Delayed reaction from electrical shock?

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Jraef said:
If the guy sues you
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generally, you cannot sue an employer over a work related injury. You can only go through the WC system for whatever relief is available in that venue. there are some exceptions, but they are few and far between.

most of the big money settlements on work related injuries involve a third party (like a machine builder) who was the one who actually paid out the money.
 
petersonra said:
in either case it is a legit WC issue.
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Since it happened on the job it could start out as a WC issue. If it can be determined it was dehydration that may or may not be work related and could end up going other directions. If it can be determined it was caused by electric shock then is should become a WC issue. If the problem can't be specifically determined - we could have litigation involved to make a determination (whether it ends up right or not).
 
petersonra said:
generally, you cannot sue an employer over a work related injury. You can only go through the WC system for whatever relief is available in that venue. there are some exceptions, but they are few and far between.

most of the big money settlements on work related injuries involve a third party (like a machine builder) who was the one who actually paid out the money.
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usually true

unless gross negligence or failure to comply with OSHA (or other) safety standards including training
 
cause and effect..

Interesting thread, as had not looked into 'delayed reaction' much. There IS a large body of literature on long term effects of severe electric shock of anything over 50 mA, but very little on delayed effects. One discussion of 'delayed effects' surmises that of the millions of internet reports these days one is bound, statistically, to find a lot of non-related but 'apparently obvious' cause and effect, but which are totally unrelated. Armageddon due to anthropocentric global warming (EXCUSE me, climate change) is a prime example of absurdity.

Will throw this actual last week case history into the mix, as similar type of some reasoning:

was cutting some firewood last week and after I shut chainsaw off and grabbed a didn dong for a snack a yearling deer comes walking up (never had that happen before!) and wants petted - this is out in the boonies of the Cascades.

So I pet the deer and feed it some ding dong.

This week have had a backache all week - diagnosis: petting a 'wild' deer causes backache, or is it eating a ding dong?

Maybe the deer was a 'shape shifter', as ancient alient theorists believe, and I was temporarily abducted by aliens and operated on an time warped back to present?

2 hours earlier I had adjusted the ignition on my dozer and got a tiny jolt - perhaps a weeklong backache was a delayed ignition shock reaction.


Cannot have been that I'm over 70 and was bending over throwing split cordwood into the back of a truck for a couple of hours, can it ?
 
Ingenieur said:
my point was at 20 it would take a loooong time
doesn't start a thermal time down until +15-20% or something like that
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time down?

From recollection of information posted by others in the past, a typical inverse time breaker, when new anyway, should be able to hold it's rating indefinitely.

Go over the rating you start to get into the trip curve, but if only over by an amp on a 20 amp breaker that may still be a pretty long time before trip occurs. Five or ten amps over is going to be a shorter time but still well over what one would call instantaneous, which should be measured in milliseconds.
 
kwired said:
time down?

From recollection of information posted by others in the past, a typical inverse time breaker, when new anyway, should be able to hold it's rating indefinitely.

Go over the rating you start to get into the trip curve, but if only over by an amp on a 20 amp breaker that may still be a pretty long time before trip occurs. Five or ten amps over is going to be a shorter time but still well over what one would call instantaneous, which should be measured in milliseconds.
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at 25C and 20 A when will this trip?
at rated 40 C and 22A how long?

http://apps.geindustrial.com/publibrary/checkout/GES-9887B?TNR=Time Current Curves|GES-9887B|generic

instantaneous for these type of cb is usually 13-15 x Ir (varies)
0.100 sec 100 mS or 6 cycles (60 Hz based)
 
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Ingenieur said:
at 25C and 20 A when will this trip?
at rated 40 C and 22A how long?

http://apps.geindustrial.com/publibrary/checkout/GES-9887B?TNR=Time Current Curves|GES-9887B|generic

instantaneous for these type of cb is usually 12-13 x Ir
0.100 sec 100 mS or 6 cycles (60 Hz based)
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Now you have thrown in additional circumstances. 40C is the typical default test and is what is shown on that graph. Should hold indefinitely at current rating if temp is 40C or less.

Don't know that if you could accurately plot 22 or 25 amps on that chart that it would ever cross the maximum clearing time line even when compensating for other then 40C, so the answer is unknown, but should at least be longer then the 1000 seconds displayed on the chart.
 
kwired said:
Now you have thrown in additional circumstances. 40C is the typical default test and is what is shown on that graph. Should hold indefinitely at current rating if temp is 40C or less.

Don't know that if you could accurately plot 22 or 25 amps on that chart that it would ever cross the maximum clearing time line even when compensating for other then 40C, so the answer is unknown, but should at least be longer then the 1000 seconds displayed on the chart.
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40 is 104F amb
amb is usually less
curve shifts left as amb decreases

What will it trip at amb = 25 with 20 A ?

you miss the point
100 sec
10 min
10 hr
indefinitely

he said it tripped and he took 14 A
not likely at 120 vac /1000 ohm body
he would be dead
 
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Ingenieur said:
usually true

unless gross negligence or failure to comply with OSHA (or other) safety standards including training
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even then it is tough to pierce the WC protections for employers. that is kind of the point of the WC system. basically workers lose their right to sue an employer for work related injuries in exchange for WC benefits administered or at least overseen by a neutral 3rd party (generally the state)
 
junkhound said:
was cutting some firewood last week and after I shut chainsaw off and grabbed a ding dong for a snack a yearling deer comes walking up (never had that happen before!) and wants petted - this is out in the boonies of the Cascades.

So I pet the deer and feed it some ding dong.

This week have had a backache all week - diagnosis: petting a 'wild' deer causes backache, or is it eating a ding dong?
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I don't think petting a deer nor eating ding dongs is known to cause back problems but if you had certain other symptoms they may well have wanted to know if you had been in contact with any wild animals.

A person that works as an electrician and passes out on a lawn and is questioned at the hospital will have to answer lots of questions to include medical history. They probably did ask about what he had been eating or drinking and everything else you can think of. If he had told them he had been bit by a spider or stung by a bee the assumptions could have been much different. He said he was shocked. If he had told them he was working in an attic for two hours at 120 degress or even digging a ditch in the hot sun but he said he had been shocked.

Doctors have to use information gathered from the patient just as we have to make assumptions at times based on information given by customers ( not always correct ).

I don't see any way for the doctors to rule out a delayed reaction to electrical shock unless they can find another cause. This may not be correct at all but it's based on information provided.
 
petersonra said:
even then it is tough to pierce the WC protections for employers. that is kind of the point of the WC system. basically workers lose their right to sue an employer for work related injuries in exchange for WC benefits administered or at least overseen by a neutral 3rd party (generally the state)
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I see more than a few suits by miners against the operators
not uncommon
involved in a few now
failure to train and maintain equipment, known hazard being the result
it is not blanket immunity
otherwise there is no incentive to promote safety (other than minor fines)
most are settled
they also sue the equip mfgs

http://www.baileyjavinscarter.com/A...perator-for-serious-on-the-job-injuries.shtml
 
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100mA can kill. Or not. The reason is that 100mA is enough to mess up the electrical control circuits in your body. A small shock to a human could cause the same sort of gremlin that interrupting a download can cause in a computer. Rebooting may fix it and usually does (going to the hospital and having a little downtown is a good reboot.)

High voltage shocks run more current through the body. They can cook a person from the inside out - cook the blood first. Really gory stuff.

Sometimes a small shock damages control circuits in the body in odd ways. Sometimes this doesn't show up for a while. It is rare, but there are quite a large number of documented cases - permanent muscle weakness is one symptom.

When you post on a public site, particularly one as popular and effective as this one, you need to be careful about how you sound. Whether you get huge fines and retraining time or whether you are absolved of all wrong doing comes down to public opinion - of a jury or of an OSHA representative. If you are deeply disturbed, have a log of what happened and of all your safety procedures and can show that you have worked hard to make this better, then that affects public opinion. If the guy decides to research incidents like this on line and figures out that you said, "So he got shocked, people get shocked all the time." it could give him a really bad attitude towards you that you will never overcome. So, be careful. Show concern. Talk online like your lawyer was present.

Anybody remember Candid Camera? We are all pretty much on Candid Camera all the time anymore.
 
Medium Shocks

Medium Shocks

Oh, and by the way, medium shocks are less likely to do permanent damage than small shocks. There are small shocks that disrupt the controls of the body and there are large shocks that cook the body, but in between there are shocks that do neither. I took some seminars and found that interesting. It is usually described as a voltage range, but the current going through the body is what kills and damages as you know. 1000 Ohms is a figure generally used for body resistance. So, 120V/1000 = 100mA and that can kill by stopping the heart.

Resistance actually depends on many things. Sweaty small barefoot people have lower resistance than large dry people wearing rubber soled boots. And so forth. If the path is pinky to thumb, that is much lower resistance.....

It is interesting stuff. Lightning strikes and cows dead from heart attacks due to ground resistance. The guy who was shocked to death at a power plant because the metal gate swung into the front of his truck and he was sitting on the tail gate with his feet on the ground and the voltage differential was enough to kill him.... I try to pretend it is off of Bones and not real so that I don't feel guilty for being interested, but actually they are real stories.
 
dema said:
When you post on a public site, particularly one as popular and effective as this one, you need to be careful about how you sound.
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This is good advice. If you, for example, are an employer and publicly display a cavalier attitude for shocks in the workplace, and you become involved in litigation with an employee who got hurt and is trying to show negligence on your part, his lawyer might drag up what you said and use it against you. We all live in glass houses these days.
 
Here's my personal trivia. In 1981 I got bit by a 2,200 volt laser power supply. Initially I was okay but by the end of the day my wrists and forearms had very little feeling in them. The doctor could find no issues and the problem went away by the end of the week. When I first got shocked for the first few moments I swear I could hear a Chinese band playing Dixieland music.
 
RobertKLR said:
Here's my personal trivia. In 1981 I got bit by a 2,200 volt laser power supply. Initially I was okay but by the end of the day my wrists and forearms had very little feeling in them. The doctor could find no issues and the problem went away by the end of the week. When I first got shocked for the first few moments I swear I could hear a Chinese band playing Dixieland music.
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lol. Glad you are okay - and that the music wasn't permanent.
 
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