friendly reminder: water and electricity don’t mix
supposedly this happened on august 1, but i just heard about it this morning. since it dealt with computers and staring at them i felt compelled to cover this. although the fact that it included those two and a sweaty man i thought about asking my co-worker in the cube over to write a guest column since he sweats like a pig at a luau a lot. back to the story.
a man in china died from a electric shock after his sweaty leg touched his open computer case.
His sweaty legs came into contact with the computer’s internal wiring, likely causing a short circuit.
i guess not having thought about opening my computer case and touching my sweaty legs to it, i didn’t realize that it could kill you, but i guess that’s exactly what it can do.
The computer’s internal voltage can reach as high as 380 volts in power-storage capacitors, which is enough to give a deadly shock.
so while we mourn the death of wu today, let’s think about ways he could have saved himself and we prevent ourselves from dying while we sit at our desks sweating with our case off and our legs dangling oh so close.
- use a towel to mop up your leg sweat.
- don’t open your computer case and touch it with your leg.
- turn on your a/c.
- don’t set your computer close to your body when it is open.
what else can any of you think of? email it to me personally and i will put it up on the site! jack[at]midwesterngothic[dot]com. i look forward to your hearing your ideas of how wu’s life could have been saved.
until next time, stay safe. keep your sweat legs away from electic devices.
jack @ 9:34 am on 8/23/07