Eliminate those unwanted Warts!

As improbable as it may seem, the common wart may be destroyed with a simple circuit that uses a tiny keyfob battery delivering a boosted 24V to the skin. Taking into account the resistance of the skin, this translates to just 100uA or so passing through the wart internally, thus delivering a fraction (about one-quarter) of the peak power delivered by a typical TENS unit.

Removing warts has never been much fun, and the use of the EPE Wart Zapper is likely to be painful – but only briefly, and not too much.

The present method is far to be preferred over the messy and painful practice of burning off warts with liquid nitrogen (also called cryosurgery, or “controlled frostbite”)! Besides, liquid nitrogen treatment may be counter-productive, in that it sometimes augments the treated warts, it sometimes does permanent damage to the skin (particularly darker skin), and poses a far greater risk of infection.

A more modern method of removing warts goes by the name “electrodesiccation” (or sometimes, “radio frequency thermal ablation”) – that is, burning off warts electrically with several watts of power. This is tidy, and is quicker than the method presented here. However, electrodesiccation tends to be expensive, and is unavailable to people in less developed or more remote areas of the world. Also, it could be dangerous to try to implement as an amateur project.

The EPE Wart Zapper therefore brings the destruction of warts within the scope of the amateur constructor. For the price of a doctor’s consultation for the dreaded liquid nitrogen treatment, or for the price of a single session of electrodesiccation, several Zappers could be built. Moreover, it should destroy many warts with a single keyfob battery.