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| However the no of amps required to power an item will be half of that in the US, so it's not really any more dangerous. The cables need to be thicker in the US | |
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Exactly.
In the US you are more likely to burn your house down due to the increase in Amperage draw, therefor more heat. In Europe you are more likely to be electrocuted due to the increased potential on the line, but you are less likely to have electrically related fires due to the increased current related heat at terminations of the wiring.
The one thing that I have heard from engineers is that power supplies that run on 230 + voltage supplies are more likely to fail due to the fact that they are using smaller wires that are more likely to fail due to physical stress. I have always wondered how true this is since the finer wires could be more flexible and therefor less likely to fail than thicker ones.
I think in the end, the danger is a wash, as long as one is respectful of the properties of electrical systems. The truth is in the beginning the end user was slightly safer using lower voltage systems, however the cost of transmission is higher with the same lower voltage. Ironically, the higher voltage systems are probably better for the end user now that electricity is so ubiquitous in our lives, due to reduced transmission losses, when one considers how everything in the our households are operated using electricity.
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