Manhattan, IL
I am an electrical engineer.
Quoted from Bud:Electrocuted... highly unlikely. Getting shocked… more likely.
It depends on so many variables I would not be so casual with the electrical safety advice.
Quoted from Bud:There are people that die from home voltage, don’t know official stats, but I’d say it’s a high probability it’s from people working in the electrical panel or with direct line voltage. Not people messing around downstream of a circuit panel that has all kind of breakers like specific circuits and main breakers.
In this context, 110 volts at your wall outlet is exactly the same as 110 volts inside your panel! Even the smallest electrical breaker (15-amp) is absolutely not going to protect you from electrocution. Why? Because current as low as 20 mA (0.02 amps) can stop your heart, and it's going to take 750 times more current to trip a 15-amp breaker. At that point it doesn't matter if you touch a branch circuit at a wall outlet or one side of the split-phase feeding the main breaker in your panel ... it's all the same kind of danger.
And a GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) is only going to work under specific circumstances; when some current flows to ground, like when an appliance falls into a bathtub or sink of water. Current flowing through your heart is not going to trip a GFCI unless the current path somehow includes ground.
