Electric Shock

The primary variable for determining the severity of electric shock is the
electric current which passes through the body. This current is of course
dependent upon the voltage and the resistance of the path it follows through the
body. An approximate general framework for shock effects is as follows:

Electric Current
Physiological Effect
(1 second contact)
1 mA Threshold of feeling, tingling sensation.
"Can't let go!" current - onset of sustained
10-20 mA
muscular contraction.
100-300 mA Ventricular fibrillation, fatal if continued.

One instructive example of the nature of voltage is the fact that a bird can sit on
a high-voltage wire without harm, since both of its feet are at the same voltage.
You can also see that the bird is not "grounded" -- you will not be shocked by
touching a high voltage if there is no path for the current to reach the Earth or a
different voltage point. Typically if you touch a 120 volt circuit with one hand,
you can escape serious shock if you have insulating shoes which prevent a low-
resistance path to ground. This fact has led to the common "hand-in-the-pocket"
practice for engineers and electrical workers. If you keep one hand in your
pocket when touching a circuit which might provide a shock, you are less likely
to have the kind of path to ground which will result in a serious shock.

Current Involved in Electric Shock

The electric current in amperes is the most important physiological varible

which determines the severity of an electric shock. However, this current is in
turn determined by the driving voltage and the resistance of the path which the
current follows through the body. One difficulty in establishing the conditions
for electrical safety is that a voltage which produces only a mild tingling
sensation under one circumstance can be a lethal shock hazard under other
conditions.

Will the 120 volt common household voltage produce a dangerous shock? It
depends!

If your body resistance is 100,000 ohms, then the current which would flow
would be:
But if you have just played a couple of sets of tennis, are sweaty and barefoot,
then your resistance to ground might be as low as 1000 ohms. Then the current
would be:

The severity of shock from a given source will depend upon its path
through your body.

Shock Physiological Effects

Voltage required to produce

Electric
the current with assumed
Current
Physiological Effect body resistance:
(1 second
100,000 ....1,000
contact)
ohms ohms
1 mA Threshold of feeling, tingling sensation. 100 V 1V
5 mA Accepted as maximum harmless current 500 V 5V
Beginning of sustained muscular
10-20 mA 1000 V 10 V
contraction ("Can't let go" current.)
V entricular fibrillation, fatal if
100-300
continued. Respiratory function 10000 V 100 V
mA
continues.
Sustained ventricular contraction
followed by normal heart rythmn.
6A 600000 V 6000 V
(defibrillation). Temporary respiratory
paralysis and possibly burns.
Physiological effects of electricity

Most of us have experienced some form of electric "shock," where

electricity causes our body to experience pain or trauma. If we are
fortunate, the extent of that experience is limited to tingles or jolts of pain
from static electricity buildup discharging through our bodies. When we
are working around electric circuits capable of delivering high power to
loads, electric shock becomes a much more serious issue, and pain is
the least significant result of shock.

As electric current is conducted through a material, any opposition to

that flow of electrons (resistance) results in a dissipation of energy,
usually in the form of heat. This is the most basic and easy-to-
understand effect of electricity on living tissue: current makes it heat up.
If the amount of heat generated is sufficient, the tissue may be burnt.
The effect is physiologically the same as damage caused by an open
flame or other high-temperature source of heat, except that electricity
has the ability to burn tissue well beneath the skin of a victim, even
burning internal organs.

Another effect of electric current on the body, perhaps the most

significant in terms of hazard, regards the nervous system. By "nervous
system" I mean the network of special cells in the body called "nerve
cells" or "neurons" which process and conduct the multitude of signals
responsible for regulation of many body functions. The brain, spinal cord,
and sensory/motor organs in the body function together to allow it to
sense, move, respond, think, and remember.

Nerve cells communicate to each other by acting as "transducers:"

creating electrical signals (very small voltages and currents) in response
to the input of certain chemical compounds called neurotransmitters, and
releasing neurotransmitters when stimulated by electrical signals. If
electric current of sufficient magnitude is conducted through a living
creature (human or otherwise), its effect will be to override the tiny
electrical impulses normally generated by the neurons, overloading the
nervous system and preventing both reflex and volitional signals from
being able to actuate muscles. Muscles triggered by an external (shock)
current will involuntarily contract, and there's nothing the victim can do
about it.

This prob lem is especially dangerous if the victim contacts an energized

conductor with his or her hands. The forearm muscles responsible for
bending fingers tend to be better developed than those muscles
responsible for extending fingers, and so if both sets of muscles try to
contract because of an electric current conducted through the person's
arm, the "bending" muscles will win, clenching the fingers into a fist. If
the conductor delivering current to the victim faces the palm of his or her
hand, this clenching action will force the hand to grasp the wire firmly,
thus worsening the situation by securing excellent contact with the wire.
The victim will be completely unable to let go of the wire.

Medically, this condition of involuntary muscle contraction is called

tetanus. Electricians familiar with this effect of electric shock often refer
to an immobilized victim of electric shock as being "froze on the circuit."
Shock-induced tetanus can only be interrupted by stopping the current
through the victim.

Even when the current is stopped, the victim may not regain voluntary
control over their muscles for a while, as the neurotransmitter chemistry
has been thrown into disarray. This principle has been applied in "stun
gun" devices such as Tasers, which on the principle of momentarily
shocking a victim with a high-voltage pulse delivered between two
electrodes. A well-placed shock has the effect of temporarily (a few
minutes) immobilizing the victim.

Electric current is able to affect more than just skeletal muscles in a

shock victim, however. The diaphragm muscle controlling the lungs, and
the heart -- which is a muscle in itself -- can also be "frozen" in a state of
tetanus by electric current. Even currents too low to induce tetanus are
often able to scramble nerve cell signals enough that the heart cannot
beat properly, sending the heart into a condition known as fibrillation. A
fibrillating heart flutters rather than beats, and is ineffective at pumping
blood to vital organs in the body. In any case, death from asphyxiation
and/or cardiac arrest will surely result from a strong enough electric
current through the body. Ironically, medical personnel use a strong jolt
of electric current applied across the chest of a victim to "jump start" a
fibrillating heart into a normal beating pattern.

That last detail leads us into another hazard of electric shock, this one
peculiar to public power systems. Though our initial study of electric
circuits will focus almost exclusively on DC (Direct Current, or electricity
that moves in a continuous direction in a circuit), modern power systems
utilize alternating current, or AC. The technical reasons for this
preference of AC over DC in power systems are irrelevant to this
discussion, but the special hazards of each kind of electrical power are
very important to the topic of safety.
Direct current (DC), because it moves with continuous motion through a
conductor, has the tendency to induce muscular tetanus quite readily.
Alternating current (AC), because it alternately reverses direction of
motion, provides brief moments of opportunity for an afflicted muscle to
relax between alternations. Thus, from the concern of becoming "froze
on the circuit," DC is more dangerous than AC.

However, AC's alternating nature has a greater tendency to throw the

heart's pacemaker neurons into a condition of fibrillation, whereas DC
tends to just make the heart stand still. Once the shock current is halted,
a "frozen" heart has a better chance of regaining a normal beat pattern
than a fibrillating heart. This is why "defibrillating" equipment used by
emergency medics works: the jolt of current supplied by the defibrillator
unit is DC, which halts fibrillation and and gives the heart a chance to
recover.

In either case, electric currents high enough to cause involuntary muscle

action are dangerous and are to be avoided at all costs. In the next
section, we'll take a look at how such currents typically enter and exit the
body, and examine precautions against such occurrences.

 REVIEW:
 Electric current is capable of producing deep and severe burns in
the body due to power dissipation across the body's electrical
resistance.
 Tetanus is the condition where muscles involuntarily contract due
to the passage of external electric current through the body. When
involuntary contraction of muscles controlling the fingers causes a
victim to be unable to let go of an energized conductor, the victim
is said to be "froze on the circuit."
 Diaphragm (lung) and heart muscles are similarly affected by
electric current. Even currents too small to induce tetanus can be
strong enough to interfere with the heart's pacemaker neurons,
causing the heart to flutter instead of strongly beat.
 Direct current (DC) is more likely to cause muscle tetanus than
alternating current (AC), making DC more likely to "freeze" a victim
in a shock scenario. However, AC is more likely to cause a victim's
heart to fibrillate, which is a more dangerous condition for the
victim after the shocking current has been halted.
 Electric shock precautions.

There are not many safety hazards in the Pchemlab, but every experiment
involves electrical and electronic apparatus. Sometimes during the course of an
experiment, students need to fiddle with the apparatus, which brings up the
remote possibility of electric shock hazard. Nobody has yet been injured by a
shock in our lab, but since electrical and electronic devices are a ubiquitous part
of everyday life, a brief summary of electric shock precautions is given below.

Experience shows that more than 98% of all difficulties experienced with balky
Pchemlab apparatus involve two problems: (1) equipment which isn't plugged in
properly or which isn't turned on; (2) pens which don't write.

Offhand, it would seem that a shock of 10,000 volts would be more deadly than
100 volts. That is not necessarily so! Individuals have been electrocuted by
appliances using ordinary house supplies of 110 volts and by electrical
apparatus in industry using as little as 42 volts direct current. The real measure
of a shock's intensity lies in the amount of current (amperes) forced through the
body, and not the voltage. Any electrical device used on a house wiring circuit
can, under certain conditions, transmit a fatal current.

It's the electrical current that does the damage. Current equals voltage divided
by resistance (I = V/R), but the resistance of the human body varies so widely it
is impossible to state that one voltager is "dangerous" and another is "safe".

The actual resistance of the body varies depending upon the condition of the
skin at the points of contact (moist or dry). The skin resistance may vary from
1000 ohms for wet skin to over 500,000 ohms for dry skin. However, once the
skin is broken through (for example by the burning away of skin) the body
presents no more than 500 ohms resistance to the current.

The path through the body has much to do with the shock danger. A current
passing from finger to elbow through the arm may produce only a painful
shock, but that same current passing from hand to hand or from hand to foot
may well be fatal.

Therefore, the practice of using only one hand (keeping one hand behind your
back) while working on high-voltage circuits and of standing or sitting on an
insulating material is a good safety habit.
 

The Physiological Effect of Electric Shock

Electric current damages the body in three different ways: (1) it harms or
interferes with proper functioning of the nervous system and heart; (2) it
subjects the body to intense heat; and (3) it causes the muscles to contract.

(1) Chart 1 shows the physiological effect of various currents. Note that voltage
is not a consideration. Although it takes a voltage to make the current flow, the
amount of shock-current will vary, depending on the body resistance between
the points of contact.

Figure 1

As shown in Figure 1, shock is relatively more severe as the current rises. At

values as low as 20 milliamps, breathing becomes labored, finally ceasing
completely even at values below 75 milliamps.
As the current approaches 100 milliamps, ventricular fibrillation of the heart
occurs-an uncoordinated twitching of the walls of the heart's ventricles.

Above 200 milliamps, the muscular contractions are so severe that the heart is
forcibly clamped during the shock. This clamping protects the heart from going
into ventricular fibrillation, and the victim's chances for survival are good.

(2) AC is said to be four to five times more dangerous than DC. For one thing,
AC causes more severe muscular contractions. For another, it stimulates
sweating that lowers the skin resistance. Along that line, it is important to note
that resistance goes down rapidly with continued contact. The sweating and the
burning away of the skin oils and even the skin itself account for this. That is
why it's extremely important to free the victim from contact with the current as
quickly as possible before the climbing current reaches the fibrillation-inducing
level.

The frequency of the AC has lots to do with the effect on the human body.
Unfortunately, 60 cycles is in the most harmful range. At the house voltage
frequency, as little as 25 volts can kill. On the other hand, people have
withstood 40,000 volts at a frequency of a million cycles or so without fatal
effects.

A very little current can produce a lethal electric shock. Any current over 10
ma. will result in serious shock.

Summary

Voltage is not a reliable indication of danger because the body's resistance

varies so widely it is impossible to predict how much current will be made to
flow through the body by a given voltage.

The current range of 100- to 200-ma, is particularly dangerous because it is

almost certain to result in lethal ventricular fibrillation. Victims of high-voltage
shock usually respond better to artificial respiration than do victims of low-
voltage shock, probably because the higher voltage and current clamps the heart
and hence prevents fibrillation.

AC is more dangerous than DC, and 60-cycle current is more dangerous than
high-frequency current.

Skin resistance decreases when the skin is wet or when the skin area in contact
with a voltage source increases. It also decreases rapidly with continued
exposure to electric current.
Prevention is the best medicine for electric shock. That means having a healthy
respect for all voltage, always following safety procedures when working on
electrical equipment.

In case a person does suffer a severe shock, it is important to free him from the
current as quickly as can be done safely and to apply artificial respiration
immediately. The difference of a few seconds in starting this may spell life or
death to the victim. And keep up the artificial respiration until a physician
pronounces the victim dead!