Re: TC-safety

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Christoph,

I have heard of many dangers of coiling, but these are new ones ;o))

At 10:26 PM 6/22/2003 +0200, you wrote:
>Hello everybody.
>
>After my first 7 month of coiling I always thought I did read a lot about 
>safety before I started and sofar everything worked out well without the 
>need of an amulance or even worse ;-)
>Last week my former physics teacher joined me to have a look at my 5KVA 
>maggie ( only 4 feet output currently, I am 10 feet away ). The room is 10 
>feet X 30feet. Two day later he called me quite late in the evening and 
>said that everything I was doing was way to dangerous for two reasons:
>
>1.: My MOT under oil could produce dioxine for any reason.....? why should 
>it? Is stays cold and there is now arcing under the oil... am I wrong?

A quick check at:

http://www.ejnet-dot-org/dioxin/

Says we need to "burn chlorine-based chemical compounds with hydrocarbons." 
to make dioxin.  But you are not burning anything and you don't have any 
chlorine...   Perhaps he thought you were using PCB oils instead of plain 
old mineral oil.  There are like 20 million high voltage transformers 
around soaking in mineral oil, and the reported dioxin dangers are 
zero...  He must have picked up some PCB danger info which does not apply here.

>
>2.: I have to do my coiling indoors and the room has carpet on the floor. 
>during summer the humidity can get pretty high ( not really tropical ). He 
>said that streamers could travel through the carpet to the walls of the 
>room and by that current would flow through my body....

The current will likely flow somewhere else since your are not a good 
ground reference and everything else looks like a better ground than you to 
the streamers.  Streamer currents are not known to be dangerous at low 
levels.  Indeed people with like 25 years of mental exposure report no illness:

http://www.krampf-dot-com/p_images/fp_ele_sparks.jpg

Don't try this at home!  Robert's head band is "not" wired so the streamer 
currents really do go though his head!  After 25 years, if this has not 
damaged Robert, the rest of us far field casual observers have nothing to 
worry about...

I have never heard of any "long term or latent" damage from Tesla 
coils.  Just the immediate effects if one gets into the high current stuff:

http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Misc/Deaths.txt

So I don't think the dangers your teacher tells of are significant.  If 
he/she wants to E-mail me, I would be happy to discuss it all too.

>
>I tried to prove each of those statements but was not able to prove 
>one.....Was I only lucky until now?
>
>I would really like to hear from your experiences ...... I am really 
>confused and afraid.

Calm down!  High currents through the body will certainly kill you.  But 
beyond that, the "dangers" of Tesla coiling approaches zero...

http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Safety/safety.htm


Cheers,

         Terry

         terrellf-at-qwest-dot-net

>
>Thanks
>
>Christoph