Main causes of Electric Shock or Electric Accident

Electric Shock is already discussed in Electric Safety and Electric Shock. In that post we discussed What is electric shock, what are the effects of electric shock and how these shocks can be prevented ? What we missed in that post was why these shocks occur and how to treat a person who has experienced an electric shock, so in next article We'll discuss these two things. Lets begin with Causes of Electric Shock in this post :

Causes of Electric Shock

Electric shocks are essentially caused by touching a point that is at some potential and the intensity of the shock depends upon the potential of that point or metallic part. Here are some possible reason for electric shock :

• Ignoring Instructions : This is the most common cause of electric shock. Normally every electric equipment comes with the operating instructions and ignoring these instruction may result in an electric shock. Every live part of the equipment is assigned a danger notice or danger plate, ignoring this will result in electric shock.
• Defective Equipments : Working on a defective equipment is very dangerous. It may give electric shock to the person who is working over it. If an electric equipment is defective then it may give unexpected results like sparking, very high voltage at metallic body parts etc.
• Touching Live Parts : Sometimes a person may accidentally touch the live part of a machine or line, this will result in electric shock and proper care is needed when you are near live part of the machine.
• Proper Protective Arrangement : If a device or system is not provided with proper safety arrangement then working with such equipment may result in electric shock.
• Proper Safety Devices : Apart from safety arrangement at site the person working on such devices must wear proper safety devices like Helmets, Safety glasses, safety belt etc.
• Improper Insulation : A device with improper insulation will result in electric shock when somebody touches the insulation. This is due to the fact that the person may come in contact of the live conductor when trying to hold the insulation.

These were the most common causes of getting electric shock or reasons for electric accidents. To safe operations these must be avoided and proper care must be taken. In next article we'll continue with the treatment of electric shock.