A method for assessing the potential for a dermal burn hazard from malfunctioning consumer electronic devices

We developed an approach to adapt the ASTM C1055-03 Standard to assess the potential for contact burn injury from portable consumer electronic devices. The approach involves measuring the maximum temperature profile during the fault and devising a way to reproduce these temperatures in an exemplar device in a controlled manner for thermesthesiometer measurements. By comparing the results of the thermesthesiometer measurements to the contact burn injury threshold data published in ASTM C1055-03 and various guidelines for unintentional contact times, we were able to predict whether a potential hazard exists and verify result with "finger tests." We applied this method on a number of occasions to assess the likelihood of a contact burn injury resulting from a fault arising inside portable consumer electronic devices.