Subject: Are RF safety questions too hard for the proposed new Novice
exam?
From: Alun
Date: 4/19/2004 7:35 PM Central Standard Time
Message-id:

The current kills you, but it takes volts to jump the gap, thousands of
them. I have a little L-shaped scar on my right index finger from 10kV that
I didn't touch. I'm an EE amongst other things, and I assume you are a
physician?? If you say it doesn't matter which hand it is, then I beleive
you, as it sounds like you know. I've never worked with power transmission
or distribution, only with electronics, so that limits the current quite a
bit (but not necessarily the volts)!

Nope...Not an M.D....An ER/Trauma Nurse with 15 years of EMS behind that.
But it only took one electrocution to make me a believer. The one victim in
particular was in a trench along a runway installing new lights...Somehow his
feet came into contact with buried power lines that the work crew was unaware
were there.

Typical paddle application for defibrillation is to the left chest wall
and upper midline sternum. The placement of the paddles in combination with
the delivered current attempts to repolarize the the irratically firing SA node
causing ventricular fibrillation. (That's the "HE'S IN VEE-FIB" you hear on
countless episodes of "E.R." and "Third Watch".)

Congrats on being an EE. Does it make you immune to electrocution? Does
my NOT being an M.D. in any way diminish the fact that sufficient current
sustained by adequate voltage can be fatal regardless of how or where it's
applied to human tissue?

73

Steve, K4YZ