Lithium-Ion Battery Explosions

As more Americans turn to e-cigarettes and personal vaporizers, we wanted to alert you to a lesser-known danger of these products.

E-cigarettes typically run on high-power, lithium-ion batteries that are highly combustible. Most e-cigarettes or personal vaporizers utilize a cylindrical housing area for the battery. When one of these batteries fails, the e-cigarette or personal vaporizer can either explode or rupture at one of its ends, causing the device to be propelled like a rocket. Serious injury to users’ hands and faces have been associated with the use of e-cigarettes or personal vaporizing hardware. In some cases, the explosions have also caused house and car fires.

RPWB attorneys are currently involved in litigation stemming from injuries caused by the explosion of electronic cigarettes or personal vaporizers. If you would like to speak with one of our attorneys about injuries resulting from the use of these types of devices, please contact Matt Nickles.

Learn more about e-cigarette explosions.

The answer is often the result of manufacturers pushing the limits of batteries in order to maximize the amount of stored energy while minimizing charging time and cost. If you think about it, nearly every new device we use is more powerful than what it replaced, placing more and more demand on a style of battery that many experts believe has been maxed out in terms of the amount of energy it can store.

There are a variety of ways in which lithium-ion batteries can explode, including leaking chemicals, incompatible chargers and improperly separated electrodes as appears to be the case with the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. For more information about the science behind battery explosions, we recommend this article.

Many lithium-ion batteries are produced in unregulated factories in Asia, according to a recent report in the New York Times. Often battery explosions happen without warning, which poses even more of a threat for products that are kept close to a person’s body, such as e-cigarettes, cameras, cell phones and other personal electronics.

In March 2016, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning that lithium batteries in the storage area of airplanes pose a risk of “catastrophic hull loss.” Six months later, in October 2016, the FAA banned Samsung Note 7 phones from airplanes after numerous reports of exploding phones.

RPWB attorneys are involved in product liability and personal injury litigation against parties who are responsible for bringing defective and dangerous products to market. We understand the science of these cases and have a long record of bringing justice to the victims of dangerous products.