I subscribe to the Electrical Currents Newsletter from the Washington State Department of Labor in order to stay “current” (no pun intended) with what is going on in the “electrical field” in Washington State. It always has “electrifying tidbits” about what is going on with updates to the National Electric Code as they pertain to Washington State–as well as lots of other useful if not too “shocking information.”
The newsletter always has a question of the month that is often times way over my head technically, but that is fun to read nonetheless.
This month’s question left me a little baffled as it entered into a discussion about the differences in susceptibility to electrical shock between the sexes.
The idea that I might be more inclined to pee my pants than a woman left me feeling a little uneasy. However I was greatly “relieved” to find that it is actually women that are more likely to lose muscle control when encountering electrical current. 15 milliamperes for men and 9 milliamperes for women.
While the answer seemed clear cut and emphatic it does nothing to answer the many questions that come to mind.
How old is a “woman?”
How old is a “man?”
Is it also true of “boys” and “girls?”
Is it true regardless of weight, height, and/or size?
What if the woman was pregnant?
What if the woman was pregnant with a boy?
Another interesting aspect of the question though is, how the heck did they figure this out? I can imagine some sort of Frankensteinian experiment involving paid and/or unpaid volunteers and lots of screaming, wriggling and floor mops.
I could find nothing definitive on the internet as to why this difference between men and women is true, but it does seem to be a pretty pervasive idea in the electrical literature that I did find.
By Charles Buell, Real Estate Inspections in Seattle
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