Hey there. I am a student interested in electrical safety. I have read in books that dry skin has (typically) 1 million+ ohms of electrical resistance in it, but wet skin has dangerously low resistance, less then 1,000 ohms.

I decided to try and use a digital multimete to check my own skin's resistance. I tried several routes (hand-hand, hand-foot) and found the following:

MINIMUM Conductivity:
LHand-RHand Dry: 400,000 ohms
LHand-RHand Wet: 40,000 ohms

These were the "lowest average" levels the voltmeter gave me when I pinched the leads as hard as I possibly could. The 400,000 dry looks right, but I was surprised at the 40,000 for when my hand was wet! I have repeated the test a few times, getting similar results. I also checked the multimeter with some of my dad's "standards" (big blocks for testing) and the multimeter proved to read very accurately from it's lowest level (100 ohms) to 1M Ohms.

So, is it possible for someone to have this high electrical resistance? I've been told that some people do have high resistance- I've heard a story about an electrician back when they used screw-in fuses who would stick his finger in the socket and "feel" if it was live or not. I'm not planning on going out and grabbing power cables, of course, however I could (NOTE: NOT SAFE!) handle live 120 when dry with minimal shock hazard.