Replacing fusebox with RCD?

[John Rumm]

I think with our one they insist entries are submitted on the proper forms which makes it harder, but it has worked in some countries where syndicates have bought the entire number space.

[tony sayer]

Thats the sort of thing I suppose you have to take into account when designing Nuclear plants;)..

Lucky you .. I couldn't even move at all;!..

[Tabby]

Let take a quick overview here, rather than getting bogged down in other stuff.

I could sum up (my interpretation of) your position as: =A3150 can avoid the risk of 10 people per year dying in the UK, do you want to spend it?

I could sum up my position as: Which, if any, do you want to spend your =A3150 on: a) avoid the risk of 10 people per year dying in the UK a) avoid the risk of 100 people per year dying in the UK a) avoid the risk of 1000 people per year dying in the UK

The issue is that (my interpretation of) your position omits key information, infomation that imho is necessary in order to make a good decision.

This is a very common error when making these sort of decisions.

NT

[Tabby]

rote:

I've addressed the key issue later in the thread

NT

[John Rumm]

Nope that was not my point at all (in fact its almost the opposite of my position). Forget about the folks croaking for the moment, the numbers are so far down in the noise as to be not worth worrying about (for the purposes of this discussion).

Focus on the 1 in 10 chance that your or someone in your family[1] will end up in hospital as a result of an electric shock at some point in the next ten years[2] - and as is that worth spending the £150? (or £50 or £300 or whatever)

[1] Assuming a three person family. [2] Take the ESC's 200K hospital admissions/year out of a population of 65M = 1 in 325, over ten years that would become = 1 in 32.5, over three people = 10ish (nearer 11 in fact). (yes I know there will obviously be other factors in there making some subsets of the population more or less likely to suffer than others). Also note I have ignored all of the electricity related fires.

If I were a government deciding how best to spend £150, then yup the principle of low hanging fruit applies. Go for the most bang per buck.

However if British Gas started up in the electrical protection racket business[3], and delivered an ultimatum of "give us £150 now, or you won't know when, but sometime in next few years we are going to make sure you or one of your family end up getting an electric shock so bad they need hospital treatment, in fact so bad they may even suffer permanent injury", I suspect most people would cough up.

[3] Assuming they have not already ;-)

My position is simple; The liklihood of someone getting fatally electrocuted is remarkably small, but the probability of them getting hurt by an electric shock is actually fairly high, the cost in preventing or at least drastically reducing that hurt is pretty low.

Same applies to most other accidents. Chances of you being killed falling in your home are pretty small. The chances of being hurt in a fall however are rather high. Hence it is worth investing in a proper stepladder, and using it carefully, rather than climbing on chairs and tables.

[Tabby]

So you're focussing on the injuries rather than fatalities, but still only looking at one risk rather than the real life many, and choosing which is the bigger problem that one can reduce in size.

People get whisked to hospital by panicked family/employer/etc but not kept there, I dont see that as the issue here, its the big killers I'm more interested in avoiding. I know how much shocks hurt, but compared to the main killers it seems pretty small in comparison.

I guess the OP has plenty to consider and chose from. I'd be looking elsewhere at the big risks, the ones that do destroy peoples lives, and in quantity.

NT

[robgraham]

e:

=EF=BF=BD50 or

There's an FAI in Glasgow at the moment for an 18 month old who plugged a bared cable and plug into a socket and died. Was there an RCD? - we're not told in the press, but he should have survived if there was one.

As a typical member of this group I've had over near enough 70 years many electrical tickles. I started off young and was lucky to survive I guess - when a toddler, my mother moved into a house where the previous owners had left taking the sockets with them and leaving bear wires - I still carry scars on my fingers from that. In terms of Tabby's other hazards I should add that round about the same age I succeeded in avoiding adults and wandered into the sea and floated away - fortunately my mother was good swimmer, but that's me been a near statistic twice.

Rob

[John Rumm]

Go look at the numbers, and find other household risks that put

200K/year in hospital and injure 1.2M.

Of those, how many can you prevent or mitigate for a low one off payment?

You are back to killers again - there are no big (in numbers terms) accidental killers in the home. Shift your focus to the non killers where there are big numbers.

Such as?

[ARWadsworth]

It does come down to peoples own risk assessments. My parents spent over £300 to make their garden ponds childproof once their eldest grandchild could walk.

They did not consider £300 a lot of money to remove the biggest risk that they could find to a protect a grandchild.

Everyone has to do their own risk assesments.

[Tabby]

RTAs, falls, infections, suicide, all these claim far more people than electrocution.

the main killers. You'd reduce the risks more by putting the =A3150 toward a safer car, or protection against falls at home. Or spending it on fixing the exterior lights.

IIRC 1.2 million was the number taken to hospital, not the number needing any treatment.

NT

[John Rumm]

RTAs generally don't occur in the home. However if you look at the WHO stats you linked to, it does concur with what I said - that accidental death (of which RTAs are the single largest group) are way down in the numbers for total causes of death. (WHO quotes 2% however that will be significantly less in the UK since many country's RTA rates are 2 to 3 times ours).

This is why I am not concentrating on death rates, and I don't understand why you keep citing them as relevant since one is highly unlikely to suffer an accidental death?

The last RoSPA/DTI estimated[1] figures I saw had the hospital admission rate for all classes of fall in the home (i.e. trips on one level, stair falls, ladders[2], from parts of the building structure and unclassified) as the single largest cause of A&E admissions at around

1.2M, cuts and puncture wounds a bit under 300K/year, Burns / Scalds at 84K, Poisoning (including food) 33K. So if you take the ESC figures as plausible, or for that matter as over egged by a fair bit, then they suggest that electric shock injuries are certainly up there in amongst the noteable injury causes.

Hence in my view, one should devote some effort to mitigating them along with other comparable likely causes of injury. Note I am not suggesting this is to the exclusion of fitting a baby gate on the stairs, of fixing the loose stair carpet, but as well as.

[1] Based on a sample of interviews made at a number of A&E departments. [2] Surprisingly ladders only accounted for about 32K IIRC (although 2/3rds of those were doing House maintenance / DIY).

These don't want to be "or" really... The car one - possibly - depends a bit on how many miles you drive a year. Protecting against falls certainly (and that includes eliminating trailing extension leads and any knock on electrical infrastructure work that requires). Obviously defective stuff such as the outside lights mentioned aught to be fixed as I think everyone so far has agreed.

True, apparently about 8% of people attending A&E are examined and sent away without requiring treatment. (about 4% leave before waiting for examination!)

[Tabby]

I think we agree on most of it, but I'll address this one.

All of us die, about 50% of us from heart disease and cancer. Of those, the general concensus is that around 50% of those deaths are preventable by simple measures, such as eating healthier. I see a similar picture for other daeths generally, with a lot fo them being the reuslt of failure to look at the risks and make basic decisions to reduce them. IOW we can live longer if we look at what the risks are, and take basic steps to reduce them. I dont see any reason to separate in the home from outside the home, both we can act on in some cases.

If you look at the numbers of death from various causes, electrocution is orders of magnitude smaller than the main risks, and simply doesnt warrant spending on if an install is in sound condition, but a bit dated. In terms of daeths prevented per pound spent, its a spectacularly poor investment compared to many other options.

If you're concerned about non-fatal shocks, fair enough. I'm more concerned about death from easily prevented causes, which affects somewhere between 25% and 50% of the population. That's what I regard as the big issue. I've had shocks, and while they're not pleasant and are a minor risk, to me they seem trivial compared to the big preventable dangers we face daily - and that will kill us.

NT