I'm a little worried that if these get made to the same standard that most usb cables are that one of these is going to kill someone.
And you don't need 20A to kill anyway. 20V with sweaty salty skin is right at the edge of dangerous territory.
> (1999) A US Navy safety publication describes injuries incurred while doing don't's. One page described the fate of a sailor playing with a multimeter in an unauthorized manner. He was curious about the resistance level of the human body. He had a Simpson 260 multimeter, a small unit powered by a 9-volt battery. That may not seem powerful enough to be dangerous… but it can be deadly in the wrong hands.
> The sailor took a probe in each hand to measure his bodily resistance from thumb to thumb. But the probes had sharp tips, and in his excitement he pressed his thumbs hard enough against the probes to break the skin. Once the salty conducting fluid known as blood was available, the current from the multimeter travelled right across the sailor's heart, disrupting the electrical regulation of his heartbeat. He died before he could record his Ohms.
"It's the volts that jolt but the mills that kill" - voltage gives you the electric shock feeling but current across the heart will kill you.
Unless you are actively, visibly bleeding, it's going take well over 50V to cause any sort of lasting harm. Not to mention that it'll almost certainly default to 5V unless both ends are plugged in to devices supporting higher voltage.
He stuck the probes into his thumbs.
This sub thread is not so much about whether it is probable that a person will die but whether it is possible that a person could die. And, with some convolutions, you can work out a situation where a person could indeed die.
Importantly rasz_pl is claiming that 50 mA cannot kill you. The rule of thumb is 50 mA at 50 V across the heart is enough to kill you. This voltage level is dropped if the skin is broken - and you don't need a big wound.
If you're saying it's fantastically unlikely to actually happen: I agree.
>50 mA at 50 V across the heart is enough to kill you.
1 Voltage doesnt matter!
2 AC 60hz, not DC. I dont know the state of safety education in US, but in Europe it was the first thing on the first day of EE lab. Quick google:
"The threshold for ventricular fibrillation for direct current shocks longer than 2 seconds is 150 mA as compared with 50 mA for 60-Hz shocks; for shocks shorter than 0.2 seconds, the threshold is the same as that for 60-HZ shocks, that is, approximately 500 mA"
so >2 seconds at 45 volts if you jam two live wires at 45V into your open wounds across the heart
and here are some funny, but educational yt clips
You start this post saying "Voltage doesn't matter!" but end it with "so >2 seconds at 45 volts if you jam two live wires at 45V into your open wounds across the heart" - so which is it?
https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1335
https://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~p616/safety/fatal_curren...
Fatal current is between 100 mA and 200 mA. Internal resistance of human body (and this doesn't require "open wounds") is between 300 ohms and 1k ohm.
20V is fine through skin - too much resistance, but if you push it under the skin the resistance is much lower and it can kill.
You might be able to do it with sweaty skin and squeeze the wire hard. Not certain.
Not likely to happen by accident though.
Also it's enough to cause a burn if you put it in your mouth.
painful yes, but not deadly
More likely, though, a crappy USB cable carrying 5A will kill people by burning their house down.
Frankly, I'm worried enough about the possibility of fire due to power over ethernet (eg: hotel wifi).
All that said, modern, useful, standardised dc cabling does sound convenient.
20-50 mA - Can't breathe. Paralysis of the chest muscles. Possibly Fatal
And if this story is to be believed 9v has in fact killed: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-50.html
"Investigation of alleged appliance electrocutions and fires caused by internally generated voltages"
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=31244&...