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A school lunch lady was making food for the children when she was shocked by the oven. The kitchen was closed for several days for an investigation.

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An investigation has been launched after a school dinner lady suffered a severe electric shock.

The woman was working in the kitchen at Bowker Vale Primary in Crumpsall.

She was preparing meals at the Middleton Road site when she received an electric shock from an oven.

The woman was taken to North Manchester General Hospital for treatment following the incident, on Wednesday last week.

One source said: "The kitchen was only refurbished in the summer. The lady was using an oven on Wednesday morning when she got the electric shock. She was in a bad way as he blood pressure went very high.

"The lady was visited in hospital by two council officials and I understand the council and health and safety have launched an investigation."

It is understood the kitchen was initially closed for several days.

Bowker Vale is a large, two form entry, successful community school catering for around 450 pupils aged from 3 to 11 years.

In its last Ofsted report in January 2012 it was judged to be 'good'.

A Manchester council spokesperson said: "An incident last week involving a staff member in the school kitchen is being investigated. The kitchen remains open as usual and the children haven't been affected."

The school declined to comment.

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Dinner lady suffers severe electric shock in school kitchen

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An investigation has been launched after a school dinner lady suffered a severe electric shock. The woman was working in the kitchen at Bowker Vale Primary in Crumpsall. She was preparing meals at the Middleton Road site when she received an electric shock from an oven.

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Mother Electrocuted While Mopping Up Water

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Mother Electrocuted While Mopping Up Water

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A young mother Emma Shaw was electrocuted while mopping up water from kitchen floor. She got electrocuted when a heating appliance made contact with this the water and electrocuted her. Emma Shaw died from her electrical injury on December 14, 2007.

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22-year-old's body was found by her devastated boyfriend next to a boiler

Inquest hears of a series of blunders by electrical and building firm

Grieving mum blasts company for not doing its job properly

A catalogue of mistakes by workmen led to a young mother being killed after she was electrocuted while mopping up water at her home.

Emma Shaw, 22, received a fatal electric shock while mopping up the water from the floor of her flat after the heating appliance sprang a leak.

During a seven-day inquest, jurors were told of a series of blunders carried out by employees from Staffordshire firm Electrical and Building Services leading to Miss Shaw's death on December 14, 2007.

Her son Brayden, then aged 23 months, had been shut in the living room while his mother went to tend to the boiler in a hallway cupboard.

Brayden is now being cared for by his dad, Miss Shaw's then-partner, gas engineer Andy Cross, 29, who found his girlfriend's body on the floor of the flat in West Bromwich, Sandwell.

At the end of the inquest, jurors ruled that Miss Shaw was unlawfully killed.

Her family told how they will continue to press for justice.

Mum Diane Potter, 46, said her daughter, who worked at Asda, had hoped to join the RAF but had failed a medical because she had eczema, and was on a two-year waiting list for an appeal.

She had two sisters, Amy, now aged 22, and Laura, 19.

'We were more like sisters and friends than mother and daughter,' Miss Potter said.

'Emma would go to work and I would watch Brayden.'

Speaking of the jury verdict she said: 'I'm so pleased. We've got a little bit of justice for Emma. I'm still angry and upset about the building firm. If they had done their job properly we wouldn't be here now.'

Miss Shaw's dad Paul Shaw, 49, who now lives in Ireland with his second wife Kathleen, said: 'Emma was bright and cheerful - very sure of herself. She was very lovable.

'It's up to the CPS whether they proceed with criminal court action. We are also seeking suitable compensation for Brayden.'

Jurors at the inquest said installation work on the boiler in the flat was 'not adequate' and criticised its 'poor layout and poor design'.

A screw fixing up plasterboard in apartments had gone through a cable, causing live electricity to escape into the stud wall.

This had not been detected because insulation resistance tests had not been carried out properly on the wiring, the inquest heard.

And water from the boiler also became live when some of it seeped under the skirting board.

In their inquisition form, members of the jury blasted 'the failure to report a known hazard of trapping cables and not making tradesmen aware of this fact'.

They found further fault in the fact there had been no drawings prepared of the site, so that workmen would know where electricity 'safe zones' were in the flat.

Jurors ruled testing on the flat, was 'not carried out to a professional standard if at all'.

They said that there had been a 'failure by the company to assess the capabilities of their workforce and constantly monitor their development' and a 'failure to comply with their health and safety standards'.

Black Country coroner Robin Balmain told the inquest that he would use coroner's rules to write to the National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting, which is the voluntary regulatory body for the electrical contracting industry.

He said he would be asking if anything can be done to curb the practice of electric workers signing safety certificates based solely on information reported to them by others.

'The dangers of that ought to be obvious to anybody,' Mr Balmain said.

Boyfriend Andy Cross said he had met Miss Shaw at a party at the Five Ways pub in West Bromwich, nearly four years before the tragedy, through a mutual friend.

He said: 'Time is a healer but I still see visions of her. Sometimes when I get up in the morning, one of the first things I think about is her.'

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is being asked to have a second look at Miss Shaw's death after it originally said there was not enough evidence to charge anyone.

Speaking at the end of the inquest, barrister Susan Monaghan, representing Miss Shaw's family, said: 'We hope that the CPS would look at it again, and for the family it's about justice for Emma.'

Ruth Barber, an independent solicitor representing the Health and Safety Executive at Miss Shaw's inquest, confirmed the paperwork would be passed on to see if a prosecution could be brought against Anchor Electrical and Building Services or any of its employees or directors.

She said: 'The file will go to the CPS and then it's really dependent on what the CPS wants to do.'

A CPS spokesman was unable to confirm whether a new investigation would take place, after earlier efforts by detectives, headed by now-retired Det Sgt Graham Sanders, failed to lead to any charges.

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Young mother electrocuted as she mopped up water from leaky boiler died after catalogue of workmen's errors

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22-year-old's body was found by her devastated boyfriend next to a boiler Inquest hears of a series of blunders by electrical and building firm Grieving mum blasts company for not doing its job properly A catalogue of mistakes by workmen led to a young mother being killed after she was electrocuted while mopping up water at her home.

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A 28 year old pregnant woman was shocked when  her dry hand touched a kitchen electric appliance with worn insulation connected to a 220-V, 55-Hz alternating current. later the fetus had hypoactivity and a remarkable change in fetal movement pattern. The child may be affected.

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Abstract

Objectives Data on fetal effects following accidental electric shock during pregnancy are scarce. We report on a case of accidental maternal electric shock associated with benign fetal arrhythmia in a woman at 28 weeks' gestation.

Study Design Case report.

Results Although electrocution involving low-voltage, low-frequency current has been associated with fatal cardiac arrhythmias and conduction abnormalities, two protective parameters in the present case likely reduced the fetal injury: the dry skin at the site of current entry and the hand-to-hand pathway of current flow.

Conclusion Because the pathophysiology of electric injury is altered during pregnancy, assessment of fetal well-being should be prompted no matter how trivial an incident may appear.

Keywords: accidental electric shock, pregnancy, fetal injury, electrocution

The occurrence of accidental electric shock during pregnancy poses a dual challenge and is the source of significant concern with respect to maternal and fetal well-being. Data on fetal risks following accidental maternal electrocution are scattered. Fetal injuries have been reported to include sudden deaths, cardiac arrhythmias, intrauterine growth retardation, oligohydramnios, and abortion. Postmortem examinations have revealed dilatation of fetal cardiac chambers, as well as hemorrhages in fetal brain, kidneys, and liver. The most common source of published data on accidental maternal electrocution, however, has often been cumulative case reports, which suggest a fetal mortality of 76%. This type of reporting nevertheless is prone to significant overestimate bias, as it is often prompted by adverse fetal outcome. Although case reports have demonstrated an unrealistically high perception of fetal risks, a prospective cohort study from Toronto suggested that accidental electric shock during pregnancy poses major risks to the fetus only in 15% of cases and in the presence of particular enhancing parameters, such as the characteristics and pathway of the electric current.

We present a woman who sustained an accidental electric shock at 28 weeks into her gestation, resulting in fetal arrhythmia of benign and transient nature. Parameters believed to influence the extent and likelihood of fetal injury are also discussed.

Case Report

A 28-year-old primigravid woman presented at 28 weeks' gestation for accidental electric shock to her dry hand from a kitchen electric appliance with worn insulation connected to a 220-V, 55-Hz alternating current. The duration of the shock was estimated by the woman not to exceed 1 second, during which she reported hand tetany but no loss of consciousness. The woman reported to the clinic 2 hours later because of fetal hypoactivity and a remarkable change in fetal movement pattern, which became brisker and short-lasting.

Maternal physical examination revealed no signs of superficial burns or any current entry or exit skin marks. Because the woman was wearing rubber slippers, the flow of current was estimated to be hand-to-hand. Fetal Doppler monitoring showed an irregular fetal heart rhythm and missed beats, but no evidence of fetal distress. Ultrasound examination revealed a 1,220-g normal-looking male fetus with unremarkable amniotic fluid index and placentation.

The pregnant woman was monitored for 6 hours during which external fetal heart tracing reverted to regular rhythm and movements returned to previous normal pattern. She was discharged home and delivered at 38 weeks' gestation a live male newborn weighing 3,120 g with Apgar scores of 8 and 10 at 1 and 5 minutes, respectively. Postnatal physical examination was unremarkable with no burn skin marks identified. Electrocardiography revealed normal sinus rhythm and no functional conduction abnormalities. Echocardiography showed no particular structural abnormalities.

Discussion

Several parameters have been proposed to influence the seriousness of fetal effects following maternal electric shock. The characteristics of electricity and the pathway of current flow both appear to be important determinants of fetal risk during accidental maternal electrocution.

Alternating current seems to be associated with more serious risks than direct current, in that it can provoke repetitive tetanic muscle contractions causing the individual to grip the source of electricity leading to longer electric exposure. It is also associated with a ninefold greater risk of ventricular fibrillation than direct current, considering the same voltage and intensity parameters. Although a high-voltage electric source (1,000 V or more) is usually the cause of a more harmful discharge of electricity, cardiac arrest from ventricular fibrillation and conduction failure appears to occur more commonly with low-voltage (less than 1,000 V), low-frequency (15 to 150 Hz) alternating current. It was reported that ∼10 to 46% of adult survivors experience subsequent cardiac arrhythmias, the most common of which are sinus tachycardia and premature ventricular systoles. Conduction abnormalities have also been described as a result of the vulnerability of the sinoatrial and atrioventricular nodes, and they are expressed as transient nonspecific ST-T-wave abnormalities, sinus bradycardia, and high-degree atrioventricular block on electrocardiography. Because very little is known about fetal arrhythmias occurring following accidental maternal electric shock, extrapolation from adult survivors' data may prove intuitive in that respect.

Dry maternal keratinized skin is highly resistant to electricity, hence playing the role of "gatekeeper" limiting the conduction of electric current to deeper structures. Moist skin, in contrast, conducts electricity more readily and therefore is associated with more extensive injury to internal organs despite often misleading superficial thermal injury and skin marks. The vertical hand-to-foot and head-to-foot pathways of current appear to carry the worst risk to the fetus as they travel through the uterus, placenta, and amniotic fluid. Keeping in mind that fetal skin is less resistant to the passage of electric current than mother's skin, it transmits current effectively, which increases the risk for fetal injury. In fact, fetal skin provides an excellent conduction platform and has been demonstrated to offer 200 times less resistance to the passage of current than postnatal skin. It has therefore been estimated that direct exposure to a 100- to 380-V, 25-mA current for 0.3 seconds could be lethal for the fetus. Fortunately, only 10% of home accidents involve such pathways. A horizontal hand-to-hand current flow represents a more common scenario and has been associated with least harm to the fetus albeit with a higher risk of maternal fatal cardiac arrhythmias.

In the present case, the dry skin at the site of electric current entry and the horizontal hand-to-hand current flow appeared to have provided partial protection to the fetus, as evidenced by the immediate reversal of a benign pattern of fetal arrhythmia followed by uncomplicated term delivery with adequate fetal weight gain and excellent Apgar scores at birth.

Prior knowledge of the basic principles of physics may be helpful for treating physicians in interpreting the consequences of injuries sustained by the mother and her fetus following accidental electrocution during pregnancy. Particular attention should be provided to the nature of the electric current and its pathway during history taking. Low-voltage (less than 1,000 V), low-frequency (15 to 150 Hz) alternating current is a typical characteristic of home electrocution and has been associated with the highest risk for cardiac arrhythmias and conduction failure. Vertical current flow (hand-to-foot and head-to-foot) through a wet skin increases the frequency and propensity of fetal injury.

Because the pathophysiology of electric injury is altered during pregnancy, the consequences of electrocution in pregnant women may be more serious than actually anticipated. Fetal well-being should therefore be promptly assessed following maternal electric shock no matter how trivial an incident may appear.

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Accidental Electric Shock during Pregnancy: Reflection on a Case

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Objectives Data on fetal effects following accidental electric shock during pregnancy are scarce. We report on a case of accidental maternal electric shock associated with benign fetal arrhythmia in a woman at 28 weeks' gestation. Study Design Case report.

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Do not try to catch a sharp falling utensil

Never use wet oven mits to take out a hot plate from an oven

Do not get distracted while handling hot plates

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Make sure that all counter top appliances are unplugged when not in use and located away from the sink.

Dry your hands before using any counter top electrical equipment or using switches

Pull by the plug not the cord.

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Kitchen Electrical Safety Tips, Pittsburgh Electricians

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Your safety is our number one priority. It is very important to us that our clients are aware of ways to maintain a safety-approved electrical status for their homes or places of business. We recommend the following tips and resources.

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Some effects are

Vifib, which can be fatal if sustained.

Temporary respiratory paralysis and possibly burns.

Beginning of sustained muscular contraction ("Can't let go" current.)

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This article includes the effects of being shocked at different voltages and the symptoms of one who is shocked. It also explains how to administer first aid and what not to do.

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Questions that cross everyone's mind who has worked on electronics are: what does it take to feel a shock, and at what level can you get into serious trouble. The simple answer is that low levels of electricity have the possibility to cause injury, either directly or indirectly.

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Frayed Wires: Check appliances regularly. If you find frayed wires, replace appliance immediately.
Kids using electrical items: You should show caution when your child is around electrical items. 2/3 of children can be prone to electrical shock by pulling and tugging cords, and bite electrical cords.
Using while wet: Electricity can flow more easily through your body when your hands are wet, but that doesn't mean you cant get electrocuted when your hands are dry.

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You already know not to stick your fingers or tools into electric outlets, and you know to put covers on them to protect kids from electric shocks. But you might not be aware of these surprising ways you or your child could get an electric shock or electrical burn.

Electric shock, by the way, is not the same as electrocution, though many people mix these up, says John Drengenberg, consumer safety director at UL. "Electrocution is when the electric current kills you. Getting a shock is different. You touch something and jump back, but you've survived. A shock is scary, but electrocution will kill you."

There are three main causes of electric shocks in the home, Drengenberg says: small appliances, power tools and lighting equipment. "For example, if you're working with your electric hedge clipper and you cut the power cord or extension cord, you could get sparking and a shock," Drengenberg says. And those sparks could lead to an electrical burn, which can cause long-lasting damage to nerves, muscles and internal organs, the American Burn Association says.

Shocks are dangerous in themselves but there's also something called "secondary effects." "Say you're up on a ladder and you're replacing a light bulb or fixture. But you forget to shut the power off, and you do get a shock," Drengenberg says. "You react instinctively - you jump back or step back, and you fall off the ladder." Maybe you hit your head, maybe you break a wrist. Those secondary effects could harm or kill you.

Related: 8 Signs You May Have a Problem With Your Electrical Wiring

To avoid a truly shocking incident, steer clear of these mistakes.

1. Using appliances with frayed wires. Check your appliances regularly for frayed wires. If you find any, do not use the appliance. Replace it.

2. Walking in a flooded basement. "If your basement is flooded, don't wade in the water unless you've got the power turned off. You might have a washing machine or electric dryer down there, and some of those electric components may be in the water" and can electrify it, Drengenberg says.

3. Touching downed lines. Contact with power lines is a major cause of electricity-related injuries and deaths. " You may think they're phone lines or cable lines, which won't electrocute you. But you don't know if those lines are touching a live power wire down the line," says Drengenberg. Assume any downed utility line is "live," or has electricity running through it. Even if it's dead, it may be re-energized if the utility company tries to send power back into it. So don't touch the line, and don't touch anything touching the line, such as a tree branch or another person. Also, don't climb utility poles or trees near power lines, and don't fly a kite near them either.

4. Letting kids play with electrical items. Two thirds of electrical burn injuries happen to children under 12. Don't let kids near electrical cords, and especially don't let babies or toddlers bite on them, according to Shriners Hospital for Children.

5. Swimming or staying outside in a lightning storm. Go inside during lightning storms, Shriners Hospital advises. If you're stuck outside, try to avoid being near tall objects, such as big, isolated trees. Instead, squat down to the ground (don't lie flat), possibly near bushes or groups of trees roughly the same height. And never go swimming or boating during a lightning storm.

Related: Dock Dangers: Experts Warn of Electrocution Risk

6. Touching anything electrical while you stand in water or touch water pipes. If you're standing in water, whether it's a bathtub or puddle, don't touch anything that uses electricity. And never touch electrical appliances while touching faucets or water pipes. If there is a problem or malfunction in the appliance, you could get shocked. "Your faucets are generally big pieces of metal," Drengenberg says. If you touch the faucet with one hand while you're using a faulty electric appliance with the other, that will complete the circuit, he says.

7. Touching anything electrical while your hands are wet. "When your hands are dry you can still get an electric shock. But when your hands are wet, the electricity is going to flow through your body more easily," Drengenberg says.

8. Forgetting to shut off your home power supply before making repairs. A lot of electric shock incidents happen to do-it-yourselfers because they haven't turned off the power - or they think the power is already off before starting a project, Drengenberg says. Mount Sinai Hospital says working on appliances or electrical installations without proper training can lead to electric shocks and burns.

Related: DIY Projects You Might Want to Hire a Professional For

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Angela is a Pulitzer Prize-winning digital editor with more than 15 years of experience delivering news and information to audiences worldwide. Prior to joining SafeBee, she was the features editor for Boston.com at The Boston Globe, overseeing health, travel, entertainment, business and lifestyle coverage. Before moving to features, she was the news and homepage editor, covering stories such as the Boston Marathon bombing, Red Sox World Series victories, presidential elections, a papal inauguration, and more. Her favorite safety tip: Clean your phone! The average cell phone has 18 times more germs than the toilet handle in a men's restroom.

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8 Ways You Didn't Know You Could Get an Electric Shock or Electrical Burn

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You already know not to stick your fingers or tools into electric outlets, and you know to put covers on them to protect kids from electric shocks. But you might not be aware of these surprising ways you or your child could get an electric shock or electrical burn.

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The main causes of getting shocked/electrocuted, are having tools that are battery operated or use electrical outlets, and are combined with misuse or accidental mishaps

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Leave all electrical utensils away from water when is unused

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Read and follow manufacturer's directions before using any electrical appliance. Plug cords into appliance before plugging them into the wall. outlets. Disconnect appliances by pulling on the plug rather than cord.

Avoid overloading electrical outlets. Unplug an electrical appliance before cleaning.

Handle electrical appliances only when your hands are dry.