Validity of conventional approaches for calculating body currents resulting from electric shocks

In North America, ANSI/IEEE Standard 80 is almost universally applied to determine electrical currents flowing through the human body as the result of touch and step voltages near transmission and distribution facilities. The authors argue that significant inaccuracies can occur when the ANSI/IEEE Standard 80 based method is applied without understanding the assumptions which underlie it. In particular, errors can occur when the method is applied to grounding situations where the remote foot resistance of a human is much different from the resistance through ground between a human's feet and the buried grounding system under study. The authors discuss the problem of determining body currents from measured touch voltages and present an improved model for doing so.< >