Another consumer product disaster in China: exploding mobile phone batteries

[TexasLawyer]

Source: Int. Herald Tribune

Another consumer product disaster in China: exploding mobile phone batteries
By David Barboza
Published: July 6, 2007

SHANGHAI: After concerns over pet food, toothpaste, seafood and defective tires, China may now have to cope with another consumer product disaster: exploding mobile phone batteries.

Chinese regulators in the southern Guangdong Province, one of the world's biggest electronics manufacturing centers, said this week that they had found Motorola and Nokia mobile phone batteries that failed safety tests and were prone to explode under certain conditions.

The batteries were said to be manufactured by Motorola and the Sanyo operation in Beijing, and were being distributed by companies based in the Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong - one of China's biggest export centers.

It is unclear whether any of the substandard and hazardous batteries entered the export market. The announcement came just a day after China's state-controlled news media reported that in June a 22-year-old man in western China was killed after his Motorola cellphone exploded in his shirt pocket.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/06/bloomberg/battery.php

[sandnsea]

1. lead paint on toys & bibs

Oh yeah, and kerosene in toys too. Just wanting to keep up with all this magnificent free rein capitalism.

[DBoon]

21. just like the Victorian era

When lead acetate was used as a sweetener and milk was adulterated with chalk.

You get rid of Progressive era and New Deal government programs, you end up back in the 19th century.

The right wing's dream is our nightmare.

[nodehopper]

35. chalk is less harmful than, say, melamine!

[MockSwede]

36. tagline

love it!

[The Backlash Cometh]

24. Do you get the impression that it was China that Grover Norquist

was trying to accommodate with all that deregulation? Maybe the Carlyle Group knew what was coming and wanted to butter up the Chinese for future personal business negotiations?

[sandnsea]

31. Uhm, Delay's Mariana Petri Dish

Absolutely. One of the first things Bush did after 9/11 was lift the trade barriers with India, where Carlyle had invested millions. Of course this was all planned. I can't figure out why they keep thinking people won't make products that kill, or whether they have convinced themselves they're too smart to buy that stuff, or they just truly don't give a shit.

[fed-up]

2. unclear whether any of the substandard and hazardous batteries entered the export market

great job homeland security

we don't even know what is coming into this country

[Bitwit1234]

3. And these are the places we outsourced jobs to.

And where we buy our products. Since bush and the administration don't think ours are good enough.

[Soulshine]

4. omg

I love it they say the fish are poisoned so they're gonna up testing to 3% of cargo instead of less than 1%! They're trying to kill us off, one American at a time. If they lose a few they don't care, the have a billion of them!

But seriously, you should have known as soon as we got them in to the WTO. They will will topple us completely using our trade polices and inadequate FDA and other safety agencies against us. And then they'll come along and and buy everything they don't make so we're completely dependent on them. We can't compete with their buying power.

[bamacrat]

5. I propose a ban on all things Chinese..

Even though its damn near impossible, all items need a country of origin label or something. It seems as though everything from China lately has been deadly or defective.

[Auntie Bush]

30. Yes, yes, yes. Ban EVERYTHING made in China!

Then maybe someday some of those companies will come back to the US again.
Fat chance!

[Critters2]

40. I don't knowingly buy anything made in China

It can be done, though it is a challenge. And many things have Chinese ingredients that aren't labeled so (like, say, wheat gluten in cat food). But I do my best.


www.boycottmadeinchina.org

[Speck Tater]

6. Look for THIS soon is a store near you...

The "Certified China Free" label on products.

[emilyg]

7. Sure hope so.

[TheMadMonk]

9. You might wish, but it won't be permitted.

[tblue37]

27. Some organic food company is already

labeling its home-grown products as China-free.

[TheMadMonk]

28. Wait until some supplier decides that's "STIFFLING FREE TRADE"

[FloridaJudy]

10. Almost there already

I actually saw a sign on some costume jewelry at K-Mart: "contains no lead".

Sheesh. Remember when the worst thing you could get from cheap jewelry was a rash? What next: "these diapers are asbestos-free!"?

[Canuckistanian]

26. LOL

How about "Preparation H - Now 100% Arsenic free!"

[spoony]

32. "This juice contains almost no plutonium!"

[Liberty Belle]

13. Alvito has registered a trademark for "Not Made in China."

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2006/03/01/not_made_in_china/index.html

[FlaGranny]

18. I bought a bag of shrimp yesterday

that had a large American flag on one side and on the other side said "American Harvest." On top it said "Gulf shrimp." On the back it said "product of USA" and "processed in the USA." I hope many, many more American manufacturers and food producers start to do the same. I very willingly paid about $1.00 more for this shrimp.

If I need something, anything, I now read all the labels and if I have a choice, I buy the American product. Sometimes it is not any more expensive than imported and sometimes it is a tiny bit more. I wanted a pizza pan recently and bought an American made CHEAPER than the imported. American companies CAN complete using American workers in American factories and I sure will support those who do.

Here's hoping that all products made in the US will get labeling like that package of shrimp so we can make a choice.

[Lorien]

19. There was a story posted last night about a "china-free" label

that is being placed on some health food items.Some here thought that it was xenophobic, but for most the labels refer to a corrupt system, not a people.

[mitchum]

29. And look for the Chinese to counterfeit those labels

[Critters2]

41. I was looking at a pair of Earth Shoes with a tiny US flag sticker

on them. "How odd"' thought I, since I know Earth Shoes are made in China. On closer inspection, I found that the sticker said "designed in the USA" in the tiniest little print I think I've ever seen. And inside the shoe was the stamp "made in China".

Now I REALLY will never buy Earth Shoes.

[skids]

8. So a while back at a panel discussion at a convention...

...I asked a so-called security expert when people were going
to start taking security seriously in portables, and being a
computer systems engineer fully aware that some systems might
decide to save a few pennies by implementing battery management
with the main cpu/software, the example I gave was what if a hack
were discovered that allowed ones cell phone battery to be
exploded, or just caught on fire.

The room saw fit to laugh me off. The "expert" said that
couldn't happen. Well, we'll see about that. Most Li-poly
batteries are time bombs if their safe operational parameters
are exceeded.

But I think he was right when he said people will never
take security seriously, unfortunately. I mean heck people
still send highly personal and sensitive information by
unencrypted email to this day. Sigh.

[FloridaJudy]

11. Can you hear me now?

Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Can you ... BOOM!

The sad thing is that I'm already making a list of people I'd love to see this happen to.

[trashcanistanista]

34. OMG! That was funny!

Am I sick or what? :rofl:

[ClintonTyree]

12. Actually, this has been a problem for quite some time.....

I remember seeing a story about this a few years ago. At the time I thought it was just a ruse by the manufacturers to keep people from buying cheaper replacement batteries. Now.....I'm, not so sure. :scared:

Is there ANYTHING they make in China that won't kill or maim you? :shrug: Maybe this is Bush's way to get the trade deficit down: release a blizzard of Chinese product horror stories? :shrug: Of course, we don't manufacture anything in our own country anymore so NOT buying Chinese would present a bit of a problem.

[strategery blunder]

14. Contradicts Bu$hit's exhortation to go shopping after 9/11 however.

:shrug:

[salin]

15. wonder how long, and how many more stories before Walmart

sees a decline in sales? (Given that they helped, in a big way, move so many manufacturing jobs, to China)

[Blue Gardener]

16. Chinese cars coming in 2009

I'm sure they'll be safe to drive. :sarcasm:

[fujiyama]

37. A European magazine or group of some sort

did a test on one of the Chinese cars.

They said they had the worst safety test results of any car they'd seen in well over a decade.

[april]

17. maybe they could give a few of the phones to bush ,dick & carl

[DBoon]

22. Won't work

The Chinese man was killed due to an injury to his heart.

To die in this way requires that you have a heart in the first place.

[TexasLawyer]

25. good one!

[candice]

20. If they failed safety tests, they shouldn't be out of the factory...

...manufacturing problems can happen in any country. We've had the laptop battery issues. If manufacturing of large quantities of these batteries was taking place in the U.S., there would still be some number of defective batteries. It is important from the standpoint of consumer safety to have defective ones culled and if they do get through quality assurance, that they can be recalled.

[Coventina]

23. Didn't I see a story recently about battery fires in airplane cargo holds?

IIRC, there is a proposal to ban items like laptops, cell phones, iPods, etc. from being in checked baggage. That way, if they catch fire in the cabin, the fire would be detected in time.

:scared:

[RamboLiberal]

33. Yep - I remember posting a story about this a few months ago

If I'm remembering correctly it was thought batteries might have been the ignition source in a cargo plane fire that destroyed the plane on the ground after landing. And there was the story of some device (laptop?) that had to be extinguished in the passenger cabin of a commercial flight. Made me wonder if these devices should be banned in the cargo hold - I'd rather not see another one like the Valujet crash in to the Everglades (that one was oxygen cannisters being transported illegally in the cargo hold that caught fire).

[ima_sinnic]

38. on the upside: this might wreak havoc with Wal-Mart's business

--knowing how much of Mall-Wart's goods are made in China, customers could be predicted to start shopping elsewhere. Some massive recalls of WM junk will help that along ...

I had one of those old basic Nokia candybar-style phones and noticed it had become quite hot once when charging. I mentioned this to a tech at Cingular and he didn't really know what to make of it. I wonder it I am now lucky to be alive? hmmm ...

[dansolo]

39. And Ralph Nader said that Chinese electronics are safe to use

He was interviewed a few days ago regarding the Chinese food import problems, and he was asked by the interviewer if all Chinese products should be avoided. He denounced all food products, but said that the electronics were all right.