I hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving. Florida was nice, although my dives got cancelled by an overly cautious boat captain. Jack is 10 months old today. Man, this year has flown by. Today is also the Patriot’s last day at his current job. Monday finds me cruising up and down the New Jersey Turnpike commuting to my new gig. This will be a big adjustment since I have worked in and around NYC for my entire adult life. I’ll miss the ferry in the morning but not the chaos of downtown. I suppose the next step is to buy a mini-van and move to North Jersey.
So when I switched to Verizon last month because T-Mobile SUCKS, I purchased a smart new phone manufactured by the Korean company LG. I have been enjoying the QUERTY keyboard and built in GPS navigation system and up to this point the only thing that scared me about the phone was the prospect of receiving an enormous bill. Then I read this (from CNN):
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- An exploding mobile phone battery apparently killed a South Korean man in the first such known case in this gadget-obsessed country, police say.
The man, identified only by his family name Suh, was found dead at his workplace in a quarry Wednesday morning and his mobile phone battery was melted in his shirt pocket, a police official in Cheongwon, 135 kilometers (85 miles) south of Seoul, told The Associated Press.
"We presume that the cell phone battery exploded," the police official said on condition of anonymity.
The official said the phone was made by South Korea's LG Electronics, the world's fifth-biggest handset maker.
LG Electronics confirmed its product was involved in the accident but said such a battery explosion and death was virtually impossible. E-mail to a friend
Virtually impossible doesn’t sound like completely impossible. The doctor who examined Suh said the death was probably caused by an explosion of the battery.
"He sustained an injury that is similar to a burn in the left chest and his ribs and spine were broken," Yonhap news agency quoted Kim as saying.
His freaking spine was broken? What kind of insane technology is involved here? An exploding cell phone battery has the force potential to actually break your back? Imagine if he was holding the damn thing up to his head at the time it exploded. Ewww.
A little internet research reveals that similar explosions have taken place in New Zealand. The phone that exploded there was made by Nokia who issued a warning about bl-5c batteries made between December 2005 and last November. That story also proffered the statistic that around 100 out of 46 million cell phones worldwide have overheated or exploded “so far”. This begs the question as to whether we are all carrying around little potential hand grenades which could rip off the side of our faces at any time without any warning. Wonder if the TSA will ban them on commercial flights. Seems to me the risk is at least equal to the shoe bombs.
3 comments:
Confucius say: "Patriot no put cerr phone in Patriot pant pocket or buddee Wang could be onry Wang you reft with."
--You buddee Wang
LOL. I'm starting to like this guy. Wang, you alright.
Hey sir - it appears the story was a hoax.
Seoul (South Korea) - What was widely reported on Wednesday as a case of accidental death due to an exploding cell phone battery has now been found to be a cover-up of a different kind of accidental death. A co-worker, named Kwon Young-sup, who originally told police that he found the victim, named Seo, bleeding from the nose and lying dead, has now confessed to accidentally killing him while operating a large piece of heavy machinery. This is being reported by The Korean Times newspaper.
Kwon said, "I was moving the excavator [a large backhoe on tracks] and Seo was suddenly out of my sight. I ran out and saw he was lying down bleeding and his clothes on fire.'' Kwon told this story to police, according to The Korean Times. "All this happened in a moment, and I was too afraid about the accident. So I lied that the battery exploded and killed Seo." This news spread across the Internet very rapidly on Wednesday as the possibility of an exploding cell phone battery, something most everybody has these days, is big news.
The coroner assigned to the case found evidence which suggested Kwon's story could not be accurate. There chest damage to Seo was too wide-spread to have been caused by a cell phone battery explosion. This raised questions about the real cause. A spokesman for LG electronics came out and flatly denied that the battery could have exploded in the manner described, stating that their batteries were lithium polymer, and not lithium ion based. The confession came from Kwon after this information was presented. Kwon said, "I was too afraid about the accident. So I lied that the battery exploded and killed Seo."
Full story here
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