who teaches trade
school classes (including GFCI circuits) about "How come the GFCI didn't
protect her; does that mean it wasn't working properly?"

He said it doesn't protect against that. I thought it did.

If we say that one side of the two a/c slots is considered hot and the
other side is neutral and the gfci is supposed to sense if there is an
imbalance in the current flowing thru' each side and disconnect...

.... and we also say that her extension cord doesn't have a ground wire
but it has exposed one or both sides and she provides a ground or
neutral 'pool' for the a/c current to 'escape' through her; wouldn't
that constitute an imbalance in the current sensor in the GFCI plug/circuit?


--
Mike Easter
 
Mike Easter wrote:

----------------------
I was having a discussion about this with a fellow who teaches trade
school classes (including GFCI circuits) about "How come the GFCI didn't
protect her; does that mean it wasn't working properly?"

He said it doesn't protect against that. I thought it did.
Click to expand...

** I understand the bathrooms in the USA have GFCIs on any AC outlets in the room. The device should have operated in a case like this.

Possibly the extension cord was plugged into another and unprotected outlet.



...... Phil
 
In article <43fffeba-a53e-49be-84f5-a8fe5f889da6@googlegroups.com>,
pallison49@gmail.com says...
Mike Easter wrote:

----------------------

I was having a discussion about this with a fellow who teaches trade
school classes (including GFCI circuits) about "How come the GFCI didn't
protect her; does that mean it wasn't working properly?"

He said it doesn't protect against that. I thought it did.



** I understand the bathrooms in the USA have GFCIs on any AC outlets in the room. The device should have operated in a case like this.

Possibly the extension cord was plugged into another and unprotected outlet.



The house could have been old enough that the GFCI was not required.
Click to expand...

Not sure when the GFCI came out but was thinking around 1970 or shortly
after. Probably took a few years for them to be required. I know one
house I lived in was built in 1965 and still had fuses in it. Not eeven
a breaker box.
 
Ralph Mowery wrote:
Phil Allison wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:

I was having a discussion about this with a fellow who teaches
trade school classes (including GFCI circuits) about "How come
the GFCI didn't protect her; does that mean it wasn't working
properly?"

He said it doesn't protect against that. I thought it did.

** I understand the bathrooms in the USA have GFCIs on any AC
outlets in the room. The device should have operated in a case like this.

Possibly the extension cord was plugged into another and unprotected outlet.
Click to expand...

No, see below.
The house could have been old enough that the GFCI was not required.

Not sure when the GFCI came out but was thinking around 1970 or shortly
after. Probably took a few years for them to be required. I know one
house I lived in was built in 1965 and still had fuses in it. Not eeven
a breaker box.
Click to expand...

In this case: there was an earlier news report video including
interviews and demonstrations in the bathroom this happened. The vid
showed the location and type of AC outlet, namely GFCI over the
lavatory, which was used to plug the extension cord so that the charger
cord plus the extension solved the distance problem from lavatory to
bathtub.

We are advised to test our GFCI plugs regularly, so there must be an
appreciable failure rate; except I don't know exactly which way a GFCI
plug failure occurs. The test button disconnects the circuit. The
reset button resets the circuit. What fails? I assume that the failure
is a failure of disconnect, so pushing the test button would NOT cause
the circuit to disconnect -- not the opposite -- in which the test
button disconnects but the reset button fails to re-establish the circuit.

So, if both of my assumptions are correct, then the accident would
include a failure of the GFCI function to disconnect in spite of an
imbalance of current in the two sides of the plug while her body and the
bathtub were draining current from one side.


--
Mike Easter
 
Mike Easter wrote:

The vid
showed the location and type of AC outlet, namely GFCI over the
lavatory, which was used to plug the extension cord so that the charger
cord plus the extension solved the distance problem from lavatory to
bathtub.

So, if both of my assumptions are correct, then the accident would
include a failure of the GFCI function to disconnect in spite of an
imbalance of current in the two sides of the plug while her body and the
bathtub were draining current from one side.
Click to expand...

A current article which includes the frayed extension cord information
says that the bathroom outlet was not GFCI nor grounded, in spite of the
appearance in the video report, so something must be amiss with the
installation not being code.

--
Mike Easter
 
Mike Easter wrote:
> the appearance in the video report,

This 2:23 vid report appears to be taking place in the home and the
bathroom where the accident occurred and very briefly shows a (THE) GFCI
plug 35 sec into the video.

http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/24466-father-of-teen-who-died-after-taking-cell-phone-into-bathtub-my-world-just-came

I know that you can have a normal plug 'GFCI/ed' by being on the same
circuit as a GFCI plug, but I don't know how one could improperly
install a GFCI plug that would defeat its purpose.

I can't resolve the conflict between the report which says the plug was
NOT GFCI with the video which showed a GFCI plug, unless the video
report patched together parts which were really at the home and in the
bathroom with parts which were shot somewhere else for purposes of
illustration.

Clearly the phone and the phone charger and the extension cord in the
vid were not the same ones involved in the accident; but I assumed that
the bathroom and the lavatory and the plug over the lavatory were 'real'.


--
Mike Easter
 
Mike Easter wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:
the appearance in the video report,

This 2:23 vid report appears to be taking place in the home and the
bathroom where the accident occurred and very briefly shows a (THE) GFCI
plug 35 sec into the video.

http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/24466-father-of-teen-who-died-after-taking-cell-phone-into-bathtub-my-world-just-came


I know that you can have a normal plug 'GFCI/ed' by being on the same
circuit as a GFCI plug, but I don't know how one could improperly
install a GFCI plug that would defeat its purpose.

I can't resolve the conflict between the report which says the plug was
NOT GFCI with the video which showed a GFCI plug, unless the video
report patched together parts which were really at the home and in the
bathroom with parts which were shot somewhere else for purposes of
illustration.

Clearly the phone and the phone charger and the extension cord in the
vid were not the same ones involved in the accident; but I assumed that
the bathroom and the lavatory and the plug over the lavatory were 'real'.
Click to expand...

I would think that a new GFCI was installed right after the
incident, and before a news crew was allowed into the room. Otherwise,
some moron would shove something into the outlet to demonstrate his or
hr stupidity.


--
Never piss off an Engineer!

They don't get mad.

They don't get even.

They go for over unity! ;-)
 
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