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Your phone, smart watch, smart glasses, extra battery pack, wireless earbuds, laptop, and essentially all other modern wireless consumer products can and do bur

Your phone, smart watch, smart glasses, extra battery pack, wireless earbuds, laptop, and essentially all other modern wireless consumer products can and do burst into flames on occasion. As a result, they are required to be shipped with hazardous material declarations like the UN3481 stickers you'll find on everything. Consumers in general are unaware of the hazards and unwilling to learn, mostly because it's very rare for anything particularly bad to happen. You can find thousands of examples of dangerous situations here: https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/ edit: as a tangential story, I once ended up at a battle robot live stream. Turns out lithium battery fires are a normalized part of that, with arenas filling with toxic smoke and volunteers with no PPE collecting actively combusting robots while breathing billowing clouds of thick smoke. It happened to have some affiliated moderators; after pointing out this was stupid and very, very unhealthy, they basically told me to shut up and donate PPE if I didn't like it. I thought it was a fascinating example of the disconnect between OSHA-regulated industry and end consumers.

romwell 5y ago
>As a result, they are required to be shipped with hazardous material declarations like the UN3481 stickers you'll find on everything. These modern hieroglyphics a)mean little to nothing, and b)stop existing once you remove a product from its packaging. That's not enough. >Consumers in general are unaware of the hazards and unwilling to learn Unwilling? Well, perhaps they would be more willing if the instructions that came with the product contained the information that you'd want them to learn. According to this thread, this includes: * Awareness of Li-Ion cell chemistry, normal operating voltage ranges, critical low voltage after which the battery should not be charged, and the possibility of formation of dendrites and runaway thermal reaction; * Awareness that the said runaway reaction, in practical terms, means that charging a device with a "dead" battery can result in spontaneous combustion; * Awareness that, given lack of access to internal batteries, and any information about its state, we solely rely on regulating circuitry to prevent that from happening, and that this circuitry might be faulty, resulting in the possibility of spontaneous combustion under normal use conditions; * Awareness how to handle a Li-Ion battery that caught on fire, and how to dispose of a device with a burning battery safely, especially when it's operated in highly flammable environments (e.g. using headphones in a bedroom/in a dry field outdoors/at a gas station); * Awareness that the battery catching on fire may result not only thermal, but also chemical burns if it is not disposed of in a safe manner while it's on fire - in addition to toxic fumes; * Awareness of how to deal with thermal and chemical burns should they happen (e.g. for chemical burns, rinse with cold water for half an hour), as well as consequences of inhaling the fumes; According to commenters here, all of the above is "common knowledge", "high school chemistry", "middle school knowledge", "easy best practices", etc. - which, at the same time, are virtually unknown by the general public (due to unwillingness to learn, no less). Also, the manufacturers are under no moral or legal obligation to inform their users of these hazards and procedures, and this information isn't (and shouldn't) be included in product manuals. Holy self-contradictory Jesus this thread has been quite a read.

romwell 5y ago

>As a result, they are required to be shipped with hazardous material declarations like the UN3481 stickers you'll find on everything. These modern hieroglyphics a)mean little to nothing, and b)stop existing once you remove a product from its packaging. That's not enough. >Consumers in general are unaware of the hazards and unwilling to learn Unwilling? Well, perhaps they would be more willing if the instructions that came with the product contained the information that you'd want them to learn. According to this thread, this includes: * Awareness of Li-Ion cell chemistry, normal operating voltage ranges, critical low voltage after which the battery should not be charged, and the possibility of formation of dendrites and runaway thermal reaction; * Awareness that the said runaway reaction, in practical terms, means that charging a device with a "dead" battery can result in spontaneous combustion; * Awareness that, given lack of access to internal batteries, and any information about its state, we solely rely on regulating circuitry to prevent that from happening, and that this circuitry might be faulty, resulting in the possibility of spontaneous combustion under normal use conditions; * Awareness how to handle a Li-Ion battery that caught on fire, and how to dispose of a device with a burning battery safely, especially when it's operated in highly flammable environments (e.g. using headphones in a bedroom/in a dry field outdoors/at a gas station); * Awareness that the battery catching on fire may result not only thermal, but also chemical burns if it is not disposed of in a safe manner while it's on fire - in addition to toxic fumes; * Awareness of how to deal with thermal and chemical burns should they happen (e.g. for chemical burns, rinse with cold water for half an hour), as well as consequences of inhaling the fumes; According to commenters here, all of the above is "common knowledge", "high school chemistry", "middle school knowledge", "easy best practices", etc. - which, at the same time, are virtually unknown by the general public (due to unwillingness to learn, no less). Also, the manufacturers are under no moral or legal obligation to inform their users of these hazards and procedures, and this information isn't (and shouldn't) be included in product manuals. Holy self-contradictory Jesus this thread has been quite a read.