Man dies charging phone in the bath ...

[WaveyDipole]

This is another article on the subject. Its still not clear exactly what happened though. Phone chargers usually have a simple capacitor dropper rather than transformers. Yes it is only 5v output, but its still mains input and they are not usually earthed. One article suggests that the charger dipped into the water. If that was indeed the case and the water made contact with the mains inside the charger then due to lacl of earth there would have been no RCD protection. Assuming the residence has a consumer unit with RCD protection (older properties may not) then ironically, the extension socket falling in might have caused the RCD to trip and saved his life. Since these chargers are wall wart types that plug directly into the mains socket, Im not sure how you separate the charger unit from the mains extension so I would imagine one was plugged into the other and both were resting on his chest. A very dangerous thing to do indeed with saddly lethal consequences.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4322932/Man-32-dies-charging-iPhone-bath.html

PS regulation in the UK is that no mains sockets are allowed in a bathroom, only shaver socket. Lights must be operated from a cord switch rather than a wall switch. Its a safety measure to prevent wet hands or people sitting in baths from touching mains electrical inlets and switches or operating electrical appliances with possible electrocution risk. Its designed to prevent exactly this kind of situation and bypassing this using an extension lead is definitely not recommended.

[Monkeh]

Phone chargers usually have a simple capacitor dropper rather than transformers.

Uuuhh, when was the last time you looked at a phone charger, 1995?

http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html
http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html

[Ian.M]

As I said up thread, there can't have been a working RCD on that circuit.  It would have tripped fast enough to prevent significant burns, and would probably have been fast enough to save his life.

UK trading standards are very tough on importers/sellers of fake chargers due to the lethal hazard of a mains PSU with insufficient or no isolation being used with a portable device and earbud headphones, so the odds are the victim got the end of the extension lead wet.  If the live terminal of the socket had water in it but the neutral was still more or less dry, without a RCD, there would be up to 32A available (assuming a fake 13A plug fuse or other electrical dodgyness like a miswired socket) for a 'long pork' electric Wiener roast.

[Avacee]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4322932/Man-32-dies-charging-iPhone-bath.html

Quote from the deceased's brother in that article:
'We can all be careless at times, when you're younger you're taught about electricity and the bath but you don't think about it.
'I live in the US and they say it can't happen, and that there is not enough electricity. But in the UK it is enough. You don't think there is enough electricity but there is.

Is that really the prevailing thought in the US? Is that what is taught in school?

[raspberrypi]

What does apple have to do with it? Deep pockets? If you blame apple you have to blame:
The extention cord company
The water company
The electric company
The bath tub maker
The plumber who grounded the water pipe
The maker of the water pipe
The company that made the ground rob
The company that made the wiring in the house
The electrician who installed it
The maker of the outlet he plugged it into
The maker of the soap that made the water more conductive
And the list goes on.
Or you can be ignorant and mention the manufacture of the device like that has anything to do with being so stupid you kill yourself. Its not like electricity is some new invention that we are not used to and its not very well understood. In preschool you learn not to mix wet hands with outlets or cords.
I wonder what his IQ was. No doubt he had done this many times and got lucky.
Next story: "man gets run over as he doesn't look before crossing the street". The makers of the car were notified and its unclear whether Toyota is responsible.

[Monkeh]

PS regulation in the UK is that no mains sockets are allowed in a bathroom, only shaver socket. Lights must be operated from a cord switch rather than a wall switch. Its a safety measure to prevent wet hands or people sitting in baths from touching mains electrical inlets and switches or operating electrical appliances with possible electrocution risk. Its designed to prevent exactly this kind of situation and bypassing this using an extension lead is definitely not recommended.

Also, this is incorrect.

Sockets are allowed so long as they are 3m outside of zone 1 (the area in which water is likely to get directly sprayed from a bath or shower). Light switches are allowed so long as they are outside of zone 2, which extends 600mm from zone 1.

[Ampera]

I think that rule is a bit stupid. In the US, as long as it's a GFI socket, you can put it in the bathroom.

[raspberrypi]

I have known a number peer electronics engineers who have never received basic consumer education. They make the most stupid financial decisions. One being spending more than they earn on non-appreciating, non-essential assets over a long period of time, slowly going broke.

Probably the same problem we have over here. Throughout my education I don't remember one single class that more than touched on basic financial responsibility, credit, compounding interest, etc. When so many parents exhibit such poor financial behavior it's no wonder their kids make so many mistakes. Growing up without a lot of money wasn't always pleasant but I credit the experience with making me far more financially sensible than the average person. I've known so many people who make substantially more than I do yet are always broke.

They dont teach any off that but over hear when I was a kid you pretty much got a 500$ capital one card on your 18th birthday and some how my brother got a $300 one when he was 17. I learned how credit worked because I wanted a new Preowned $34k BMW when I was 20. I got a loan. I did it through a complicated scheme of taking out multiple loans to get other loans paying them off with loans until I was 20 with a 700 mid fico credit score. My first car had 3.9%APR and was used. At one point (for first 3 months) the car payment was over 600$ a month but I could afford it since I had a job. Then 2008 happened and eight years and over 1000 on time payments went to shit in three months.

My father was a millionaire growing up but he told us we were poor, so we never got to enjoy it. Hes an hardware electrical engineer of course. But he would cheap out and end up paying more. But when every one got 600 bucks from GW Bush he got $65,000 back on his tax return. 600 bucks unless you are rich.

[VK3DRB]

...
My father was a millionaire growing up but he told us we were poor, so we never got to enjoy it. Hes an hardware electrical engineer of course. But he would cheap out and end up paying more. ...

IMO, there is a difference between false economy and being frugal. False economy equates to stupidity. I have seen some really stupid acts of false economy by a certain owner of a business - it has cost him very dearly, crippling the health of the business. Maybe like the electrocution guy, he does not even realise his lack of common sense will be his downfall. But being frugal can simply mean living below your means. Earn $100 every week and spend $105 every week, and you will eventually go bankrupt. But Earn $100 and spend $95, you will eventually grow rich. Earn $100 and spend $5, then you will die miserable.

Buying a luxury car when you are young, using money you don't have is a bad idea unless you want to attract pretentious chicks. You are better off with a cheaper car, like a Honda Civic which gets you from A to B that is reliable, than a face saving BMW or Mercedes. Even if I had $10 million in the bank, I would never be bothered with a luxury car. Anecdotally, people with humble cars tend to get better road respect from other drivers.

[amyk]

Phone chargers usually have a simple capacitor dropper rather than transformers.

Uuuhh, when was the last time you looked at a phone charger, 1995?

http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-quality.html
http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html

In 1995 they would've probably been big linear transformers...

Not to say they don't exist, but bigclivedotcom on YouTube does teardowns of some very dodgy stuff, and he has yet to come across a capacitive dropper in a phone charger. (There's been some "surprise cap droppers" in PSUs that were not USB chargers, however.) The cheap Chinese manufacturers, although they don't always succeed, seem to at least try for an isolated design.

[Ian.M]

What does apple have to do with it? Deep pockets? If you blame apple you have to blame:
The extention cord company
....<snip>...
The maker of the soap that made the water more conductive
And the list goes on.
Or you can be ignorant and mention the manufacture of the device like that has anything to do with being so stupid you kill yourself. Its not like electricity is some new invention that we are not used to and its not very well understood. In preschool you learn not to mix wet hands with outlets or cords.
I wonder what his IQ was. No doubt he had done this many times and got lucky.
Next story: "man gets run over as he doesn't look before crossing the street". The makers of the car were notified and its unclear whether Toyota is responsible.

Captain of his local Rugby club, and Rugby players are stereotyped the same way as American Football jocks.  He may have been a MENSA member having a very bad day, but the odds are against it.

[Housedad]

Reminds me of when I spent a few months in China in the early 80's.  At a lot of hotels, there would be a outlet at about bellybutton height in the side wall of the shower/tub, right in the middle.  At 240V and no sign of a ground fault outlet, It was always scary to take a shower.  I would cover the outlet in tape and divert the shower stream to hit the curtain and stayed to that side.  Always be grateful for our NEC even though it seems not to make sense sometimes.    Ah, the good ol days.

[Ian.M]

Its always worth remembering the rest of the world does NOT have the standards for electrical safety we expect in 1st World countries, and the standards they do have are often only enforced if someone important gets killed.   You don't need to go further afield than the average UK or US package holiday to find potentially lethal wiring if you stray from the resort hotels that have been checked by the tour operators.

e.g. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/suicide-shower-hear-teardown/

[Red Squirrel]

Its always worth remembering the rest of the world does NOT have the standards for electrical safety we expect in 1st World countries, and the standards they do have are often only enforced if someone important gets killed.   You don't need to go further afield than the average UK or US package holiday to find potentially lethal wiring if you stray from the resort hotels that have been checked by the tour operators.

e.g. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/suicide-shower-hear-teardown/

Those shower heads are freaking scary.  Crazy to think they are a thing.
 

[tooki]

'I live in the US and they say it can't happen, and that there is not enough electricity. But in the UK it is enough. You don't think there is enough electricity but there is.

Is that really the prevailing thought in the US? Is that what is taught in school?

I can assure you, it is not!!!! We were taught to respect electricity.

I think that rule is a bit stupid. In the US, as long as it's a GFI socket, you can put it in the bathroom.

That's the rule now. (I seem to vaguely recall that some jurisdictions now require the entire house to be on GFCIs.) In the past it wasn't, so in some very old installations you see unprotected outlets near water.

As a related tidbit, Switzerland historically didn't require GFCIs, even in wet areas, choosing instead to use recessed sockets in wet zones. Later GFCIs became mandatory (still with recessed sockets), and now, they're mandating recessed sockets everywhere, even outside wet zones.

[suicidaleggroll]

they're mandating recessed sockets everywhere, even outside wet zones.

That sounds like a pretty good idea.  The US plug scares me, they NEVER stay fully inserted and the metal prongs are exposed for the full length of the plug.  This means that within a couple of days of plugging something in, the plug will slightly back out and you'll have exposed metal at mains voltage just sitting there, waiting to cause problems.

I remember when I was young, I was playing around on my parents' bed and a metal pin (like a needle) fell behind the bed.  There was a bang and a bright flash, and I ran out of the room yelling for my parents.  Turns out there was an electrical outlet on that wall under the bed, and they had a lamp or something plugged into it.  Naturally the plug had backed out a bit and exposed the metal prongs, and the pin just HAPPENED to fall horizontally right on those exposed pins, shorting them out.  It coated the wall in black soot for about a 1' radius around the plug and could have easily started a fire.  I've never been comfortable around the US plug since then.  Recessing the plugs into the wall even a little bit would help out tremendously.

[Ian.M]

That problem was solved on UK BS1363 plugs by sleeving the pins with no compromise on their current rating and little effect on their robustness.  You'll also see sleeved pins on CEE 7/16 Europlugs  (2 pin in flat body style), but they're only good for 2.5A max.  Unfortunately blade pins aren't suitable for sleeving so the US doesn't get the easy fix that can be rolled out without changing all the sockets.

[Ampera]

Yea, the NEMAtoad plugs are pretty stupid. But there is a reason for them being the way they are. It's because a lot of early municipal electrical development occurred in the US at first (The plug was patented by Hubbell in 1913 while standards like the BS and CEE came into use after WW2) so while NEMA is one of the worst plug designs, it's also one of the oldest.

This is true for other things like NTSC. We came up, designed, and implemented NTSC before PAL was designed, which is why PAL is better as it was an improvement over the not as good NTSC standard.

Our customary measurements are based off of the Imperial system used by the UK (As we were previously colonies of the UK).

We haven't changed most of our standards because we both haven't had many wars fought on home turf, as parts of Europe had to rebuild and redesign after the world wars, while we sorta didn't need to, and because it as MUCH larger ordeal for us to change standards because we are so big in size and population. This IMO (Also based on some facts) is why we never really adopted the better and more worldwide standards like 240/230v power, PAL TV, and the Metric system.

And in terms of danger of 120v and 240v countries, keep in mind our outlets are current limited to 15A, which means, depending on other factors, we may be a bit more deadly. Then again, a standard German installation is 16A. The twice the voltage is not the end of the story. The alternation rates are different for all 120v countries (Except for half of Japan) than in 230/240v countries too.

But no matter how you put it, yes you can kill yourself on both if you ground yourself straight through your heart, and you're not within immediate medical care. If you ground yourself through your hand or arm, you might cause nerve and tissue damage, but it can't really kill you as easily.

[SeanB]

The AU plug has sleeved plate pins, and is rated for 10A, and is based on the US one, so it is possible to make a sleeved safer version of it.

NTSC is a standard that was devised to be both low cost to produce and reasonably robust, the colour added later to it was more meant to not interfere with the majority of monochrome sets and to give colour on newer sets. Thus the compromises in it, to have cheaper flyback ( the blanking period and why there is a front porch and a back porch, meant for cheap sets with minimal overscan not to have unwanted video on the sides of the older CRT displays), the unused lines top and bottom for the vertical retrace to be slower, the equalising pulses added so there was no DC component making it easy to have AC coupling throughout and thus no brightness shifts with drift, and the compromise on bandwidth making IF design easier. the original design was meant for tube sets, where each added tube was a good portion of the total manufacturing cost of the set, and higher frequency tubes were a lot more expensive to produce and required a lot more alignment and setup in production, along with much tighter design.

PAL used all the known issues with NTSC and designed around them, using the newer technology of transistors that were available in lowish cost at the time, so they could use a lot more in the set for a much lower cost, and still have a cheap reliable set.

[tooki]

they're mandating recessed sockets everywhere, even outside wet zones.

That sounds like a pretty good idea.  The US plug scares me, they NEVER stay fully inserted and the metal prongs are exposed for the full length of the plug.  This means that within a couple of days of plugging something in, the plug will slightly back out and you'll have exposed metal at mains voltage just sitting there, waiting to cause problems.

I remember when I was young, I was playing around on my parents' bed and a metal pin (like a needle) fell behind the bed.  There was a bang and a bright flash, and I ran out of the room yelling for my parents.  Turns out there was an electrical outlet on that wall under the bed, and they had a lamp or something plugged into it.  Naturally the plug had backed out a bit and exposed the metal prongs, and the pin just HAPPENED to fall horizontally right on those exposed pins, shorting them out.  It coated the wall in black soot for about a 1' radius around the plug and could have easily started a fire.  I've never been comfortable around the US plug since then.  Recessing the plugs into the wall even a little bit would help out tremendously.

It would really make sense for the US to adopt sleeved prongs. As SeanB said, the Aussie plug uses almost identically sized prongs, and they require sleeving, so it's clearly possible.

As for the loose fit: I've found that this is usually due to outlets being old and worn out. Nobody does it, but the recommendation is to replace them every 10 years or so. Hospital-grade outlets grip plugs better, and don't loosen up with time. So in many ways, it's an implementation problem more than an inherent problem with the standard.

[SeanB]

I prefer the older outlets over the new ones, as the older ones at least used brass plate for the contacts, unlike the new ones which seem to be using something the thickness of bond paper, with some very small contact area to do the contact that is supposed to handle 16A. Then they use a switch that is made with such small contacts I would not trust them beyond 3A, but they have been certified. I have had to replace a number of 1 year old socket outlets that have either had the contacts weld themselves closed in the switch, had the switch melt closed or open or which have welded themselves to the plugtop inserted into them.

Load is 3kW, which is under 15A, but they failed with new sockets, so I went hunting for an unused older one instead after the third one.

[CraigHB]

Wow I didn't know those shower heads even existed.  We all have hot water heaters in the US.  I'd be pretty nervous about using one especially in such bad repair.  Would probably just be smelly until I could find a shower like the one at home.  There is something similar now in the US, but it's nowhere near the bathroom.  We're going from tanks to on demand systems that are much more efficient only heating water as it flows through a heating pipe, pretty nifty idea really.  They simply replace existing tanks, far away from the bathroom fortunately.

Back to the original topic, I really can't believe anyone is that stupid to lay an extension cord outlet on his chest in the bath.  Though no matter how impossibly stupid you think something is, there's always someone that's not past it.  That's why you see these ridiculous warnings on products, like a bag of peanuts with a printed warning about peanuts.  Like someone might think a bag of peanuts does not contain peanuts.

[Ampera]

The thing about the US plugs is they actually need the large contact area due to the high current and low voltage.

I've had an idea for a plug that is three rings each inside each other, with the middle ring being live, the next larger ring being neutral, and the largest ring being ground. This would allow for a VERY compact plug, it could be made out of sheet metal instead of other standards which require die pressing or other manufacturing standards. It could be designed with a twist lock connector that would turn on the power when locked, and only when locked. This means that you don't need to shutter or sleeve the outlets and plugs respectively, as it would require the plug to be fully inserted and twisted in order for power to be applied.

This would eliminate almost any and all problems with current standards

It would eliminate the bulk of the UK standard.

It would be polarized unlike the CEE standard

It would be better in every single way shape and respect to the NEMA standard.

I should probably make a good drawing of this, and I have posted this idea to the forum before.

[Iwanushka]

Fastest solution to fix US problems (most of them) would be to do it like in almost every EU country recess sockets by 1 cm and everyone is safe and happy (applies to 3 pin sockets only, 2pin ones in US are just to loose like the ones in the red light district  ) and also ban 2 pin crap...

[andtfoot]

The thing about the US plugs is they actually need the large contact area due to the high current and low voltage.

I've had an idea for a plug that is three rings each inside each other, with the middle ring being live, the next larger ring being neutral, and the largest ring being ground. This would allow for a VERY compact plug, it could be made out of sheet metal instead of other standards which require die pressing or other manufacturing standards. It could be designed with a twist lock connector that would turn on the power when locked, and only when locked. This means that you don't need to shutter or sleeve the outlets and plugs respectively, as it would require the plug to be fully inserted and twisted in order for power to be applied.

This would eliminate almost any and all problems with current standards

It would eliminate the bulk of the UK standard.

It would be polarized unlike the CEE standard

It would be better in every single way shape and respect to the NEMA standard.

I should probably make a good drawing of this, and I have posted this idea to the forum before.

The first thing I thought of when reading your description was powerCON...
http://www.neutrik.com/en/audio/powercon/