It's generally safe to shower during thunder storms and a young boy who suffered an electric shock at his Brisbane home appears to have been unlucky, science guru Dr Karl Kruszelnicki says.
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The young boy was showering at his Ferny Grove home when wild storms hit just before 7pm (AEST) on Sunday.
Paramedics who went to the home were told he'd suffered an electrical shock from a lightning strike and the boy was taken to hospital in a stable condition, complaining of pain in his legs.
Dr Kruszelnicki says it's possible the house wasn't properly grounded, or that the lightning strike created an electrical field so powerful it spread in all directions and rendered the home's grounding system useless.
"In general it is safe," he told ABC radio of showering in a storm.
He said homes have earthing systems to deal with lightning strikes, providing a way for electricity to find its way safely into the ground.
"The earth of the electricity is tied to the earth of the water pipes, and then they both go into a bit metal stake ... that's hammered into the ground," he explains.
But occasionally earthing wires are not properly linked up, or plastic piping might have been used to replace a small section of a home's network of metal pipes.
"It may well be that it's not legally done, that there could be a little plastic section. Or it could be that there was simply a huge electrical field that overpowered that."
Dr Kruszelnicki said an entire herd of dairy cows were killed by a lightning strike at Dorrigo in northern NSW in 2005.
The lightning bolt didn't hit the cows but it did strike a large tree about 40 metres away, generating a electrical field so strong it passed through their bodies and stopped their hearts.
A group of golfers in Milan once survived a lightening strike but only because they were utterly drenched.
"If you're very lucky and you are entirely wet all over your skin, the electricity goes through the thin layer of water over your skin," he says.
Lightning strikes can also cause all sorts of long-term neurological problems and most victims suffer some degree of brain damage.
So would Dr Kruszelnicki himself shower in an electrical storm?
"Overwhelmingly I would. I think it would be perfectly safe."
But there's no way he'd chat away on a landline phone. That's not safe in a storm, but if you're on your mobile phone, go for it.
Australian Associated Press
