2016 Ends With A Bang
The year began with fears over exploding hoverboards but finishes by returning to Li-ion ecig cells.
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by Dave Cross
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New York senator Charles Schumer is using the wealth of anti-ecig stories to demand they are banned. He’s taken to warning people that one of the biggest risks they face over this holiday season is that they could be sitting next to “a ticking time bomb”.
Schumer is attempting to drive fear into the public by warning them of the risks vapers pose on planes, trains and automobiles. He is demanding the Food and Drug Administration investigates why “e-cigarettes have become ticking time bombs, and we're here today to disarm them before they injure more unsuspecting people.”
He isn’t the only one. Senator Richard Blumenthal is also placing all of his efforts into increasing the regulation of vaping devices. At a specially convened press conference, he said: “Anybody who is smoking an e-cigarette ought to be aware for the potential of it to explode in your mouth.”
Blumenthal has written to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission demanding that all vaping products are withdrawn from sale in the same way that Samsung did with the Galaxy Note 7. His letter states: “Despite frequent accounts in the media of exploding e-cigarettes, there has yet to be a single recall by any e-cigarette manufacturer. I am troubled by this lack of action to date, and also concerned that the e-cigarette industry is cutting corners and not taking appropriate steps to ensure the electrical safety of the products they are manufacturing and marketing.”
It’s not a new line of attack, a letter was sent to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, earlier in the year, stating: “Although these explosions were previously thought to be isolated events, the injuries among our patients add to growing evidence that e-cigarettes are a public safety concern that demand increased regulations as well as design changes to improve safety”.
The problem vaping has is not so much that these people hold their opinions about safety and ecigs, it’s that irresponsible vapers keep giving them ammunition. Christopher Gademan’s aunt, for example, had just telephoned him to take more care with his vaping device. He didn’t pay heed to her words of warning and then featured in another of those ‘explosion’ news stories.
Closer to home, every news source covered the CCTV images from Leeds Trinity. West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service repeated the observations we’ve been making for years: “This is not the first time we have seen injuries caused by a lithium-ion battery exploding whilst being carried in someone's pocket. We really want the public to understand the risks which can be easily avoided. There does not need to be a fault with the battery, the problem is the incorrect storage of the batteries. The explosion occurred when a spare lithium-ion battery in the man's pocket came into contact with another metal item, such as coins or keys.”
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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