Recent discussions have moved me to re-visit the question of fairly recent statistics on electricity-related deaths in the UK, since previous discussion have utilised fairly old and somewhat iffy data.
Below I summarise the official figures from death certification records for England and Wales for 2013-1017, and the figures are actually even appreciably lower than I had expected. The ICD-10 classification of causes of death used for this purpose has only 3 categories for deaths due to electricity, as tabulated below. If one excludes deaths related to transmission lines (not of interest to our discussions here), the annual figures are hardly into double figures for most years - and that includes all deaths certified as being due toi electricity, many/most of which are quite probably in work-related environments - so the 'domestic' deaths were very probably 'in single figures' for most/all of these years. 2015 was odd, in that the figure was approaching double that in the other years (but still only 23 total).
One major caveat ... Albeit easily the best thing we have got, death certification records are far from foolproof. Even when a death is clearly the consequence of a prior electric shock, it does not necessarily have to be certified as having been due to that cause. Paper death certificates have the facility to record subsidiary levels of cause of death, but it seems that only that recorded as the primary cause gets into the searchable official databases. None of the ICD-10 sub-categories of deaths due to heat (i.e. burns) seem to include electrical burns.
There is, of course, also the matter of deaths due to 'electrical fires'. There are certainly a good few deaths due to domestic fires, but the fact that 'electrical' seems to be used as the scapegoat underlying cause for any fire for which there is not some other clear explanation means that one cannot determine how many deaths are due to domestic fires that genuinely were 'electrical' in origin. Death certification does not help, since ICD-10 does not identify even the alleged cause of a fire for those deaths due to fire in a building (and nor does it distinguish between fires in homes and those in other buildings).
To help with perspective, I also include below the corresponding numbers of annual deaths due to a few other causes. The number of deaths recorded as being due to falls from beds is considerably greater than the number recorded as due to electricity (and the same, individually, for falls from chairs and falls from ladders), whilst even the number of deaths recorded as being due to 'contact with hot tap water' is at least as great as those due to electricity.
Useful, let alone reliable, hard statistics on serious injuries due to electricity are essentially non-existent. HSE etc. has some figures (which may or may not be fairly reliable) relating to workplace-related injuries, but that is not really of interest to us here.
As above, one has to be very cautious about interpreting these statistics, but in terms of deaths recorded as being due to electricity, the annual number in the UK in domestic premises is clearly so small that there is hardly any scope for changes in regulation of electrical work in the UK, or different approaches to electrical safety (even 'draconian') in other countries, to 'do much better' than the apparent present situation in the UK. No matter how draconian a system, "accidents (and 'negligences') will always happen", and it's hard to see that it would/could ever get down to less than a handful of deaths per year in a population of 60 or so million.
Kind Regards, John
Below I summarise the official figures from death certification records for England and Wales for 2013-1017, and the figures are actually even appreciably lower than I had expected. The ICD-10 classification of causes of death used for this purpose has only 3 categories for deaths due to electricity, as tabulated below. If one excludes deaths related to transmission lines (not of interest to our discussions here), the annual figures are hardly into double figures for most years - and that includes all deaths certified as being due toi electricity, many/most of which are quite probably in work-related environments - so the 'domestic' deaths were very probably 'in single figures' for most/all of these years. 2015 was odd, in that the figure was approaching double that in the other years (but still only 23 total).
One major caveat ... Albeit easily the best thing we have got, death certification records are far from foolproof. Even when a death is clearly the consequence of a prior electric shock, it does not necessarily have to be certified as having been due to that cause. Paper death certificates have the facility to record subsidiary levels of cause of death, but it seems that only that recorded as the primary cause gets into the searchable official databases. None of the ICD-10 sub-categories of deaths due to heat (i.e. burns) seem to include electrical burns.
There is, of course, also the matter of deaths due to 'electrical fires'. There are certainly a good few deaths due to domestic fires, but the fact that 'electrical' seems to be used as the scapegoat underlying cause for any fire for which there is not some other clear explanation means that one cannot determine how many deaths are due to domestic fires that genuinely were 'electrical' in origin. Death certification does not help, since ICD-10 does not identify even the alleged cause of a fire for those deaths due to fire in a building (and nor does it distinguish between fires in homes and those in other buildings).
To help with perspective, I also include below the corresponding numbers of annual deaths due to a few other causes. The number of deaths recorded as being due to falls from beds is considerably greater than the number recorded as due to electricity (and the same, individually, for falls from chairs and falls from ladders), whilst even the number of deaths recorded as being due to 'contact with hot tap water' is at least as great as those due to electricity.
Useful, let alone reliable, hard statistics on serious injuries due to electricity are essentially non-existent. HSE etc. has some figures (which may or may not be fairly reliable) relating to workplace-related injuries, but that is not really of interest to us here.
As above, one has to be very cautious about interpreting these statistics, but in terms of deaths recorded as being due to electricity, the annual number in the UK in domestic premises is clearly so small that there is hardly any scope for changes in regulation of electrical work in the UK, or different approaches to electrical safety (even 'draconian') in other countries, to 'do much better' than the apparent present situation in the UK. No matter how draconian a system, "accidents (and 'negligences') will always happen", and it's hard to see that it would/could ever get down to less than a handful of deaths per year in a population of 60 or so million.
Kind Regards, John
