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US Bans Electronic Cigarettes From Checked Baggage Over Fire Risks (foxnews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this month, the FDA announced it would regulate electronic cigarettes and other new tobacco products. Now, the U.S. Transportation Department announced it is permanently banning passengers and crew members from carrying electronic cigarettes in checked baggage or charging the devices onboard aircraft. They have cited a number of recent incidents that show the devices can catch fire during flight. Passengers can still carry e-cigarettes in their carry-on baggage or on their person, they just can't use the devices on flights. "Fire hazards in flight are particularly dangerous," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement. "Banning e-cigarettes from checked bags is a prudent and important safety measure." The new rule covers e-cigarettes, e-cigars, e-pipes, and battery-powered portable electronic smoking devices in general. It does not prohibit passengers from transporting other battery-powered devices for personal use like laptop computers or cellphones.
Exploding vaporizer rips hole in man's tongue
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
terminals/parking lots/shuttles/etc....
Those also are flammable and cause explosions. Just glad cell phones don't explode or catch fire....o snap.
Okay, so thing that can explode/cause a fire is banned from checked baggage, yet the same thing that can explode/cause a fire is allowed in carry-on luggage?!? Seriously, what the fuck? Oh, well, we can't have fires in the cargo space, but inside the cabin? Perfectly fine. Thanks USA, for the usual amount of sense in protecting your citizens.
I seriously think you really do not get the concept of being a human being, a social species for whom empathy is a requirement for social cohesion. If just one blows up in some ones face it is a serious problem, eyes, ears, taste, appearance, let alone repeated examples. The manufacturer of a defective device in this context considering the nature of the harm, deserves a custodial sentences, anyone profiting by blowing up someone face, deserve a custodial sentence, regardless of context. If a particular gun blew up in people's faces it would be banned (they would require a redesign to ensure it as near as possible to never blowing up in any ones face, gun and munitions).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Better vapetards than actual smokers. As someone with pretty bad asthma, I want to hug every single person that has the decency to get their nic-fix without making me get my albuterol fix.
Well done.
You are welcome on my lawn.
even your linked source casts significant doubt as to SHC ever having occurred and that the likely scenario is ignition sources that are conveniently left out of most accounts (like smoking, next to a fireplace, candles etc etc).
What about a south Korean battery?
Every time I go through the airport in a secured zone, I see shelves stacked with wine, whiskey, beer, vodka, champagne. Every bottle, when broken, is a potential ceramic knife. By the way, a very sharp knife.
Two quarters of 100 proof spirit is very flammable. Whiskey in the bottle is just an expensive Molotov cocktail - lite.
Oh come off it, i just recently got off a flight from LA to SYD where another passenger from the same flight had his bag catch fire on the train from the airport. Turns out he had power drills and their batteries in there. How are you going to stop an e-cigarette when people are taking power drills and batteries aboard in checked baggage?
Next we will be leaving laptops, tablets, watches and phones at home too.....
This has been modded "Flamebait." Oddly appropriate.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Just an FYI, Philadelphia was enforcing this when i flew out of there a few weeks ago to come home. They asked me specifically about those items prior to letting me check my bags in. Nashville (my hometown) had not started this procedure yet.
The story talks about an ecig exploding during *USE*, not while it was unattended... or in luggage on a plane.
Using it on a plane is a non-issue, since I can't remember the last time I was on a plane that allowed smoking at all during the flight.
And in matters of storage, why are batteries for ecigs more dangerous than any other kind of battery?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Those perform automatic face lifting and eye lid modification surgeries.
How about the baggage compartment is actually sealed and inert during the flight.
In my country, vaping is regarded as smoking, and is not allowed on planes, trains, buses or inside any other public space. It's still second hand smoke containing nicotine. Isn't it so in the US?
I've dissasssmbled around 10 different brands and examined the electronics just for fun. I've designed smart battery systems for actual products in the field and was curious what types of protection were used. Tl:dr they shaved about half a dollar off each one by providing almost no safety at all.
Decent single battery systems have over voltage, under voltage, current limiting during charge and discharge, and temperature sensing with bonus points for more advanced features like fuel gaging so that you have an accurate idea of the power left. The models I looked at had everything from none at all (serious fire/venting risk even with the matched charger) to at most a leaky over and under voltage protection. The kind where if you left it on the wrong charger it would likely be a fire/venting risk.
There really needs to be a concrete law with actual fines and punishments about including some basic safety whenever you release a product into the wild with lithium batteries. Too often people remove the safety features to save a few cents because they tested two for 5 minutes and were fine, not realizing that 1M in the field would mean a fire a day.
that e-cig batteries are more likely to catch fire than any other rechargeable electronic device ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Even without a GFI the risk is extremely close to zero. Electricity always takes the shortest route. If that powerstrip falls in the water, the shortest route is a direct short circuit from live to neutral. A tub of water can't hold charge and even if it could charge can't kill you - no current would be flowing through the pool. Hell even if by some miracle current did flow through the pool it still wouldn't harm a human in the water - it would flow around the person since water (especially chlorinated water) is far, far lower resistance than human skin.
The only real danger actually is removing the thing at the end, if your hands are still wet - or the powerstrip got wet you risk creating a short circuit that DOES run through your body. It's very unlikely (and even more unlikely to run through more than your thumb) but it's at least theoretically possible, unlike the "powerstrip fell in the pool and electrocuted him" idea, that only works in murder movies, in the real world you would almost certainly not even be injured. It's the high-tech version of ground-glass-in-food - as a method of killing somebody, it's so close to impossible to succeed that you would be better off just wishing the guy would get hit by lightning.
People have a lot of paranoia about electricity based on really not understanding it. Human skin has incredibly high resistance and so even if you are a short circuit it mostly runs outside the body. The risk comes in when the voltage heats you up. Clamped to the cable long enough the heat burns skin away - and electricity gets really dangerous when it hits the bloodstream. Directly through the bloodstream - 1v is more than enough to kill you. The calculations have been done, one volt in the blood -hits the heart with a stronger current than the electrical signals from the brain... and it obeys what it sees as a regulatory signal and basically shuts down. Instant heart attack (like a defibrillator in reverse).
But the powerstrip on the pool ? Nah. That's really not a high risk situation, you take a much higher risk every time you drive a car.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Not to mention all the oddities of "SHC" like melted bones can be explained quite satisfactorily by the wick effect, as experiments have repeatedly proven. When there IS a perfectly viable scientific explanation for the evidence you found, then claims of an unexplained phenomenon become extremely suspect. And the evidence mostly consists of bodies found in states of burning that suggest far higher heat than normal. Nothing to suggest it was spontaneous or extraordinary... all you need is to be wearing tight clothing or have a blanket wrapped around you, anything that can soak up fat when it starts to melt and form a wick so you burn out really slowly over many, many hours.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Maybe that's part of it. For some I could see it. But in my opinion it is because you asshats won't stop trying to ban nicotine. You've been downright bastards against smokers since I was about 18.
I'm seeing calls for a war on vaping, complete with confications and criminalization, horror storuies about vapers gone mad, and attacking teh childrenz, and how vaping is a gateway drug to crack cocaine and watching The Young Turks on Youtube.
All sarcasm aside, the issue of vaping is a big problem for the puritans, because without the carcinogenics, they don't have much to rail against. And the properties of small amounts of nicotine make for a pretty innocuous but often useful effect on people.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No. I'm only in agreement if you can't read words good like.
I gave two statements. Let me break them down:
a)Interestingly enough this is the one thing on your list that would be very unlikely to kill you.
Analysis: I said the entire contrived example is unlikely to kill you. Nothing more nothing less.
b) If it's attached to a ground fault interrupter it would almost be outright impossible to kill.
Analysis: Given an additional restriction on top of statement a, with that restriction it would be almost outright impossible to kill. This statement doesn't invalidate or in any way affect what I said in statement a.
If you disagree with my statement of a, then look at the parallel thread one up where I explained why it won't kill you. Or if you want more entertainment look it up on Youtube.
Electricity always takes the shortest route.
To be specific, electricity takes all routes, but most of the current will go along the path of least resistance; for the purposes of bathtime fun, this isn't a super important distinction. And I apologize for lack of a -1, AKSHULLY mod.
I think you mean flower, the seed-bearing part of the plant.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Only from checked baggage. You are still free to pack people in your carry-on luggage or carry them on your person.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!