A man in Kansas has filed a lawsuit against a vape shop in Wichita alleging that his e-cigarette’s spare battery exploded in his pocket.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Sedgwick County on February 6, alleges that Daniel Anderson, the plaintiff in the case, suffered chemical and thermal burns to his hands as well as his left leg as a result of the alleged explosion.
The plaintiff claims in his lawsuit that the vape shop that sold him the battery, Big E’s Vapor Shop in Wichita, should have known about the battery’s defect and subsequently warned customers, which the lawsuit alleges that the store failed to do.
This isn’t the first time a vape shop has been sued over an exploding vape battery as a man in New York filed a suit against a New York vape shop, Village Vape-Or-Smoke in Webster, alleging that he too sustained injuries as a result of an exploding vape battery.
How Often Do Vape Batteries Explode?
With vaping clearly on the rise, it may come as little to surprise to find that incidents of exploding vape batteries are also on the rise.
From 2009 to 2016, the U.S. Fire Administration tracked a total of 195 reported incidents of vape batteries exploding.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tracked a total of 66 vape explosions from 2015 to early 2016.
Why Do Vape Batteries Explode?
Lithium-ion batteries, known as “Li-ion” for short, are commonly used to power vaping devices. These types of batteries–which are also used in smartphones, laptops, and other popular consumer electronics–have been known to explode. In fact, Hewlett-Packard (HP) recalled over 10,000 laptop batteries at one point over what they indicated to be fire concerns.
While these types of batteries do carry their own inherent risk of potentially exploding, the American Vaping Association (AMA) previously stated that user error was at least in part responsible for some incidents of exploding vape batteries. So if you’re tweaking your vape mods, you may want to reconsider as the AMA believes that a failure on your part could result in the possibility of an exploding battery.
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