Getting electrocuted in bathtub - is it possible with plastic pipes? (2025 Update)

Appliance comes in contact with water. What's in the pipes ?

Greg

Errm, why do you want to know?...

Mike.

Mike Coon snipped-for-privacy@mjcoon.plus.com> wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.plus.net:

Just an appliance in the water is not going to make a path through the body in either tub.

Lightning travels 10 miles across the open sky and strikes your tubafor house. Do you think some wet plastic plumbing will save your ass?

Some farmers think the tires on their tractor provides protection. Loose some farmers that way.

Perhaps a few of the more obnoxious posters in this NG might give it a try- then report back....if they can ;-)

That said being inside a car is a fair bit safer than standing outside. The metal Faraday cage isn't perfect but it is better than nothing.

A building I worked in took a direct lightning hit on one apex. The strike ran down the telephone cables to the main switchboard instantly vapourising them to a black mess. The switchboard girl was inconsolable and temporarily deaf. The other resulting damage was most peculiar.

Surge arresters supposed to protect computer terminal lines saved themselves by allowing more expensive IO boards to fry in the mainframe. They had to be replaced as a precaution anyway. Terminals all survived. Murphy's law that only the most expensive bits took damage.

It was more than a bit annoying that the strike hit us and not the much higher supergrid pylon just 30m away.

In another incident I narrowly missed seeing ball lightning during a particularly violent summer thunderstorm. Physicist friends did see it.

People are hit by lightning and some do survive. They have interesting Lichenberg figure skin burn pattern marks from the discharge.

Ordinary tap water is a conductor so the plastic pipes are not relevant.

I'm guessing that electrocution occurred when the panicking person tried to lift the appliance out of the bath. If that were the case, then a plastic bath and pipes would help. I'm not going to do the experiment.

Cheers

It's not true that all or probably even most fresh water pipes are plastic today. Even in new construction I see copper used here. If it is plastic it would lessen the chance of getting shocked. Same thing for lightning.

Getting hit by lightning is most likely to happen in Florida and the person is usually holding a golf club. One rule I have heard is always carry a one iron because not even God can hit a one iron.

Seriously, there is such a thing as lightning protection but it is far more than one surge protector or just having plastic pipes.

I don't know much about the rest but i know that lightning doesn't need a continuous path to ground. After all, it jumps 1000's of feet from the sky to the earth and it will also jump iirc a foot or more from one conductor to another. There are still grounded electrical outlets and afaik copper water pipes are very common. I have them.

I was going to say the same thing after I read the other posts. In Goldfinger, the person gets shocked immediately, but there's no special reason I know why the electricity would go through her body (was it a woman?) instead of a shorter path** through the dirty, soapy water. What one should do is avoid the radio and get out of the tub without touching it.

You can measure the resistance of your body with an ohmmeter, a VOM, but the greatest resistance is between the probe and the skin.. Get that wet, maybe even salt-water wet (pushing the probe firmly against your skin will lower the resistance there), and measure from one part of your body to another.

Then you can measure the resistance of the bath water. Try it with different levels of dirtiness and soapiness. And compare the two.

I'm curious what you find. Post back.

Me neither.

If the current is flowing from an appliance dropped into the tub and to ground via a metal drain pipe, then the current would flow through both the water and the person's body, the relative amounts determined by the resistances.

Of course they do in old homes back when drain pipes were metal.

So be double sure not to pick the radio up with one hand hold

duh snipped-for-privacy@duh.club wrote in news:PwzwF.6732$% snipped-for-privacy@fx31.iad:

There is a big difference between lightning and a breaker protected residential service branch.

The lightning travels across miles because it is at millions of volts potential.

Residential service voltages will not even travel trough a bread bag, much less your PVC plumbing.

John S snipped-for-privacy@invalid.org wrote in news:qpuh7n$tck$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

How many farmers have been 'loosed' 'that way'?

I think it is far fewer than you would like folks to believe.

And it is miles, but it ain't ten miles.

micky snipped-for-privacy@rushpost.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Basic physics.

It takes a 77kV voltage source to bridge a 1 inch gap with 3kV per mm at sea level as the reference standard.

The smallest lightning bolt is over 6 Million Volts.

I think that AND the mostly even bigger mo fos can jump considerable gaps of several miles.

The vast majority of tractors have cabs nowadays so the operators are protected. Most of the time they are pulling an implement in the ground which should provide a good path for the lightning. I've been on or around farms all of my life. I don't recall anyone getting killed by lightning while driving a tractor. My parents did get a shock while unloading irrigation pipe. Hardly any clouds but there was a lightning shot. My dad's hair stood up for awhile afterward. I know of more guys being killed in grain bins or by rollover than lightning.

We had a friend die in a bathtub from a hairdryer.

She was leaning back against the faucets so yes she was in contact with copper pipes. Of course that's uncomfortable and most people put their feet at that end. However in her case it was deliberate, she was depressed.