How does wetness affect the resistance of your body?

1 Answer
Mark C.
Jan 12, 2018

It reduces it dramatically.

Explanation:

Your skin is encrusted with salts as a result of perspiration (no personal comment, mine is too) but as it is dry it doesn’t provide a very good conductive path (the ions are not mobile.) A typical value might be several M#Omega#.

Once wet, the salts (mainly NaCl) dissolve, dissociate and can move. As a result the resistance may fall to a few tens of Ohms.

This explains why, in many countries, electrical sockets are not present in bathrooms with the possible exception of shaver sockets.

Related questions
Impact of this question
2329 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License