Last week, something that could potentially have been a much worse incident happened. I was sitting watching TV and drinking coffee around lunch time, when I noticed that something smelled like burning. I got out of the sofa and had a look around the kitchen, and saw substantial amount of smoke hanging over my kitchen bench. At that time, the fire alarm in the apartment block also got activated, luckily, only as a pre-warning. A full alarm would have called the attention of the guard company and the fire department.
So where did all this smoke come from?
My several year old Phillips kitchen scale.
One of the rechargeable batteries had exploded and the scale had started melting, both on the outside and on the inside. The rechargeable battery was only a tiny AAA-battery, but was able to do so much.
Imagine what would have happened if I had been away from home at the time! We surround ourselves with so many batteries: in remote controls, in toys and in computer devices such as keyboard and mouse. Most of the batteries I have are of the rechargeable kind. I guess everything has a shelf-life of some sort, a certain amount of load and discharge cycles. It’s an eye-opener when something like this happens, and I guess it’s time for all of us to take precautions in every thinkable way we can.
Has this ever happened to you, or have you heard about something like this happeneing to someone?
