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Why some people died in their bath after smartphone dropped into water ?

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james_s:
It's going to be people holding onto their phone while sitting in the bath with the phone plugged into the charger. I wouldn't do that myself but it's very common behavior, people have run down the battery and want to sit there watching videos or playing games on their phone so they plug it in. Lots of phones have metal components that you can touch easily, and if a charger fault causes those to be live then you're in for a bad experience.

Jwillis:

--- Quote from: amyk on January 30, 2020, 01:20:08 am ---Even if there was an isolation fault, a phone dropped into the tub would make the current seek the ground, it won't take a detour through your body --- unless you grab it and it's metal, which is what I suspect happened in a lot of cases.

--- End quote ---

That's not entirely true . The current does not take a direct path in water to a common ground or on contact with the earth, but creates a varying potential radiating outward from the point of contact.  So being a body of water can still be lethal as one point of the human body can be put at a different potential than another part of the human body. It only takes a few milliamps to cause heart failure. And in a wet environment the resistance from one potential and another can be quite low only requiring very small voltages for the current to cross potentials.

KL27x:

--- Quote ---It's going to be people holding onto their phone while sitting in the bath with the phone plugged into the charger.
--- End quote ---
But has this ever happened? I personally do not know of any such cases.


--- Quote --- Mains voltages would cause the entire device to attain a potential with respect to the world around it, but internally, there is no such risk.

But add a path to ground and things change.
--- End quote ---
If this CAN actually happen, someone could demonstrate it and put it on Youtube. Just take one of these chargers that is somehow putting full mains (and mains - 5V) directly to the phone (full mains, not high impedance capacitive coupling of microamps) and showing how you plug the usb cable into the end of a hot dog and then grounding the other end and instantly cooking the weiner.

I don't see how this can happen and get sold like that. Nothing coming out of the charger should be directly connected to mains. If you cut the cable and touched it without wearing shoes, you would get shocked. If you were standing on wet ground, you could be electrocuted. This does not compute with realworld experience with cheap PSU's. I mean, if you touch the DC output (either the + or the -; dunno which; try both?) to ground, this would blow your breaker? You're saying that one of the DC output wires is direct mains!? I don't believe this is for sale and making it to the US even through Alibaba.

They can be dangerous if they fail. Dropping the DC output end into water/ground should not cause any problem other than short/current-limiting, unless the thing has also happened to fail in some other way at the same time?  :-//

Jwillis:
I think theirs more to these stories than what is really being told. The average USB charger cable is around 3 feet long or about a metre. Electrical code states that any power outlet must be a minimum of 6 feet or 2 meters from the bathtub or shower or toilet . So as the OP stated it's quite likely that an extension cord was used at the time of insistent . GFCI receptacles are supposed to be installed in bathrooms but I have seen these plugs replaced with standard wall receptacles.
So in a scenario of no GFCI with an extension cord charging a smart phone while taking a bath add up to a very bad day for the victim.
Darwin wins again.   

AVGresponding:

--- Quote from: KL27x on January 30, 2020, 04:11:48 am ---
--- Quote ---It's going to be people holding onto their phone while sitting in the bath with the phone plugged into the charger.
--- End quote ---
But has this ever happened? I personally do not know of any such cases.


--- Quote --- Mains voltages would cause the entire device to attain a potential with respect to the world around it, but internally, there is no such risk.

But add a path to ground and things change.
--- End quote ---
If this CAN actually happen, someone could demonstrate it and put it on Youtube. Just take one of these chargers that is somehow putting full mains (and mains - 5V) directly to the phone (full mains, not high impedance capacitive coupling of microamps) and showing how you plug the usb cable into the end of a hot dog and then grounding the other end and instantly cooking the weiner.

I don't see how this can happen and get sold like that. Nothing coming out of the charger should be directly connected to mains. If you cut the cable and touched it without wearing shoes, you would get shocked. If you were standing on wet ground, you could be electrocuted. This does not compute with realworld experience with cheap PSU's. I mean, if you touch the DC output (either the + or the -; dunno which; try both?) to ground, this would blow your breaker? You're saying that one of the DC output wires is direct mains!? I don't believe this is for sale and making it to the US even through Alibaba.

They can be dangerous if they fail. Dropping the DC output end into water/ground should not cause any problem other than short/current-limiting, unless the thing has also happened to fail in some other way at the same time?  :-//

--- End quote ---

Ebay and Alibaba are full of this cheapo dangerous tat. There are countless youtube videos, search bigclivedotcom to start.

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