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Monday, July 20, 2015
Boeing Warns Carriers About Flying Bulk Shipments of Lithium Batteries
It's lithium ion batteries that power the iPhones, iPads and other
iStuff that have come to be regarded as the essentials of life. Only
problem is, they tend to catch fire, leading Boeing Co. to warn airlines
that loading up their planes' cargo compartments with bulk battery
shipments pose unacceptable fire hazards. There've been plenty of
cases of individual phones and other devices catching fire, both on the
grund and in the air. Just one blazing phone is a problem; think what a
blazing pallet of burning batteries could do.
That, says the Wall Street Journal,
is what led Boeing to issue a formal warning to its customers, urging
them to stop accepting large shipments of lithium batteries until safer
packaging and fire protection efforts can be worked out. Let them take a slow boat from China, Boeing advised, though not in so many words.
Nothing new
It's
hardly a new problem. There have been many case over the years of cell
phones igniting in people's pockets, on airplanes and in other
inconvenient locations. Thomas Forqueran's vintage Ford truck post-fire (Submitted photo)Last August, an airplane was evacuated in Tel Aviv after an iPhone 5 caught fire and filled the cabin with smoke. Last July, a smartphone caught fire under a 13-year-old girl's pillow in Dallas. And way back in 2008, a laptop computer caught fire in a vintage pickup truck in Nevada, destroying the truck, a Remington rifle and setting off two boxes of ammunition.
Boeing
has reportedly been giving the no-big-battery-cartons advice to
airlines who asked but has now issued a formal warning to all of the
world's carriers, who are expected to comply. Airlines that disregard
the warning would be on shaky legal ground in the event of a disaster
attributed to flaming batteries.
Feds pondering
Boeing at
least beat the U.S. government, which has been considering rules limited
lithium batteries in carry-on luggage since 2007. In March 2007, the
Department of Transportation said there had been five fires in airplane passenger cabins or cargo holds since 2005, a period of only two years. This smartphone caught fire in a Dallas girl's bed (Fox 4 photo)Lithium
metal batteries were banned from the cargo holds of U.S. airliners in
2004 but lithium ion batteries -- which are much more common -- are
still good to go.
Lithium metal batteries are nonrechargeable
while the lithium ion type is the one we're all familiar with --
requiring frequent plug-ins to keep the juices flowing.
The
problem is that other things can get the juices flowing as well. Both
types of batteries contain chemical-infused metals that get very hot
very quickly if they come into contact with each other due to a short
circuit or leaking seal. The result is a fast-spreading, very hot fire
that is very difficult to extinguish.
While a single battery
catching fire in a phone or laptop may start a small fire, a battery
catching fire in a shipment of thousands of batteries could start a
blaze that would quickly become catastrophic.
Many airlines have
already stopped accepting battery shipments and Boening's warning may
push the recalcitrants to act as well. While Boeing's warning doesn't
have the force of law, airlines nearly always comply with formal
warnings from manufacturers, so Boeing may have accomplished what
governments so far have not gotten around to. Source:http://www.consumeraffairs.com