Re: Cell phone electrocution

Cursitor Doom wrote:

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.

On Tuesday, July 11, 2017 at 10:06:24 AM UTC-7, Mike Easter wrote:

  



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

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:


Yes to the ground issue.

On 7/11/2017 12:22 PM, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

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

Mike Easter wrote:


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.

Mike Easter wrote:


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.

Mike Easter wrote:




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:

http://www.thenewsrecorder.com/14-year-old-girl-found-dead-in-bathtub-due-to-electric-shock/37453

Mike Easter wrote:


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."

Mike Easter wrote:


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.

On Friday, July 21, 2017 at 5:16:00 PM UTC-7, Mike Easter wrote:



Ooh oww.

Michael

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com 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.

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 wrote:

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


** 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  

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com says...

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.

Ralph Mowery wrote:


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.

Mike Easter wrote:



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 wrote:


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 wrote:



    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.

Michael A. Terrell wrote:



Maybe that is the answer.  The other possibility that I've considered is  
that the entire Inside Edition report was a 'mock-up' as far as the  
bathroom part was concerned.  Besides having props for the phone and the  
charger and the extension cord, they had props for EVERYTHING in the  
bathroom -- that it wasn't the Coe bathroom at all.  Not the Coe  
bathtub, lavatory, or GFCI outlet.  Vid took place somewhere else.

They wanted to show all kinds of 'simulations'; the phone falling into  
the bathtub water, a model standing in the bathtub in a bathrobe, etc.

I asked Inside Edition by email to address the veracity of the bathroom  
situation, no answer.

Logan Coe is a fireman.  The business about the frayed extension cord  
and the improper bathroom plug is not good home safety.

wrote:






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.