Georgia Woman Nearly Loses Home After E-Cigarette Explodes
A woman is pondering what “could have been” after an e-cigarette she was charging exploded in her Georgia home — an explosion she compared to a “bomb detonation.”
The woman claims that after she plugged the Chinese-manufactured eHit electronic cigarette into her laptop to charge, it exploded, sending 4-foot flames across her living room. She said the flames scorched her couch and rug. Fortunately, she was able to grab a wet washrag and pull the still-smoldering device out of her computer’s USB port before it could do any more damage.
“If I hadn’t been home, I would have lost my dogs, I would have lost my cats, I would have lost my house,” the woman told WSB-TV.
The co-founder of the e-cigarette trade association Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association (TVECA) suggested in a phone interview with MailOnline that the woman may have “overcharged” the device or that the e-cigarette may have been “mismatched” with the charging device she was using. He steered clear of implying that the device or its battery may have been defective.
He also told MailOnline that he could only recall one other time when an e-cigarette exploded. The product liability attorneys at Farah & Farah in Jacksonville reported about that incident in a blog last year. An e-cigarette seriously injured a 57-year-old Florida man after it exploded in his mouth. The father of three lost all of his teeth and part of his tongue as a result of the explosion.
At the time, fire officials said that a faulty battery was the most likely culprit in the blast.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is planning to regulate the emerging billion dollar e-cigarette industry, but those new rules will most likely only deal with allowable nicotine levels in the increasingly popular devices and will probably not delve into hardware safety concerns.
The law firm of Farah & Farah will be closely monitoring the safety record of e-cigarette devices as sales of these products expand. If you’ve been injured or suffered property damage due to a defective product, talk to us. You may be entitled to compensation for medical bills, hospitalization, and other damages. Contact us online or call us at (800) 533-3555 for a free, and confidential case evaluation.
