Report: Electronic Cigarette Explosion Leaves Man Severely Injured

[superpatriotman]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/health/fl-exploding-electronic-cigarette-20120215,0,366930.story

A man in the Florida Panhandle community of Niceville lost all of his teeth, part of his tongue and suffered facial cuts when the electronic cigarette he was smoking exploded, WEAR-Ch. 3 television reported.

Photographer, Vietnam veteran and father of three Tom Holloway was being treated at a burn center, the station reported.

http://www.weartv.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wear_vid_20551.shtml

Holloway's cigarette had exploded.
The debris that flew around the room was so hot, it melted everything it touched.

Chief Butch Parker/North Bay Fire District "And what we believe was in the battery, and whenever the battery ignited, it was basically like him holding a bottle rocket in his mouth"

Wendy Jensen "It exploded in his face, and it knocked out all his teeth and part of his tongue and he had blood all over his face, and it set the study on fire"

[LadyHawkAZ]

1. I bet you he tried to light it.

[Liberal Veteran]

2. Where do I send the bill for a new keyboard?

I am so going to hell.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

20. I was wondering how many teeth he started with.

Bad Chair, BAD BAD Chair.

[ret5hd]

3. i bet he put something flammable like lighter fluid in it...

either accidentally or on purpose.

I take that back, i don't bet. but it was my initial reaction.

[spin]

24. It is possible to refill the cartridges on an e-cig...

Some people experiment with different favors and it might be possible to mix an explosive combination.

[superpatriotman]

6. We have a winner!

Good idea.

[ProfessorGAC]

8. I'm Going With The Lithium Part Of Your Theory

The rest of it, i'm not as comfortable with, but alkali metals and moisture do not play well together.

[LadyHawkAZ]

12. Good idea!

We should also ban laptops, cellphones, mp3 players, those annoying little handheld poker games that go beep, and everything else with a battery on airplanes. Just in case.

Seriously, if something like that is really going to bother you, you should probably not be flying at all. Or using a laptop, for that matter.

[Bluenorthwest]

21. Don't know what the toy chopper has to do with anything other than padding your

list. I use e-cigs without recharge and some with. So if the recharge is the issue, they go one off.

[LadyHawkAZ]

22. I don't recall a ban on RC helicopters from the TSA

Somehow I don't think this is about exploding batteries.

[blogslut]

15. The batteries aren't near the "mouth end".

The battery is located on the lower portion of the device - always.

[TheKentuckian]

16. So, you wish to ban battery powered devices on the plane?

How miserable does the experience have to be?

[LadyHawkAZ]

23. One specific type

that, by a miraculous coincidence, happens to provide nicotine vapor...

[LadyHawkAZ]

28. But you are only supporting a ban for THIS application

which, coincidentally, happens to deliver nicotine vapor.

[LadyHawkAZ]

30. No, I am pointing out that

you are supporting ONLY a ban on ecigs, NOT a wide-scale ban on lithium batteries, based on one incident where we don't actually know what went wrong. This would lead anyone to think that your issue was with the ecigs, not the batteries, especially since there have been a lot more laptop batteries catching fire than ecigs.

http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LZCOK66JTSED01-5O2FN6BF2M4B05S1TBR2V53T5Q

Without new safety standards, lithium batteries that can spontaneously combust were projected to destroy one U.S.- registered cargo jet every other year, according to a study commissioned by U.S. and Canadian aviation regulators. Shipments of lithium batteries that include those used in mobile phones, tablets and laptop computers have been suspected of contributing to two U.S. cargo-jet accidents since 2006.

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09035.html

Incidents/Injuries: There have been 19 reports of the batteries overheating, including 17 reports of flames/fire (10 resulting in minor property damage). Two consumers experienced minor burns.

If you really are worried about things that might explode in-flight, you might be better off just driving or taking the bus. (they still let butane lighters on, too).

[Bonobo]

33. It would be a more credible argument if motives were not already well-established. nt

[Warpy]

5. Horrific

It's going to be interesting to find out what brand it is and how long he had used that particular unit. The e-cigs might be something with a limited lifespan that need to be replaced periodically, either yearly or every few months.

[Jello Biafra]

7. How do you spell L-A-W-S-U-I-T?

[saras]

9. Batteries fail. That's a given. The more energy in the battery, the worse the failure.

Old batteries used to get hot and leak corrosive chemicals that ate up the insides of whatever they were in. Even if you shorted them with a fat copper wire, they simply didn't have the energy density to explode.

Cell phone batteries, in the rare event that they fail, have killed people.

Laptop batteries can be REALLY spectacular - miniature volcanoes of molten stuff spouting right up through the keyboard.

The first electric car battery that gets a steel rod, or a guardrail, poked right through it in a rainstorm is going to be interesting.

[TheWraith]

13. An electric car doesn't have a single battery.

It has thousands of batteries wired together, each individual one only the size of a laptop cell.

[saras]

31. When you impale the whole assembly on a guard rail at 65MPH, does it matter?

I imagine it only takes a certain small number of cells going off to set off a chain reaction, and ignite nearby cells just from the heat.

See, the best car explosion never happens. The best car explosion would be if a single car turned over in a tunnel with a full tank of gas, and the gas didn't ignite until the entire tank formed a nice gas-air mixture. That way pretty much all the energy in the gas is released in an extremely short time, but usually the gas just burns for a long time. A whole car full of batteries will deliver a roughly (order-of-magnitude) similar amount of energy, probably in just a few seconds once started.

[TheWraith]

32. When you compressively smash 15 gallons of gasoline, does it matter?

You're grossly exaggerating the danger from lithium ion batteries. They are, as a rule, fairly stable and not easy to damage. Yes, they contain a lot of energy. So does gas. That's the nature of an energy storage system. What they are NOT, however, is a giant bomb waiting to go off, nor are they a chain of firecrackers as you seem to envision.

[jberryhill]

10. This is an inherent risk of all rechargeable battery systems

[Bonhomme Richard]

11. Oh well, there goes that idea. n/t

[sofa king]

17. An alternative theory might involve the vaporizer chamber.

I wonder if a runaway heating element could break the propylene glycol into its component alcohols, which under pressure might also explode like a bottle rocket, helped along perhaps by repetitive chomping down on the vent.

[raouldukelives]

34. I've talked to a few people using them

who sort of customize them. You can add on heating elements that burn hotter than normal to provide more "smoke". Larger batteries and such. Maybe he kind of Tim Allen'd it. Horsepower! Rarrrrr! Rarrrr!