Mobile Phones and Lightning a Lethal Mix

An anonymous reader writes "In a letter to the British Medical Journal, doctors wrote that people should not use mobile phones outdoors during thunderstorms because of the risk of being struck by lightning. Usually 'when someone is struck by lightning, the high resistance of the skin conducts the flash over the body in what is known as a flashover, but if a metal object, such as a phone, is in contact with the skin it disrupts the flashover and increases the odds of internal injuries and death.'"

Comments

Talking in the rain

[nightsnack]

And this information is useful because we are always using our mobile phones out in thunderstorms.

Re:Talking in the rain

[Anonymous Coward]

And this information is useful because we are always using our mobile phones out in thunderstorms.

But seriously, have you been out in the world lately? People use their mobile phones EVERYWHERE, at ALL TIMES. It's becoming extremely annoying.

People aren't going to ask whether they should use their mobile in a t-storm. It will never occur to them that a thunderstorm is a reason to stop talking on the phone as usual.

Re:Talking in the rain

[moro_666]

additionally, wearing a blouse with buttons certainly is a lethal
combination when you are hit by a car, the buttons distort the equal
hit and you'll die from a button breaking your chest. wear t-shirts.

  we have had quite many weird articles on slashdot, this certainly is
one of them.

  if i get hit by lightning, i'd honestly rather die than live like a
burned skin zombie for the rest of my days of sorrow.

Re:Talking in the rain

[nasor]

Lightening is one of those non-threats that people (especially the media) like to blow out of proportion.

There are an average of 73 people killed by lightening every year in the U.S. While each of those deaths is individually tragic, this is a trivial number of people compared to, say, forty thousand people killed in car crashes, thirty thousand killed by household accidents, six thousand people killed in workplace accidents, or even the average eight hundred people killed every year from non-lightening accidental electrocution.

Metal objects ?

[Ihlosi]

but if a metal object, such as a phone,

Odd, my cellphone practically has no metal surfaces ...

Another disgusting pseudo-science article

[Futurepower(R)]

This is another of those disgusting Slashdot pseudo-science articles. Slashdot editors apparently spent their entire childhoods playing video games, and didn't learn anything about the real world.

Edited paragraph, without the nonsense: "The Australian Lightning Protection Standard recommends that metallic objects... should not be used (or carried) outdoors during a thunderstorm..."

The warning about metal and lightning has nothing particularly to do with cell phones. A tiny cell phone is not the biggest hazard. Don't use metal umbrellas during lightning storms.

Don't fly kites with metal string. (Or any kite. Lightning travels on non-metallic paths sometimes.)

I'd of thought

[AlecLyons]

The decrease in liklihood of a fatal injury not using you phone causes is insignificant compared to the decrease you get from removing metal jewelery?

In other news ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Doctors find that prolonged submersion under oceans can cause suffocation, and that walking into an active volcano can result in extensive burn damage.

It is suspected that some natural forces can be injurious to human health. MORE FUNDING is needed to study these phenomena.

Seriously, every slash-dotter must be aware that conductive objects on or near the body - jewelery is the obvious and most likely candidate - will act as a focus for energy transmission during a lightning strike. Belt buckles and shoe nails used to be the problem in earlier times.

This can turn a survivable accident into a fatal accident. But should we all buy plastic-mounted diamond studs? Do we want to live forever? Or do we want to welcome our new insulated overlords.....?

Are you kidding?

[Moraelin]

Are you kidding? Some people seem to not even have a life that doesn't involve screaming into a mobile phone. Yay for sitting next to the guy who's just got to tell everyone in his phone book that he's on a train, across from the codependent chick wanting to do everything together with her boyfriend and god forbid that they're not in contact at every hour (actually, she sounded so obsessed, she sounded more like "stalker" than just "codependent"), and a few other such specimens which can't just shut up for at least 5 minutes of a 5 hour train trip.

Frankly, when I saw this Penny Arcade comic strip, I thought I had actually been around people like that.

What makes you think that that kinda people would stop talking in a thunderstorm? I can just see the same specimens under some crude picnic/fishing/bus/whatever shelter, screaming into the phone, "YES, I'M IN THE WOODS! CAN YOU HEAR ME? IN THE WOODS! WHAT WAS THAT? THERE'S A THUNDERSTORM HERE! CAN YOU HEAR ME? THUNDERSTORM!" Or I can just see the girl mentioned above shivering under some tree in the rain, but unwilling to stop being in contact with her boyfriend even then.

Doctors and EE's shouldnt switch jobs

[Ancient_Hacker]

A few quibbles:

• There is no such thing as "flashover". The human body is largely salty water, an excellent conductor. There is nothing about the "surface" of the body that makes it a better path for conduction.
• Even if the surface were a better path for "flashover", that would be a very bad thing. That would concentrate the energy into the top layers, probably vaporizing off your skin. You need your skin.
• Maybe somebody read something about "skin effect", a real electrical phenomenon, but inapplicable to this case.
• If you get struck by lightning, you have much worse things to fret over than the exact path lightning took.

Doctors and EE's shouldnt switch jobs indeed

[TrekkieGod]

Well, I'm an EE, not a doctor, so purely in terms of logic, I would agree with your arguments. However, evidence is more important than what I would deduce from current knowledge. Regardless of how I think things should work, observation of how they *do* work is obviously more correct. Simple googling on getting hit by lightning got me the following information:

80% of people who get hit by lightning recover and "lightning often flashes over the outside of a victim, sometimes blowing off the clothes but leaving few external signs of injury and few, if any, burns."

Now, I won't presume to try to explain exactly why that is because, not knowing much about biology, I don't understand the composition of the human body enough to even make an educated guess. However, considering it is observed to happen you can't argue that flashover doesn't exist.

Insignificant but spectacular risks

[mrogers]

Great, another headline about a statistically insignificant but spectacular risk. How long before we launch the War On Thunder?

This whole story is based on a letter (not a peer-reviewed article) describing essentially anecdotal evidence that using a mobile phone increases your risk of injury given that you have been struck by lightning. The letter does not say that using a mobile phone increases your (negligible) chances of being struck by lightning.

This story says a lot about the inability of people (including doctors, it would seem) to evaluate risks. I'm surprised the British Medical Journal decided to publish the letter.

Actually cars offer absolute protection.

[technoextreme]

4. Contrary to popular notion, there is no 'safe' location outdoors to take shelter from lightning, although your car will offer some protection (read: its a crude faraday cage) provided that you do not come in contact with any metal object.

Please do not confuse a faraday cage with the skin effect. The skin effect is actually what is occuring. The skin effect occurs when very high frequency currents travel through conductos. This results in the current traveling around the very edges of the conductor. Hence you can in fact place your hand on the metal frame of the car opposite the side in which lighting strikes because electricity will never travel that path. I've seen this demonstrated plenty of times on a two story van da graaf generator. Now if your dumb enough to be touching the outside of the car....

Re:At lightning voltages

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Even simpler way of looking at it: air is a really good insulator. The lightning just crashed through miles of air. It's not going to *notice* the plastic cover.