A power strip like that isn't connected to the electrical ground in your house -- that would need a three-pin connection, and it only has a two-pin connection. Despite this, it has three-pin grounded sockets for you to connect appliances to it.
Three-pin appliances require a ground to be safe. By using a power strip like this, you're creating an unsafe configuration with a high risk of electric shock if there's a fault with an appliance.
Also, the little figure-8 connectors can't pass a high amount of current safely, and lots of 3-pin appliances are relatively high draw. That's a fire risk.
I'm not sure who's responsible for the enforcement in the US.
> Three-pin appliances require a ground to be safe
Can you elaborate on this?
My MacBook charger has both a two-prong and a three-prong cable. Why would it be any more dangerous to plug my MacBook into this power strip using the three-prong cable than to connect it directly to the wall with the two-prong cable?
Your MacBook then is prepared for ungrounded operations. Now take a laser printer, it uses very high voltage on the inside and if something gets dislodged and touches an outer facing metal part and you touch that in turn, you are dead. That's why the outer parts are connected to a safety ground. Do note Xerox warns you not to use a "cheater plug" http://download.support.xerox.com/pub/docs/4400/userdocs/any... . Laser printers are also a great example of when that C7/C8 connection is a fire hazard because laser printers need a lot of power when heating up their fusers. This is also why you must not connect a laser printer to a UPS.
The MacBook chargers are designed to be safe without grounding.
The grounding pin does have a use, though: some cheap powered USB devices will put out a voltage relative to ground on their '0v' lines. If you touch a MacBook that's plugged into one of these devices, you can get a small shock. If you're using a 3-pin adapter, this doesn't seem to happen.
Exactly! I do not even know whether it's a bigger fire hazard or shock hazard. In Canada, curiously enough, it's Health Canada who would enforce a recall notice and fine you into oblivion. Look up the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act for more.
They're describing a power strip that has a 2-prong wall connector and offers three 3-prong outlets. This is dangerous, because equipment with 3-prong plugs needs to be grounded, and this power strip misleads you into thinking you've done that.
I rent an old apartment in the US, and no law requires the landlord to ground the wiring, so I actually need a power strip like that so that I can plug the strip into the wall and also plug 3 pronged electronics to it.
I know that it offers no grounding, that's a risk I have no choice but to take on my equipment because my building is not grounded. So I'm not sure someone selling a strip like that would be fined if my landlord isn't even forced to ground the building.
In that situation there are three safe and legal answers:
* Replace the wiring with grounded cable. Expensive.
* Replace the outlet with a GFCI and label it "no equipment ground". Gives most of the safety benefits of a proper ground, and is up to code. Not that expensive.
* Use a cheater plug [1] and connect the external ground tab to a pipe or something else grounded.
What you're asking for is basically a cheater plug plus an ordinary power strip, sold as one integrated unit. Better to keep them separate so that people know what they're dealing with. Also, what the poster upthread was describing didn't have a grounding tab, so there was no way to hook it up safely.
(The landlord isn't required to set up grounded outlets out of a general principle that you only need to bring things up to code when you're modifying it, and that something that was legal at the time it was installed stays so. Your unit could legally have knob-and-tube wiring if it's old enough!)
You have 3 "holes" in your power strip outlets: Line, Neutral, and Ground. Now, a figure-8 can only have 2 wires inside it.
So, it's likely that you have Line and Neutral connected, while Ground is "floating" (not connected). Which means that, if something goes wrong inside the appliance, it can be dangerous for other appliances, and more importantly for you, too.
Especially if there are exterior metal parts inside the appliance that are grounded and a wire is touching the metal from the inside, too.
Three-pin appliances require a ground to be safe. By using a power strip like this, you're creating an unsafe configuration with a high risk of electric shock if there's a fault with an appliance.
Also, the little figure-8 connectors can't pass a high amount of current safely, and lots of 3-pin appliances are relatively high draw. That's a fire risk.
I'm not sure who's responsible for the enforcement in the US.