I hate to deflate the levity here.... but.... there's a reason that ground fault circuit interrupters trigger (depending on the local laws) at 5 mA or
so: 50 mA through the heart region can kill. Once past the insulating skin, the interior resistance of the human body ranges from 10 to 1000 ohms. In
the unfortunate event that one has a cut or one's hands are wet with a salt solution, it doesn't take a high voltage to kill if the current passes
across the chest (head to feet, hand to feet if you're unlucky, hand to hand). Anything over about 12 volts can be bad if you're
really unlucky. AC at 50 Hz is especially bad because it's close to the ideal frequency to disrupt the pacemaker centers in the heart
to cause fibrillation which is often fatal.
So - many of us have survived shocks from the mains or high powered electrical or electronic apparatus. That doesn't mean that one should be careless
if one has water and electricity in the same place. Insulating (rubber, plastic, etc) shoes (a 1Meg grounding conductor to prevent sparks is
not a hazard, and keep one hand in your pocket while fiddling with any electrodes which are supplied from a non-current-limited
source. Insulating gloves (not leather, plastic or rubber instead) can help, but if they have holes (sharp wires etc.) they are not effective.
In dry conditions without wounds you can get away with touching many high powered things. Chemistry often involves salt solutions which are highly
conductive and which will render your skin conductive. Pure water (11 Megohm, for instance) can be used as an insulator... but that's
no fun :-)
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. Yeh not using dichromate does seem like a good idea. Not having to add barium chloride and worry about barium ions
in your final product. It did seem to remember that after filtering the chlorate liquor after adding BaCl2 the excess Ba++ deposited when boiling
down before the NaCl dropped.
