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E-Cigs Are Exploding In Vapers' Faces At An Alarming Rate (buzzfeed.com)
E-cigs are becoming increasingly popular, but are they safe enough? BuzzFeed News is reporting about accidents where e-cigs have exploded in vapers' faces. The report claims that these incidents are occurring at an alarming rate. From the report (condensed): Across the country, defective e-cigarettes -- the nicotine delivery machines that have taken over every strip mall and sidewalk, seemingly overnight -- are creating hundreds of victims like Cavins (a 63-year-old Orange, California-based family therapist who lost an eye after an e-cig device exploded in his face), people whose lives are suddenly and horrifyingly changed when their devices blow up. They are people like Thomas Boes, whose vape exploded while he was driving outside San Diego and struck him with such force that two of the three teeth he lost lodged in his upper palate; Kenneth Barbero, whose exploding device ripped a hole in his tongue; and Marcus Forzani, a 17-year-old whose left leg was charred from his calf to his thigh after a vape battery exploded in his pocket. An unpublished FDA analysis found 66 reports of e-cigarette overheating, fires, and explosions in 2015 and the first month of 2016, a number the agency calls "an underestimate of actual events."
Cigarettes used to slowly degrade your teeth, affect your eyesight and turn your face into something that looks like roadkill. Looks like these e-cigarettes are a huge improvement then! No more waiting 20 or 30 years for the cancer to set in, instant results in the blink of an eye.
Any lithium cell can reach an explosion point with the exception of the coin cells that don't really have the amount of electrolyte (or the architectural strength of a cylinder) to explode.
Thermal fuses are not expensive, I can't imagine they're saving that much money by omitting them. My best guess is "cut cells"* from China are not reattaching the fuses and the double whammy with the reduced capacity is what's causing them to explode.
(Cut cells are what we refer to as the degraded cells that some Chinese companies dig from the wastebucket. They dissemble the cell, remove the parts of the electrolyte paper that are no longer conducting, run a wire to connect the remaining part of the cell to the far cathode / anode, wrap a label to hold it together, and sell it as new at the capacity it was originally rated at but no longer maintains). Multi cell batteries for laptops and what not have a similar process done where the dead cells are removed / bypassed / reconfigured. As long as the battery pack can maintain the listed voltage at "max charge" it will be resold--even though it cannot hold the mAH it was listed at.
Since charge controllers don't know when this has happened, they overcharge the battery resulting in unsafe things happening to the battery. It also can get discharged lower than expected due to the reduced capacity in some applications.)
That's funny because tesla cars are the least-dangerous in the most-severe collisions. Even when the battery is all fucked up, the fire is isolated away from the passenger compartment; and high-impact collisions transfer much less energy to the driver and passengers, thanks to enormous crumple zones.
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This is why you DO NOT BUY CHEAP BATTERIES.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This is what happens if you get a shitty 18650 without any kind of protection circuitry and/or an ecig without a vented battery compartment.
How to tell if the battery is likely to explode:
http://www.lygte-info.dk/info/...
http://lygte-info.dk/info/isMy...
tl;dr stop buying cheap shit and expecting it to withstand a 35+ amp draw.
i really don't understand how lithium was ever deemed safe for pocket devices. if i had a tesla car, i'd be really scared of even the smallest collision. fortunately, my hybrid has a NiMH battery.
Which tells me that you haven't examined the risks. For example, you don't worry about the gasoline tank in your hybrid, but that's a lot more likely to be involved in or cause a fire.
Tesla has had a few cars catch fire, but at a lower rate than traditional vehicles. Perhaps even more notably, they've been able to warn their occupants to get out, and even then erupt in fire slowly enough for people to safely escape.
Looking at the other comments, it seems that people are attempting to use dodgy cells in them.
I don't read AC A human right
Bic lighters have been blamed for several deaths and several injuries over the years too. The link above was in regards specifically to Bic lighters from 1979 to 1984.
I've yet to hear of any regulated mod (battery voltage regulator) blowing up.. only non-regulated ones. The non-regulated ones are simply a push button switch that shorts positive and negative terminals of the battery via the coil of the device.
Of course if you're coil is of so little resistance as to cause a short, the battery is going to explode.. much like jumpering the postitive and negative batteries of a car battery.
If people stopped being uninformed idiots that don't know how to use an unregulated mod, then they deserve what they get..
Or in other terms, don't stare into laser with good remaining eye.
will undoubtedly account for 99% of these cases. There are no details in this story about what caused the batteries to explode, but I've read other articles which sometimes shed light on these cases. The guy with the leg burns kept loose batteries in his pocket with keys and coins. Another victim was a brand new vaper using a mech mod (it said he pushed the button on the bottom of the device, a tell-tale sign that it was a mech mod), and it was clear that someone else has prepared his gear and he had no idea what he was doing. In fact, I'd wager that most people with exploding batteries were mech mod users. Why mech mods still exist is beyond me. They have no protective circuitry, so if your build causes too high a draw on the battery, or the device gets stuck in the "on" position, you're going to have a big problem.
The one possibly unavoidable problem with any e-cigarette is counterfeit batteries. If you're trying to be safe and you buy Sony, Samsung or LG batteries, it can be tough to tell if they're genuine or not (I've gotten counterfeits myself through an Amazon third-party seller). If I have any doubts that a battery I'm using isn't genuine, it gets boxed and disposed of immediately. Of course, counterfeit batteries aren't only a problem for vapers, but the proximity of the device to your face will generally cause more damage than for, say, a flashlight user.
These types of batteries are basically identical to those found in iPhones or any other modern device. Most are cylindrical lithium polymer. What is causing the problems is three basic things.
1) A complete lack of safety circuitry. Forget a smart battery system and gas gauging, many of the units I took apart had no safety at all (relied on the charger alone) to at most a leaky over and under voltage protection that was custom implemented. No charge or discharge current sensing and no temperature sensing. No faulty cell detection and no permenant disable for a faulty battery. Just like when Lipo batteries first hit the hobby market this means fires galore, and when enclosed, sizable explosions.
2) People use the incorrect chargers. Add to that little to no safety and it's a disaster.
3) People modify thier units without knowing what they are actually doing. They may have read a forum post or read a blog or had a friend do it. They don't realize any dangers or take any precautions.
Disclaimer: I have designed smart battery systems for products in the field. I have had failures but nothing the safety systems did not shut down before catastrophe.
Propylene glycol is also known as fog juice, the stuff that goes into stage smoke machines, and it's used as a food additive. It metabolises to lactic acid and is considered safe, which is why it's used in e-cigs.
Antifreeze is usually ethylene glycol, which is toxic. However, both salt and ethanol can also be used as antifreeze, and while they can be lethal in sufficient quantities they too are considered fit for human consumption. Calling something "antifreeze" tells you no more about its toxicity than calling something "natural" (i.e. snake venom) or "organic" (i.e. benzene).
Blank until
The new FDA regulations on e-cigs did NOT ban flavors. It will, however, effectively put every manufacturer out of business with the exception of the big tobacco conglomerates.
You won't see any more innovation or options in e-cigs either. Every component is regulated and banned without a long and expensive approval process. In fact, it will probably be the end of refillable e-cigs and the sale of e-juice. It's going to be too expensive as each and every blend will require a separate application and set of laboratory testing.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There have been 66 cases reported according to the first link. 66. Out of tens of millions of devices.
This is just a typical case of control freaks in government looking for something else to get their fingers in.
Actually, they are trying to drum up public fear so they can win the lawsuits against their crazy new regulations. Which will basically cause all e-cigs to vanish from the market. Except the ones sold by the big tobacco conglomerates.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia