Re: Cell phone electrocution

Sure, charging a phone in the bathroom isn't recommended, but I thought

> chargers were better designed than this. Texas only has 110V also... > hmm...
110V doesn't sound much (not from where I am where it's 240V anyway) but the water's the killer here. It neutralises the skin's natural resistance and permits lethal levels of current to flow through the body. That was just asking for trouble.
Reply to
Cursitor Doom
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I'm trying to imagine how the 110 ac to the charger is supposed to get to the phone she was holding or dropped into the water.

The current in the wire to the phone is 5v DC. Unless something is seriously outawhack.

There seem to be details missing of all the reports through the years of people being electrocuted in association with cell phone usage. There have been fake stories, snopes debunkings, and allegedly true reports. This is supposed to be another true report without details from the Lovington NM investigators.

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

I once heard a TV talk show host say stay OFF your cellphone during a lightning storm. I'll take my chances! I also don't talk on my flip phone while it's charging.

Mikek

Reply to
amdx

I'm wondering too (that's why I posted it here). Unless she had an extensi on cord and accidentally dropped the end of it into her bath, I'm trying to understand the mechanism of shock.

While I was in the Philippines, which has 220V, I got shocked just touching the screen of my laptop when it was plugged in. I also got shocked from t ouching the ground of the headphone jack. It was just an unpleasant sensat ion, nothing serious. Bad ground, maybe?

Michael

Reply to
mrdarrett

Yes to the ground issue.

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

Lovington is ~ 50 mi SW of Lubbock TX and is pop ~9000. It is also Lea Co. which is pop 64k.

My personal theory so far is that the phone/charger wasn't actually the cause of death/electrocution. The family particularly grandmother has 'decided'/chosen to present it - her theory - that way.

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

OK, how about this one. She was holding the phone which was plugged into the charger and she was wetly plugging in the charger to the nearby wall outlet which was NOT GFI/ed.

OR she was similarly plugging in the charger to a nearby electrical extension cord similarly plugged into a non-GFI wall outlet. I prefer the former above because it can be done one-handed.

She would be getting the juice from the mains, pretty much unrelated to the phone except that its function was the purpose of her mission.

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

Presumably the charger is isolated, but may have gotten wet and had

120 VAC on the 5V output. There are supposed to be GFI protected outlets in the bathrooms.
Reply to
default

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** IMO either the charger had a dangerous fault that put 120VAC on the output jack OR it fell into bath tub - so the soapy water bridged the insulation barrier.

Typical mobile phone chargers are pretty much water proof, maybe this one was not.

.... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

Upon a time in S. Vietnam we had a power line where the low side of the line was significantly above ground. Essentially we had 2 hot lines. I think it was because the system was really wonky.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Gill

So far all I've seen is the name of the Lovington detective David Miranda who says the cause of death hasn't been established yet and that the following were 'near' the bath: extension cord, charging cord, cell phone.

Charging cord? Does that imply that an actual *charger* is integrated with the cord? There are all kinds of ways to charge a phone from AC, and often the /cord/ per se is just USB, plugging into the AC adapter one end and the phone the other.

Some of the news stories on this are absolutely unbelievable and totally fabricated.

Here's a particularly whacky one:

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

Oh, yeah; another tidbit. Authorities were called shortly after midnight. Different kind of time for a bath; and/but Madison has a history of long 2 hour baths according to mother/grandmother.

"Police in Lovington said in a statement sent to NBC News Wednesday that authorities were called to a home around 12:24 a.m. (2:24 a.m. ET) Sunday for reports of an unresponsive female. Police said they attempted lifesaving measures, but Madison was pronounced dead at the hospital a short time later."

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

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

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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.

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

Ooh oww.

Michael

Reply to
mrdarrett

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?

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

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** 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

Reply to
Phil Allison

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.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

No, see below.

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.

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

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.

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

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.

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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'.

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Mike Easter
Reply to
Mike Easter

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