Cellphone kills Nigerian man while plugged into wall charger

Okay honestly, we gotta call "urban legend" on this one. Supposedly, a man in Nigeria was electrocuted and killed when he answered his cellphone while it was charging: "electricity flowed into the cell phone unrestrained and the young man was thrown to the ground with a heavy thud." He was then apparently dead upon arrival at the nearest hospital. Total bunk?

[jon @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

bull, a wallwart converter could never source enough power to kill a man.

[jonathan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

bogus. his phone is plastic right?

[meunierc @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Can be bull, can be true. I say this is possible if you use a non-CSA (or equivalent) approved adapter... this is pretty much the only thing those certifications are trying to protect people against. Put the story in Nigeria, give the guy a 10 cents charger coming from the flea market holding with electrical tape, and watch for the sparks.

Christian

[Andrew @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

I don't know about him, but my charger puts out 5 volts DC with about 0.5 amps. Not exactly killer current...

[Julius @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Actually, you only need .006-.2 amps to stop the heart from beating. DC from a wall charger however probably doesn't have efficient transfer from source to target, making electrocution far from feasible, but I did want to point out, at the right circumstances, .5 Amps, even in DC can kill you. In fact that's really just overkill. .1-.2 could get the job done just as well.

[Dennis - Help me fight for my son @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

I don't know if that could be true or not, but, does that mean I will be getting the emails about his $15 million fortune?

[zed @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

People, this is Nigeria, not the US. They have DC there and it is susceptible to power surges. When I was in a developing country most recently, my power-strip, with power surge protector blew up in my hotel room! Then the power went out in the whole hotel.

[Joe @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

How 'bout this:

The cellphone gave him a shock to the ear, which surprised him. Startled, he took a step back onto the spoked end of a rake. Then, the other end of the rake him the bottom of a table and knocked over some cooked yams that were full of butter. Still trying to regain his balance, he slid on the yams, and in an effort to catch himself, he threw his cellphone into the air and started to let out a long shreik. Now, because there were yams all over the ground, his hand slipped too, and he fell flat on his back, mouth wide open - where, in turn, the cellphone landed and lodged itself in his throat suffocating him.

[John F @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Lol Dennis!

[Finished.Law.School @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

His death is a great thing if he was a Nigerian email spammer.

[jferth @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

If a Nigerian tries to make a phone call....and gets electrocuted.....and theres no one there to hear him....does he make any noise? (PS-I hate yams).

[Zal @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Dear friend,
I hope you can help me. Recently, a very wealthy relative died unexpectedly though a cell phone electrocution. However, in order for me to claim the inheritance, I must transfer through a bank in the US. The total amount is 15 million dollars. If you would please send me your checking account number, routing number, and social security number, I will be pleased to allow you a 10% tranfer fee (1.5 million dollars). Please write be back as soon as possible so we can continue this business transaction.

[Dave @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Check out http://www.419eater.com/ for more Nigerian scams.

[Michael @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Nigeria may indeed have power surges, but they certainly don't use DC power there. They use 230V, 50Hz power - much like Europe.

[siggy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

#13:

Doesn't it have to become DC power at one point to charge the cell phone?

[Brent @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Doesn't the fact that "Nigeria" was mentioned automatically make it bogus?

[aprodite @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

#14 Nigeria used 230V AC power at 50Hz. The cellphone charger is what changes it to DC and reduces the voltage and current as well.

If there was a lightning strike or power surge, it is just about possible that one could die from this, especially if the guy was using a dodgy charger, that may even have undergone a "self-repair" job. It would help if he had wet feet, which would makes sense if lightning was involved.

[Victor @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

As an electrical engineer, I can say with 99.99% certainty that this is imposible. Phone chargers are solid state switching transformers which will never output much more than they're rated (probably something like 5V @ 500mA), enough to give you a shock but not kill you. There would be a whole range of electronics inbetween the walljack and your hand/ear that would break (and thus open the circuit) before the current would get to you.

[LD @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

I swear, this site gets more retarded every time I read it. Somehow the author of this post seems to have the mental capacity to figure out it might be an urban legend, but doesn't have the ability to look at the top urban legend site, Snopes, to verify it. It's only the top hit in Google for "urban legend" in case the writer hadn't heard of Snopes before.

Lo and behold, when I do a simple search on Snopes for "cell phone kills man" the top hit does indeed confirm this stupid story, though not the Nigerian part, which is likely as bogus as all those bank scams.

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/cellcharge.asp

Come on, do 2 minutes of research before you post a stupid article.

[Theron @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

ummm, from personal experiance, i can say this one us bunk, cus iv shocked myself with mains voltage on the side of my head (lets not get into how, it was realy stupid) and well, im sure you have gatherd, im still alive

and that was the less safe, 240v

[Ryan Green @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

This sounds as correct as the "turn off your cellphones on top of great wall or you get struck by lightning" thing in china

[Mathew @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Sounds like another case for "The Mythbusters"

[YourNameHere @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Maybe by charging a third party battery while talking on the phone, it caused the battery to explode in his face?

[Finished.Law.School @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Better this happens then getting your limbs hacked off in Sierra Leone...I think...

[Benjamin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Hopefully I'll get less spam now.

[Lesbian Ham @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

URGENT!! IT IS TRUE THAT THIS MAN DIED. HE WAS MY SISTERS HUSBAND. WE DESPIRATLY NEED MONEY FOR HIS FUNERAL. IT IS URGENT!! IF EVERYBODY COULD PLEASE SEND MONEY!! IT IS ONLY FOR TEMPRARILY. YOU WILL GET YOUR MONEY BACK VIA WESTERN UNION WITHIN THE MONTH. THIS IS URGENT!!!!

XD :p

[Jo @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Post 18 is great pointing out that the writer is an idot for not not checking and finding that this is an urban myth. Except that on checking that link, we find that story is marked as a TRUE story. The details may have changed but the underlying principle is shown as TRUE on that link. And having lived in similar countries, I know from first hand experience that full voltage shocks are possible from faulty wiring - my guess is that it really has nothing to do with the handphone. It could be say like my house in Korea that had dual 110 and 240 with some of the sockets helpfully wired to the wrong voltage that fry the appliance, or my indonesia house with no earth, with shocks from anything metal in the house, or my personal favourite, an extension cable with prongs on one end and the other end live, so you take 240 on picking up the cable / touching the prongs.

So handphones are safe, but electricity is not

[Motorola 3G Victim @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Like lambs to a slaughter, people are so trusting of everyday things, not realizing how easily some of these things can kill them.

We bought a house as the second owners. The first owners had gotten divorced shortly after moving in and we got the house about 1 year after it was finished. When the clock in the kitchen cook top died I discovered that the builder had improperly attached the 220V power to the cook top. If someone had touched the range hood and cook top at the same time they would have gotten 220V through them.

Same house many years later... A large storm came through and knocked out power all over. By the time the over worked line crews got around to restoring power to the house they were too tired to do it right. The house wound up with a "floating neutral" which then proceeded to cook protective circuits in a 27" TV (amongst other electrical devices that started dying). The result (after a few weeks) was a TV that got even crappier Viacom than normal. When the cable guy came he got knocked on his ass when he touched the metal on the end of the patch cable screwed into the TV set. When measured, every exposed piece of metal on the TV read 124V.

I was at Verizon last week signing up for an e815 (I'd finally had enough of AT&T and the A845, now Verizon had EVDO where I live) and a lady came in demanding that the manager swap out her 18 month old car charger. She knew it was past the 1 year warranty but she right away started out claiming the charger was defective in its design. The piece of plastic that keeps the wires for rubbing on the hard plastic case had come loose and she'd been busy rubbing the wires on the plastic edges and thus stripping the insulation off the wires and pushing them in and out until at least one wires broke off inside (she finally came in when she couldn't get a charge).

In her case it was a car charger. But imagine some equally ignorant person doing the same thing with a "wall wart" in a country with 240V AC. Pushing those wires that run up to the handset back inside and one day you win a free trip to heaven when the bare wire touches 240V inside the wall wart.

If you take apart a Motorola, Nokia or Sony wall wart you will find that all the bits that have contact with AC voltages are very securely insulated so some one would really have to work at it to fry themselves in this manner. But if you take apart one of those $.99 eBay wall warts (as I did once) you will find that for $.99 you can't be so gosh darn excessive with materials to insulate bits that have contact with AC power.

Greed isn't the only reason an OEM charger costs more than a $.99 charger.

As for the guy who got 240V into the side of his head...

Back when Edison and Westinghouse were engaged in their corporate war to decide AC vs DC for public power the Edison camp would run around electrocuting animals to demonstrate just how dangerous Westinghouse AC was. Edison's roving death circus would routinely kill cats, dogs, goats, chickens, horses and even at one event: an Elephant. They used the same generator Westinghouse used for its spiffy new invention: the electric chair. But there was this one dog that kept surviving the jolts of Westinghouse AC power. Until one day the Edison folks decided to keep cooking the dog until it did die. And of course there have been recorded incidents of usage of the Westinghouse electric chair where killing the human took more than a brief jolt. Seems there may be some genetic "immunity" that makes some people easier to electrocute than others...

[Gleb Serbin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

for all those people listing amperages, you need to keep in mind that it takes 6milliamps ACROSS THE HEART, now if you sent a 3 milliamp shock across the body from hand to hand, you might only get .5 or less milliamps across the heart. i HIGHLY doubt this story but not being a specialist on the matter, i cant be 100% sure.

[anthony @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

he was both killed and electrocuted. That takes some talent. does that mean he was revived at one point, then killed again.

[Russ @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

"Can you hear me now?"







Had to, sorry.

: )

[corey @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

what a shock, maybe I will get another Nigerian email

[Google Nazi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

1 - There isn't enough power to kill somsone over a DC current unless your getting fried for over 5 minutes.

2 - The elctronics inside the cell phone cannot discharge in the ear, or mouthpiece because of how its made.

3 - The phone is plastic. Thus cannot conduct electricity.

4 - You cannot get shocked if you put your finger on the AC adapter or even if its half plugged.

5 - Even if you used your cellphone underwater you wouldn't get electrocuted unless it was still plugged in which who the hell would do that?

[Richard E. Salvatierra @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Well, this isn't a "Urban legend" in may coutry Ecuador that was a real situation. The electrical conection was very bad and This person exactly just left the bath. They must Know the form to live on each part of the world.

[Sam @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

#29: I'm not sure how you'd "accidentally" plug something into a 240v outlet. It's not a matter of just crossing wires. You have to have a breaker that spans both poles, and extra wiring.

Normal outlets don't even have the capacity to support a 240v connection. You'd just instantly trip the breaker if you plugged anything into a standard outlet that used two 120v poles with no neutral.

Creating a 240v connection in any modern US home by it's nature is just not something that happens by accident then.

And until I see a coroner's report, I just can't believe that any little 3ft strip of 22 gauge stranded copper wire could put through enough of a shock to kill someone before shorting itself to oblivion. The human body has a helluva lot more resistance than that little bit of wire.

[Ugo @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Not every thing that comes out of Nigeria is bogus, if the story is true it is possible be bought a refurbished (rewound) charger or a bad imitation that was more of a death trap. The Power supply in Nigeria ia anything but steady you expect 230-240V at 60Hhz but you get 180 to 220 max because of in-efficient power generation and supply

[kyopo lawyer @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

This happened to me a couple days ago, oh wait I forgot I'm dead. ugh.

[jaybee @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

To all those saying - "Ow my phone charger is 500mA and the human body only needs 200mA (accross the heart) to be fatal" you appear to be forgetting ohms law, or you have invented some mysterious way to circumvent it - perhaps you should try and sell it through a nigerian scam or something.

Remeber to sign off your posts with IANAEE (I am not an electrical engineer)

[Marian @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Sounds like another nigerian scam :-D

[EDIE @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

I'm getting tired of these emails where I would go to "urban legands' to check them out. you would think that news like that, the media would have metioned it on t.v. ??
people out there need to get a life away from their computers.