Going Electric Safely: Lithium-Ion Battery Precautions
Photo courtesy of NBC News
Those of us who own e-bikes, scooters, battery-powered yard tools, backup power storage batteries, or any other lithium-ion battery-powered equipment in an effort to be more eco friendly should take precautions to keep those batteries from sparking or catching fire. To be sure, none of us wants any of our possessions to burn, but lithium-ion batteries are particularly toxic and explosive when they catch fire, putting all of us in even more danger than we would be otherwise.
That includes firefighters. Besides the more obvious hazards of firefighting, dealing with the explosive power of burning lithium-ion batteries and the toxins they emit is especially perilous. Personal protective equipment worn on the job doesn’t keep all toxins out of firefighters’ systems, and these people who put their lives on the line to keep us and our property safe suffer higher rates of some cancers and die more often of some cancers than the general population because of the toxins they’re exposed to. Toxic gasses emitted by failing lithium-ion batteries are also part of “thermal runaway” chain reactions leading to explosions, making firefighters’ jobs profoundly more hazardous.
Neither public service announcements warning against cheap after-market lithium-ion batteries nor thousands of news reports of tragic deaths and property destruction across the US have stopped people from purchasing poorly made knock-off batteries, unfortunately. Even more frustrating, recent gutting of the Consumer Product Safety Commission in Washington, D.C. has left new battery safety standards that would have been enacted this year in limbo. For now, at least, battery safety is up to us.
The captain of Fire Station 5 in Hillcrest recently described cheap after-market lithium-ion batteries as one of the biggest threats firefighters in San Diego still face. We should all do our part to diminish that threat—while keeping ourselves and our possessions safer—by purchasing only batteries made by our device manufacturers, storing those batteries correctly, and when the time comes, disposing of them properly. Information on safe use and storage of lithium-ion batteries can be found at www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/home-fire-safety/lithium-Ion-batteries. Additional safety and battery disposal information is available at www.sandiego.gov/environmental-services/ep/hazardous/battrecycle.