Department of Irony

Exploding cell phonesprompt warnings

Cell phone batteries can explode. I never really thought about it. I mean, I guess I should have known that, any kind of battery can explode, so why not those? It just didn't occur to me. This article talks about people who've had problems, offering the following information:

Over the past two years, federal safety officials have received 83 reports of cell phones exploding or catching fire, usually because of incompatible, faulty or counterfeit batteries or chargers. Burns to the face, neck, leg and hip are among the dozens of injury reports the agency has received.

Of course, the article also says that there are 170 million cell phones in this country. That makes the odds kind of low.

So I finsihed the article, and I was wondering if I'd wasted my time, because I already know to be carfeul with batteries, and the statistics seem in my favor, and then I saw it. On the bottom of the page is an advertisement - for cell phones.