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Re: Pacmakers and Tesla coils = bad??
I witnessed first-hand what a TC can do to a modern pacemaker. A fellow
was about 20-25ft from a running 15/60 coil. It ran for maybe 30
seconds then suddenly he shook violently and dropped down on to his
knees. Apparently, the gap misfired or whatever and for a second the
frequency of the output was abnormal and triggered his pacemaker. If I
remember right his delivered 5J. Whatever it delivered, it scared the
holy heck out of me and was very painful for him. Fortunately, the
shock had no ill effects on his rhythm.
Obviously this situation could have been disastrous. The TC could have
triggered his pacemaker and sent his heart into an irregular beat, or
perhaps worse could have quietly destroyed his pacemaker and would have
never been noticed until it failed to shock when it was really needed.
IMHO it's just not worth it. Keep pacemakers FAR away for any TC!
-Stan
Tesla List wrote:
>
> Original Poster: Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> I just want to thank you for adding this sort of expert addition to all
> this. I got onto this pacemaker thing by accident, but the stuff I saw
> really worried me!!
>
> Having a pacemaker zap someone would be sort of unpleasant. However,
> having it do ANYTHING it is not supposed to be doing is a real concern.
> Tesla coils would be almost a worst case situation to find these ultra high
> tech gizmos dealing with.
>
> When they were just simply bipolar devices they were probably pretty immune
> to a lot of things. However, the are now really sophisticated and they
> could do a lot of harm if they were to get "confused". I think we need to
> be extra careful of these things now!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Terry
>