No, but I do remember a friend from High School who put a couple of boxes of match heads (carefully snippped off each one) into a steel pipe, then took a wood dowel to pack them in so he could add more…
He blew off both his feet & changed his name to “Neil”.
See how a horrific fact combined with an irrelevant comment can change the tone of a story?
That, to me is the “Breitbart” blog, in a nutshell.
Except for the “facts” part…
It’s about not smoking and yes for smokers it does mean getting more healthy. Not for non-smokers though. People who have smoked for decades and who have tried to quit multiple times have found that using an electronic cigarette is the only thing that works for them. Not the drugs, not the gum and not the patches. Cigarettes are seriously addictive and anything that helps them break that addiction is a good thing. Even if they remain using e-cigs it’s still a much healthier alternative. There are about 5,000 less chemicals in an e-cig which is basically just water, flavorings and sometimes nicotine. They were marketed from the very start as an aid to quit smoking and most people use them for that exact purpose. Although there are people who start using them who never smoked but again if the alternative was that they would have started smoking they are still better off.
Better yet of course just to never smoke in the first place.
Uh… Not according to the people who invented the technology . They fully charged a large one, then placed it in a Dead Short — a low-resistance electrical connection directly between positive and negative poles, just to watch it die.
Want to know what ACTUALLY happened, not what some … nevermind. Y’all won’t go get the facts because they’re not exciting and don’t hate what you’ve been told to hate. If you refuse the rest of the facts, at LEAST go to page 21-22 to see the ADHD-compatible summary of what happened when they tested Lithium Ion rechargeable batteries to destruction.
Uh… In case you haven’t found any FACTS yet, let me clue you in:
THERE IS NO “EXPLOSIVE ENERGY” IN THAT BATTERY.
This entire story is what Norman Schwartzkopf calls “Bovine Scatology”. What y’all have is an ignorant poor woman trying to find an excuse in the unrestricted BS (“unprotected cells” … “vent with flames” … “explosive energy” ooooooooh!) about scary new things, to gin up a fat lawsuit of her own.
It BREAKS and stops producing voltage. TRY IT. Every tiny component will sacrifice itself a long time before the current rises to a dangerous level. Sorry.
Again, that term doesn’t mean what you think it does.
Far more dangerous, I think, is an uprotected BLOG. Breitbart, for example. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to adequately explain how to spot bullshit coming and successfully keep it out of your head…
I enjoy discussing real things with thoughtful people. As for this story and thread, I know how to get to the farm if I need more BS.
I’m ordering more e-ciggies and juice (for SWMBO) before the nattering nabobs of nonsense take over and drive the prices up!
I think the woman is exaggerating but I can fully understand her being freaked out. A lot of people will not charge them unless they are in a special fireproof bag. These do have a mosfet and protection circuit but a cheap e-cig is like a cheap #$#@fire battery. Don’t bet on the protection working. Would you risk your house to a less than one cent protection circuit? It looks like it vented and blew through the bottom cap.
What is funny is that the e-cig community pitched a fit over non-vented mods years ago and now you will hardly ever find a Personal Vaporizer that takes batteries like 18650’s that doesn’t have vent holes. China did that on demand from e-cig users without any need from government to step in and tell them. That includes e-cigs that use protected batteries with single cells. Which are a lot safer than what many of us do with stacked batteries and no vent holes on our flashlights.
E-cig users seem to be taking battery safety more seriously than flashlight users from what I have seen. They are almost fanatical about it on ECF (electronic cigarette forum) which is a huge place by the way. For many e-cig users it’s not just about keeping people safe but keeping the government out of e-cigs. They hate these stories because they are afraid the government will step in and ban them. It’s not like they are not looking for an excuse. E-cigs are cutting into big tobacco and big pharma territory and they have been lobbying from the start to get rid of them and have had success in some places.
That’s funny! I am seriously considering TAKING UP VAPING, just to piss off the anti-smokers!
PS: THANK YOU for taking the time to produce FACTS for this conversation!!! Trust me, on this Forum, I’m not the only one thinking that, just the first to actually mention it.
Why all the hate? Because vaping is an excellent delivery mechanism for a panoply of useful drugs!! And some hated ones, like Cocaine and THC. Can’t stand needles? Can’t tolerate sublinguals? Vape your dose for instant relief! Guess what? It works for Demon Rum too!!! You just have to adjust the heat.
Welcome to the 21st Century, y’all. I hope we can evolve past all the xenophobic hate. Or extirpate ourselves “for the Greater Good”.
But haters just gotta hate, so down in the mud we go.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I have first hand experience with an unprotected (yes, as in lacking a protection circuit) Li-co 14500 sized cell venting out quite violently. Like I said, “explosion” may be an overstatement, but to someone who doesn’t know whats happening it sure is scary.
And if you don’t believe there’s explosive energy in li-ion batteries, well…if seeing helps believing go check out some youtube videos:
Uh… No.
“Big Tobacco” loves the new market for their product. Who do you think produces the nicotine in the “Vape Juice”?? The Teamsters probably do hate it, since juice takes much smaller trucks to ship than rolled leaf. Plus, it takes a long time to develop a new flavor! SWMBO develops new flavors INTERACTIVELY as she refills her little chambers with juice mixes!
“Big Pharma” has just been handed the fastest, most kid-friendly Route to get their drugs into people’s blood. How many doctors do you know who would NOT want a “no needle” Route for kid drugs??
But you are Dead-Eye-Dickie on one key point:
This propaganda story is a counter-offensive in that War. Dimbo says, the only way we can assure our own safety is by “keeping the government out”!
Well, I had a 14500 blow up and it sounded like a hand grenade going off. I won’t rehash the details because they’re here:
But I will say the inside casing took off like a bullet and cracked a full-size coffeemaker basically in half. Shattered it like it had been hit by a shotgun blast. Not the glass decanter. The plastic part of the coffee maker.
I’m not quite sure of the size of the battery in these ecig things, but even if it was 1/4 the size of a 14500, it could have made one heck of a bang. Notice in my case, the battery was NOT encased in anything. It was the battery sitting in a charger.
I’m not taking the woman’s side, just saying that an explosion is possible. Unless you have had one of these batteries go off in your house, you have no idea of the size of the explosion. Like a similarly sized piece of C4.
Lithium-Cobalt chemistry is for long discharge cycles at very low currents.
Put one in a flashlight and you can expect the results you mentioned.
Not what we’re discussing here…
First of all an e-cig can explode. The battery vents causing pressure to build up inside and the casing explodes outward with the force of whatever pressure has built up inside of it. Same way you can make a pressure cooker explode if you plug all the vent holes and keep it on the stove too long. Boom explosion.
Both big tobacco and big pharma have both been actively lobbying to get rid of e-cigs. Who produces the nicotine and 95% of all the devices? China does. How does big pharma lose out? China is producing a product that has been used by millions of people successfully instead of their drugs and gum and patches etc. Furthermore you are under the false assumption that all people who use e-cigs continue to use them. Many do not. For instance I smoked for 25 years and then started vaping I then quit that as well. There are many people who use them and never look back. Some continue to vape some quit altogether. But for now all of them cease to be a revenue stream for Big Pharma/Tobacco companies and the tax man as well. For now anyway.
If you are really interested in getting all the facts head over to ECF there is a ton of information about the lobbying efforts put on by big Pharma and the Tobacco giants and more on exploding e-cigs as well.
This is probably also available somewhere not paywalled:
“China’s E-Cigarette Boom Lacks Oversight for Safety
Almost all of the world’s e-cigarettes are made without oversight, and experts say flawed manufacturing could account for some of the hazards seen in the devices.”
ah, here’s another copy:
I’m surprised we haven’t seen more explosions with the meteoric rise of ecigs and how common the cheap cells batteries are.
Government oversight works to some degree but a lot of times industry captures the government body. They then have the force of the law to protect their interests so that you and I can do little about it.
What works better is to let industry come together, write standards, and then people pick what’s best for themselves. The IETF is an excellent example of this. While this is not perfect at least the “regulated” industry doesn’t have the might of the government to force people to do what they want. Look at what’s happening with Uber and Lyft. The embedded taxi monopolies are using the government to drive up prices and protect their monopoly while shutting down Uber and Lyft.
Nothing is perfect though but I just see this as a better choice.
I believe it’s a repost…talked ad naseum on ECF…thing from the picture
Look closely at the picture above…just like our flashlights w/ straight thru charging ports…5vdc in on a 4.2vdc max charge voltage (standard Li Ion charging voltage)…leave it there a while and guess what happens after the battery saturates and completes it’s charge?
These batteries don’t have charging intelligence…the charger it plugs into controls the shutoff…some chargers are straight thru 5vdc USB voltage thus keeps feeding the battery until it vents
P.S. Posted: 5:29 p.m. Monday, Sept. 2, 2013 is the original date of the report…been a while
i doubt the explosion “shook the house”
it may make a good pop.
that looks like one of those cheap n nasty things you see in the flea market for 9.99 kit.
the whateverfire of the e cig world.
thats why i dont smoke,
even if its electronic ones.
If I could go back in time and kick my own butt for ever contemplating starting I would…and I would buy some Microsoft and Google stock too of course ; but the not ever starting smoking is the BEST thing anyone can do…
Almost 20 years a smoker, haven’t touched a stinky since I started vaping (Aug 1 2014) and I fell 1000x better (and saving quite a bit of money for spending of flashlights to boot 
)
I actually tried a couple times out of curiosity but I was never into it, not sure why but pretty much a good thing to keep myself healthy.
But I guess its better off vaping than smoking which is bad for health.