Expert Witness Blog
Electrocution expert witness Lawrence Kamm writes on shocks and electrocutions:
Every year approximately 400 people in the U.S. are killed by electric shock. More are injured by being startled by an electric shock, lose their balance, and fall off a ladder.
To cause a shock the electricity must enter at one place on your body and exit at another place. It is the current through your body which causes the shock, not the voltage at a single place. A bird on a high voltage wire gets no shock. It is common for one of the shock places to be the earth or a piece of metal connected to the earth. Think of a faucet in your bathroom for an example. Think of bare feet on wet ground for another example.
Electricity through your body spreads out between the two places and can raise bloody hell between. If enough passes through your heart your story ends by ventricular fibrillation followed by asphyxiation because the heart stops pumping blood. Electric current can damage your organs and your nervous system. Among my clients is one whose one bare foot was on the ground, whose other bare foot stepped on a manhole cover, and whose body shakes to this day. Dogs are sometimes electrocuted sniffing around construction sites. Cows give less milk when they get small shocks from milking machines; there is major litigation as a result. People get shocked, and sometimes killed, by touching an electrocuted body in order to rescue it from contact with a fallen high voltage wire. A minor electric shock to a person on a ladder can startle a person who then loses his balance, falls off, and is seriously injured by the fall. I will talk about electric tools later on.
A common mode of shock comes from touching a defective electrical appliance, such as a hair dryer, with one hand and a water faucet with the other. To say nothing about standing in a bathtub of water.
For more, see http://www.ljkamm.com/.