See the story below.
I’m a bit stunned that there would be enough current running from an iPhone charger plug to kill you in the bathtub. What am I missing here? I can see a blowdryer killing you, but an iPhone?
A 5V DC source would not do that. My speculation would be that she got zapped plugging the charger into the wall with wet hands.
iPhone chargers are generally capable of 1.5 to 2A current output at 5V. IIRC, it takes about 20Ma in the right place to stop your heart. Unless conditions are ideal, from an electrical point of view, I’m surprised 5V was sufficient.
A cheap knockoff charger can allow line voltage onto the low-voltage side of the circuit. This doesn’t directly harm the device because the voltage is present on both the +5 V and ground lines and cancels out between those two, but if there is a path between just one of the conductors and earth ground it is just like putting your finger into the socket directly.
bigclive’s entertaning (and quirky) Youtube channel has many examples of dangerous low-cost power devices. See here for a teardown of such a charger.
I think the thread title misrepresents what happened—not that we know for sure what actually did happen.
The charging voltage isn’t a factor, it sounds like the phone case and/or charger is “hot” with respect to ground. A GFCI outlet would have been nice.
Yep. You’re correct. I should have written the title a little more carefully.
I’m surprised this doesn’t happen way more often.
Has to be worst luck ever
the power is so low, and bath water isn’t the worlds best fatal conductor of low voltage
It almost certainly was 120 volts AC. I’m wondering if it may have been an aftermarket charger. It’s too bad there aren’t any details or specifics provided, so we’re all sort of left guessing at the particulars.
It must have been a fairly small bathroom to reach an outlet from a bathtub.
Don’t bathe while texting …
Some of the news stories said she led an extension cord into the bathroom. Want to bet she actually dropped the plug end of the cord into the bath along with the charger?
If so, then we have a candidate for the Darwin Award.
People have been killed by crappy knock-off iPhone chargers before:
Yeah - to be born so damn stupid!:rolleyes:
Girl I knew used to plug a space heater and a heating pad into one of those little cheap extension cords (not even ETL or UL cert) and let the cord run up in her bed…:eek: She refused to stop so I bought her a thick 20AMP appliance cord… figured It’d be better than nothing. I’m surprised that article wasn’t about her. Darwin award is definitely deserved in the Iphone charging case. From what I’ve learned it’d be a stretch for that charger to kill you, but I bet she dropped the whole cord into the tub… :smack:
Love BigClive ! AVE is another good one.
Same here! I have no idea how I happened upon his Youtube channel–I think I was just trying to learn about electronics at some point, and then just fell down the rabbit hole of watching one video after another of his. Great stuff.
I’ve watched quite a bit of BigClive as well. In fact someone mentioned the iPhone thing to me this morning and I told them that if they watched some BigClive videos they’d be surprised at how many things are pretty dangerous…like, after enough videos you get kinda worried about touching anything in your house that isn’t plastic. IIRC, the first video I found of his was that R2-D2 looking charger that if the stars aligned, the case was hot.
It’s fun to watch (well, listen) to him as he cracks a case open ‘is that a…no it couldn’t be, why would they, hold on I have to draw this out…okay, I’m back, take a look at this, if you plug a phone in here and and look at it cross eyed, the fuse gets bypassed’.
I’m surprised at how many of those things are even legal/listed/for sale. I have to assume Scotland has similar codes as the US, but then I think he’s just looking for the shoddiest stuff he can dig up on ebay.
AvE, on the other hand…I would like I should like, but I just can’t stand the way he talks. Nearly all of his videos interest me, but within a few minutes I start getting irritated with all the, what do you call it?..made up words?
I’m sure it’s just me, once in a while I’ll check the comments and clearly I’m alone in that regard, most people seem to love it.
(Oh, and I just found out BigClive’s brother, Ralfy also has a youtube channel, and they live in the same house).
Oh dear, another AvE and BigClive watcher here. I was going to point out exactly the same chargers of death videos. BigClive does a pretty important service here - he really underlines just how seriously unsafe some of this crap is, and just why there is such a big price variation. Lots of people buy these chargers. AvE’s teardown of a couple of Omron knockoff timers similarly.
As to AvE’s made up words, it is funny, I know a couple of engineers who have the same habit. Osmelloscope and so on. Similar sense of of humour as well.