Friday, 6 March 2015

safety - Safe current limit for human contact?


What's the point below which electrical current is generally considered safe for "casual" human contact?


Is either voltage or amperage more "dangerous" (e.g. high voltage / low amperage vs. low voltage / high amperage), or is the only consideration the total current?



Answer




As rules of thumb, I've generally thought of myself as a 70 kΩ resistor to ground that feels pain at around 1 mA, which can be driven by 70 V or so. In my experience, the pain threshold is slightly above 48 V.


I can't say that I have any good medical science to back this up, but there are a few empirically obtained data points in that I'm not dead yet.


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