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Man killed charging his iPhone while taking a bath

NT1440 said:
....Reread your original post that I responded to. I was not the one asserting that kids are too dumb because of No Child Left Behind....which isn't even a thing in the country the article is from. :rolleyes:

I wasn't looking at your talk about electrical outlets, clearly, because my entire post was laughing at your Grandpa Simpson routine aimed at the wrong country.

Just to clarify things a bit. ;)
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Ah, so he brings it up AGAIN. I already said in the first response I missed the London bit and mentioned the age thing and yet you somehow claim I didn't address "not one" thing you said, which is a load of BS at this point. I don't know what the education system is like in Britain, but one would think basic electrical safety should be high on the to-do list. This could still happen in the USA if the house is older than 1976 before GFCI was required in all bathrooms (lots of those houses still around). That is why it's always a good idea to not play with electrical devices plugged into a wall while in the bath tub. Betting one's life on a GFCI isn't worth it to use a device in the tub. Even not plugged in, he could have ruined his iPhone. I'm sure that phone call or text or whatever he was doing was worth his life.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
I'd argue the UK should move to allowing GFCI/RCD outlets in the bathroom. It's better to have safe outlets than drive people to get around it with extension cords.
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Not sure if GFCI would work in the same way in a UK wiring setup but the thinking is to educate people away from expecting to find/use mains powered devices in bathrooms. With the proliferation of cheap, small and yet capacious powerbanks, Mr Darwin Award 2017 contender already had better options available than the risky setup he chose.
 
As it was said, common sense isn't prevalent nowadays. Which person with a modicum of sense would do something like that?
 
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FeliApple said:
As it was said, common sense isn't prevalent nowadays. Which person with a modicum of sense would do something like that?
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I've been thinking about this all day. It really bugs me that society today can be so stupid. Yes we make mistakes, hell my Microwave went on fire because I overcooked food using the built in oven (I am pathetic at cooking). I've dropped my iPhone, crashed my first car in my younger ears. BUT THIS....

I think its really sad people can make silly mistakes like this that can easily ruin there life. I have taken MDMA a few times am I as stupid because I could die from it? IF NOT

How do you educate common sence ?
 
iphonehype said:
I've been thinking about this all day. It really bugs me that society today can be so stupid. Yes we make mistakes, hell my Microwave went on fire because I overcooked food using the built in oven (I am pathetic at cooking). I've dropped my iPhone, crashed my first car in my younger ears. BUT THIS....

I think its really sad people can make silly mistakes like this that can easily ruin there life. I have taken MDMA a few times am I as stupid because I could die from it? IF NOT

How do you educate common sence ?
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To knowingly ingest an illegal substance that puts one's life and health at risk, just because one wants to, is stupid, in my opinion.

I don't feel sorry for the dead man. Sometimes stupid has traffic consequences. Hopefully, someone else will be the wiser and not follow in his foot steps.
 
weckart said:
Not sure if GFCI would work in the same way in a UK wiring setup but the thinking is to educate people away from expecting to find/use mains powered devices in bathrooms. With the proliferation of cheap, small and yet capacious powerbanks, Mr Darwin Award 2017 contender already had better options available than the risky setup he chose.
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Powerbank? A battery? That would have to be recharged too sooner or later. I don't know that I would call that a great solution for bathrooms in general. The point of a GFCI is it generally makes outlets in a bathroom safe to use. There's no real need for pull chains or putting switches outside a bathroom if the whole circuit is GFCI. It'd get tripped before it harms anyone and yes you can put the entire circuit on GFCI at the breaker even (including the lights).

GFCI would work the same regardless of outlet shape, type or voltage. All it does is compares the incoming current to the outgoing current and if there's a >0.5ma difference, it trips instantly. 240V or a different shaped plug wouldn't have any effect on the mechanism. You don't even need a ground plug for it to work. Current In = Current Out or you have a leakage (whether to ground or to a person standing on the ground, it makes no difference). Yes, you could defeat it with say two forks (one in each hand) and sticking the other fork in the neutral (i.e. it'd pass through you and then into the neutral, assuming <0.5ma leaked out your feet or the like). But those are unlikely (accidental) situations. They are also used in kitchens since 1996 (you can always retrofit older ones easily as it's just a different outlet needed). So even if you think the UK solution is good for bathrooms (hey, we're used to having no ability to use anything in the bathroom), it doesn't solve the dangers of a kitchen or other area (e.g. they're required for outside outlets as well where it might be say raining).
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
Powerbank? A battery? That would have to be recharged too sooner or later. I don't know that I would call that a great solution for bathrooms in general. The point of a GFCI is it generally makes outlets in a bathroom safe to use. There's no real need for pull chains or putting switches outside a bathroom if the whole circuit is GFCI. It'd get tripped before it harms anyone and yes you can put the entire circuit on GFCI at the breaker even (including the lights).
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I have a 10kmAh powerbank I paid about £7 for. It is pretty efficient with little overhead and will charge an iPhone several times over. Not really an issue with the bathroom scenario, either in terms of cost, size or capacity to do its job. Any topping up of the powerbank is done overnight as and when needed. The Heath Robinson bodge of extension cables from outside the bathroom sounds like a lot more hassle in my opinion.

In terms of the GFCI, my understanding of domestic electrics is rudimentary but I understand the average UK home has far fewer breakers compared with a US one. Any tripping of a circuit will likely take out a few rooms of the average house if not the whole floor. It might be tiresome to have a bathroom incident crash your iMac, potentially corrupting the hard drive if in the process of writing to it or your Tivo etc. If you could narrow the circuit to the bathroom socket alone, then fine but that is not how UK wiring works as far as I know.
 
weckart said:
I have a 10kmAh powerbank I paid about £7 for. It is pretty efficient with little overhead and will charge an iPhone several times over. Not really an issue with the bathroom scenario, either in terms of cost, size or capacity to do its job. Any topping up of the powerbank is done overnight as and when needed. The Heath Robinson bodge of extension cables from outside the bathroom sounds like a lot more hassle in my opinion.

In terms of the GFCI, my understanding of domestic electrics is rudimentary but I understand the average UK home has far fewer breakers compared with a US one. Any tripping of a circuit will likely take out a few rooms of the average house if not the whole floor. It might be tiresome to have a bathroom incident crash your iMac, potentially corrupting the hard drive if in the process of writing to it or your Tivo etc. If you could narrow the circuit to the bathroom socket alone, then fine but that is not how UK wiring works as far as I know.
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Well, personally speaking, I've never really tripped a GFCI (you'd have to be more or less in a potential shock condition to do so) outside of its built-in test button...well I did live once in a house that had a single GFCI in the master bathroom with an outside outlet downstream from it and the outside outlet would trip the GFCI once in awhile perhaps during a heavy blowing rain, but it only knocked out the bathroom outlet and outside outlet that was downstream from it). What I'm getting at is that US homes may have several rooms or parts of several rooms on one breaker as well, but it doesn't necessarily matter because unless there's outlets down stream from the GFCI outlet, they will continue to operate (i.e. it only cuts out itself and any outlets attached to the downstream screws). You can use a pigtail on the source side to feed downstream outlets (that will isolate only that particular outlet if desired) or you can get a breaker GFCI that protects everything on that breaker. My first point was that it's not exactly common (at least I would hope not) to trip a GFCI unless you make a habit of dropping things into sinks or tubs of water, which is what I've never done in over 40 years, making the GFCI moot thus far, but a safe backup none-the-less.
 
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MagnusVonMagnum said:
My first point was that it's not exactly common (at least I would hope not) to trip a GFCI unless you make a habit of dropping things into sinks or tubs of water, which is what I've never done in over 40 years, making the GFCI moot thus far, but a safe backup none-the-less.
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OK, thanks. That is informative. I had visions of false positives, such as trips supposedly due to circuit overloads, which necessitate a walk to the fusebox (outside our current house, annoyingly enough) to reset. These happen more than you would imagine even on a barely loaded circuit. I suppose it depends upon how sensitively the current monitor is set, which knowing the safety first attitude of the UK would likely err on the side of overly cautious.
 
What happened to this gentleman is very sad. But I have to wonder if we have the entire story.

I am not an expert at electricity. But I have always believed that the charging block stepped the current down so that the entire amount of the current did not reach the phone.

I have to wonder if maybe he somehow draped the extension cord into the water and the prongs from the charging block made contact with the water.
 
Breaking Good said:
What happened to this gentleman is very sad. But I have to wonder if we have the entire story.

I am not an expert at electricity. But I have always believed that the charging block stepped the current down so that the entire amount of the current did not reach the phone.

I have to wonder if maybe he somehow draped the extension cord into the water and the prongs from the charging block made contact with the water.
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He was resting the end of the extension cord with the power adapter plugged in on his chest while he used the phone. Almost assuredly what happened is water came into contact with the metal prongs of the adapter and the mains supply.
 
satcomer said:
Darwin Award?
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Natural selection at its finest.....?

jeremysteele said:
Sad and unfortunate...... Pretty obvious the extension cord & USB brick were submerged as well, if he got such burns. USB does not have nearly enough voltage to kill someone, let alone shock them, even when taking into account lower resistance due to the water.

And a wet phone won't cause this either. People submerge their dang phones constantly - and you sure don't hear about tens of thousands of people dying from it.....
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Agreed. Must have been the extension cord or power brick, not the phone. Will people never learn?
 
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bhayes444 said:
He was resting the end of the extension cord with the power adapter plugged in on his chest while he used the phone. Almost assuredly what happened is water came into contact with the metal prongs of the adapter and the mains supply.
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Wow, never realized anyone would be so dumb as to bring the outlet side of an extension cord into the bathtub!!! I was wondering how the 5 volt output of a transformer could kill someone......
 
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A coroner is to warn Apple that iPhone chargers can be potentially lethal
"I intend to write a report later to the makers of the phone."
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Really? It is Apple's fault? How about the makers of extension cables? How about the electricity company that provided the electricity in the first place?
 
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I don't ever take my phone or tablet with me when I take a shower. More to do with the device's safety than my own safety. Even water resistant phones aren't designed to be steam-resistant. So I just don't risk it.

And I guess it means I'm not risking my life either so win-win.
 
weckart said:
UK bathrooms tend not to have any high current electrical power points except for lightbulbs for precisely the reason highlighted by the story here. Building regulations forbid adding any and even mandate a minimum distance between any light socket and source of water. At most, you may find a low current shaver socket but those are mostly in hotels and the two pin socket for those will not fit UK or continental plugs - just the slightly narrower ones found on electrical shavers.

Tourists and expats do complain - particularly from the US, since drying one's hair in the bathroom with an electric hairdryer seems to be a thing over there.
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Seems like that creates this very situation. In the US, most electric code require GFCI outlets in all wet areas like bathrooms, kitchens, basements, garages, etc. Does the UK not have outlets in kitchens? It's the very same hazard.
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weckart said:
Not sure if GFCI would work in the same way in a UK wiring setup but the thinking is to educate people away from expecting to find/use mains powered devices in bathrooms. With the proliferation of cheap, small and yet capacious powerbanks, Mr Darwin Award 2017 contender already had better options available than the risky setup he chose.
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Those could cause death under the right circumstances as well. Maybe not severe burns, but death nonetheless. It only takes a few mA to disrupt the heartbeat.

A domestic power supply voltage (110 or 230 V), 50 or 60 Hz alternating current (AC) through the chest for a fraction of a second may induce ventricular fibrillation at currents as low as 30 mA.[6] With direct current (DC), 300 to 500 mA is required.[7] If the current has a direct pathway to the heart (e.g., via a cardiac catheter or other kind of electrode), a much lower current of less than 1 mA (AC or DC) can cause fibrillation. If not immediately treated by defibrillation, fibrillation is usually lethal because all of the heart muscle fibres move independently instead of in the coordinated pulses needed to pump blood and maintain circulation. Above 200 mA, muscle contractions are so strong that the heart muscles cannot move at all, but these conditions prevent fibrillation.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_shock
 
Newtons Apple said:
Using an extension cord, plugged in out side the bathroom, also defeated any possible use of an existing GFI.
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I doubt that from what I have observed. Common sense does not seem to be so common anymore.
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Darwin effect in full force. Used to be lions on savana. Now its 110v or 220v in bathtub. Wonder if he passed on his genes or if natural selection worked.
 
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