Katrina Williams wanted a safer alternative to smoking, and e-cigarettes seemed to be the answer until the day one exploded in her pocket as she drove home from a beauty salon.
“It was like a firecracker,” the New Yorker said, as it seared third-degree burns in her leg, blasted through her charred pants and stuck in the dashboard. That was in April. Williams, a freight manager, said she still hasn’t returned to work. “It was very disturbing.”
Similar painful accidents have been recorded with increasing frequency over the past year as use of e-cigarettes has climbed, with faulty batteries seen as the suspected culprit.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which started regulating e-cigarettes in May, said it received reports about 66 explosions in 2015 and early 2016, after recording 92 explosions from 2009 to September 2015.
In late November, a clerk at a liquor store in New York’s Grand Central Station was casually leaning against a counter when the e-cigarette in his pocket erupted. A security camera captured him frantically trying to snuff out a fountain of white-hot sparks.
Surveillance video also captured an e-cigarette explosion in September at a New Jersey mall that left a woman’s Louis Vuitton bag smoking as she stood at a checkout counter.
Police say a teenage girl on a train at the Universal Orlando amusement park suffered burns in October when an electronic cigarette belonging to another visitor exploded and shot a fireball at her.
