On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 18:47:58 -0000, Bob F wrote:

On 12/15/2018 4:57 AM, Kristy Ogilvie wrote:
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 03:41:34 -0000, Bob F wrote:

On 12/14/2018 10:41 AM, Fred Johnson wrote:
Could static electricity to the eyeball cause lasting harm? Normally
you just jump and swear with a static shock to your finger etc, but I've
found two instances on google of pain lasting a few days when someone
got a shock on their nose (one in a shop from a perfume bottle they were
smelling, and one from a blanket at home). But what if it got your
eyeball?

A neighbor of mine got shocked by her landline phone when lightning
struck while I was talking to her on my phone. It turned out that the
phone line protective ground had been disconnected. She said that her
hearing was hyper-sensitive for weeks after that. Everything was way
louder.

Where is this protective ground? There certainly isn't one in any BT
master socket I've seen, just a couple of twisted pairs coming through a
plastic tube to the socket.

The ground that was disconnected was a wire from the phone box on the
house to a pipe, in this case, where a hose bibb was on the side of the
house.

I have made sure that both the phone and cable boxes are directly
connect to my ground rod using a large (about 1/8") copper ground wire.

Not sure what you mean by "phone box on the house". In the UK an underground twisted pair wire inside a plastic hose comes right inside the house and terminates in a socket on the inside of a room wall (same size as a lightswitch or power outlet). There's no earthing anywhere, unless it's further back at the exchange or a junction box.