How many volts can kill a human

This because the type of current also has became a long debate! The danger comparison between alternating current and direct current has been a subject since s. For one thing, A. For another, it stimulates sweating, which lowers the skin resistance.

Along those lines, 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. The frequency of the AC has a lot to do with the effect on the human body. Unfortunately, 60 cycles is in the most harmful range. At this frequency, as little as 25 volts can kill. Therefore, it is suggested that human lethality is most common with alternating current at — volts.

However, death has occurred below this range, with supplies as low as 42 volts. Assuming a steady current flow as opposed to a shock from a capacitor or from static electricity , shocks above 2, volts are often fatal, with those above 11, volts being fatal, though exceptional cases have been noted.

According to a Guinness Book of World Records, seventeen-year-old Brian Latasa survived a , volts shock on the tower of an ultra-high voltage line in Griffith Park, Los Angeles on November 9, The shock with the highest voltage reported survived was that of Harry F. McGrew, who came in contact with a , volt transmission line in Huntington Canyon, Utah. The human body is a good conductor of electricity. This means an electric current can easily travel through it.

Electric shock can caused a lot of things to our body, externally and internally. Muscles are stimulated by electricity. The effect depends on the intensity of the current and the type of muscle it travels through.

When a current above 10 mA travels through flexor muscles, such as the ones in our forearms that close the fingers, it causes a sustained contraction.

The victim may be unable to let go of the source of the current, making the duration of the contact longer and increasing the severity of the shock. When a current above 10 mA travels through extensor muscles, it causes a violent spasm. If the muscles affected are the hip extensors that lengthen the limbs away from the body, the victim may be propelled, sometimes many metres away!

Muscles, ligaments and tendons may tear as a result of the sudden contraction caused by an electric shock. Tissue can also be burned if the shock is lasting or the current is high. If a current of 50 mA passes through the heart, it can cause cardiac arrest.

The heart is also a muscle, which beats to pump blood through the body. So the question really should be: How much current does it take to kill someone? The answer is very little. A current of as little as 0. However, the current involved in an electric shock is determined by the voltage and the resistance of the circuit. The human body has an inherent high resistance to electric current, which means without sufficient voltage a dangerous amount of current cannot flow through the body and cause injury or death.

If your skin is in contact with the source of the current, it gets hotter and burns. Skin is much harder for a current to flow through than nerves or muscles. But once the skin has burned away, there's nothing stopping a much higher current flowing into your flesh. And higher currents mean more damage.

Electric currents don't just affect arm and leg muscles. If a current passes across your chest it can wreak havoc with two other critical muscles: the diaphragm, which controls our breathing, and the heart. We breathe because our diaphragm is attached to our lungs, so as it contracts and relaxes it causes the lungs to stretch and contract, forcing air in and out.

A 25 mA current is enough to freeze the diaphragm, stopping breathing. The heart can be stopped by an electric current, like any other muscle. Or it can go into a more dangerous state — an uncontrolled fluttering called fibrillation, which is next to useless when it comes to pumping blood. Ironically, the treatment for fibrillation is a good sharp electric shock. The shock stops the heart completely so its own electrical system can get a nice regular rhythm going again.

Maybe Mary Shelley was onto something after all …. The trick is not to become the path of least resistance for an electric current to follow. Which is a tough call for ground-dwelling creatures like us. Among its many talents, the earth makes a brilliant path of least resistance for electrons. It can absorb an enormous number of them — lightning strikes are a doddle.

And if you're standing on the earth, and touching a wire with current flowing, you become a very attractive short-cut for those electrons. Birds can get away with sitting on live power lines because they're not touching the ground, and it's way easier for electrons to move through wire than a bird.

But connecting live current to the earth isn't the only way to get fried, as any number of fruit bats can testify.

They don't touch the ground, but their big wings and lousy eyesight make fruit bats a great path of least resistance between two live power lines. If both their wings just touched the same power line, they'd be fine — wire gives easier passage to electrons than a bat.

But two different power lines are never safe to touch because they will never have exactly the same amount of 'push' on electrons. Current will always flow from the one with more 'push' to the other — through a fruit bat, you or whatever conductor is doing the connecting. Of course power lines aren't the only things that can cause electric shocks.