 Mobile phones and iPods can kill, doctors warn
Mobile phones and iPods can kill, doctors warn
Using a mobile phone or an iPod during a thunderstorm could kill you, doctors warned today.
Three doctors said using such devices in stormy weather could increase your risk of being struck by lightning.
The effects of electrocution were also likely to be more severe as the metallic components of phones and portable music players could act as a conductor, causing potentially lethal internal injuries, the doctors wrote in a letter to the British Medical Journal.
They described how a 15-year-old girl was struck by lightning while using her mobile phone in a large London park last year. Although successfully resuscitated, she was still in a wheelchair a year later and found to be suffering complex physical, cognitive and emotional problems. The girl also had a perforated eardrum in the ear she had been holding the phone to.
When someone is struck by lightning, the high resistance of human skin usually results in lightning being conducted over the skin rather than through the body - a process known as flashover.
But the doctors said conductive materials in direct contact with skin such as metallic objects - like a mobile phone - disrupt the flashover and result in internal injury with a greater risk of dying.
They said three other cases had been reported in newspapers in China, Korea, and Malaysia. "All these events resulted in death after the people were struck by lightning while using their mobile phones outdoors during storms," they wrote.
They added: "This rare phenomenon is a public health issue, and education is necessary to highlight the risk of using mobile phones outdoors during stormy weather to prevent future fatal consequences from lightning strike injuries related to mobile phones."
The doctors said the Australian Lightning Protection Standard recommends that metallic objects, including cordless or mobile phones, should not be used, or carried, outdoors during a thunderstorm. They called for British telecommunication companies to issue similar advice.
Consultant surgeon Ram Dhillon, one of the doctors who signed the letter, said they had not found any examples of people being killed while using a mobile in a storm in the UK.
But he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If you are struck and there is a conductive component on your skin such as a mobile phone or some other object, then the electrical activity does internalise.
"The commonest cause of death usually is a cardiac arrest. But otherwise there is severe disruption to other components within the body such as the central nervous system and blood vessels and also the lungs."  | 
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