There seem to be two camps here:<p>- Bose is an evil megacorp who recklessly endangered its customers by selling dangerous and poorly designed products.<p>- Accidents happen and when a device explodes on your head you should accept it as a fact of life and move on. The chemical burns are nothing and OP is a pussy.<p>I think the reality may be different. My take on it is that Li batteries possess inherent dangers and it is incumbent upon manufacturers to take reasonable steps to mitigate the dangers while informing their consumers of the risk. Unfortunately, even when presented with the risks, most folks are unable to comprehend the probabilities and consequences and will nearly always choose convenience, features and value over the avoidance of danger. It seems we, as a society(not as individuals, as some will surely object) have chosen Li technology and deemed it safe enough to deploy ubiquitously.<p>I hope a review of this incident will shed light on the safety practices followed by Bose and will inform future engineers of unforeseen risks, giving us all safer, convenient devices.<p>Overall I find the discussions in this thread unbecoming of the types of folks I thought frequented HN. I hope we can all strive to elevate the dialogue and treat each other with a moderate amount of respect.
It would be good to see an autopsy, to find out if it's actually the battery that went into thermal runaway, or something else that shorted and dumped all of its energy.<p><i>I have no idea how much heavy metals I've been exposed to by inhaling the toxic smoke. I don't know how much smoke my pregnant wife inhaled. I worry how much chemical residue is on my desk, floor, walls, how much is getting recycled by my HVAC system, how much exposure my pets had.</i><p>That sort of paranoia doesn't help. In fact it may cause psychosomatic symptoms (nocebo effect). You've probably inhaled far worse if you've ever been to a barbeque, gas station, or just took a walk in one of the more crowded areas of the city.
If you're up for it, I suggest:<p>1) Find a lawyer. I'd guess that personal injury lawyer is the right kind, and that you can easily find one who works on contingency.<p>2) File a complaint with the consumer product safety commission, and any other applicable government agencies. The lawyer may be able to help with this.<p>You deserve compensation for this, and I wish you all the best with extracting it. I hope you recover soon.<p>Also: Take photos and document everything. A massive number of photos, of the damage to your house and your body and anything else you can think of. This will help with the lawyer.
I had the same happen to a mid-tier brand portable bluetooth speaker that was charging from the wall outlet on my night stand. Burst into a massive chemical flame right next to me, splattered the wall with molten plastic. It took me a few seconds to understand what was happening, at first I assumed it was my SO playing a really dumb fireworks prank on me. Took a few good inhalations of whatever black smoke came out of it while trying to put the fire out with a pillow. I was very, very lucky that this happened while I was in the same room, and not out at work with nobody at home to put out the fire. It would have easily caused a building-wide fire.<p>The company behind it offered to replace the product with whatever I wanted from their store as long as I signed a "I won't sue you" form and sent them the unit back for investigation. They said it was a manufacturing defect. I wasn't feeling like spending months or years in litigation, so I took the offer (no batteries this time) and moved on with my life. No regrets since.<p>The reality is that we're all surrounded by these ticking battery timebombs, and we're all at the mercy of manufacturing quality control and luck. Ever since that incident I never charge any new device unless I'm sitting next to it for a few hours, just to make sure nothing of the sort happens without my supervision. I realize it doesn't accomplish much, since these issues often happen hundreds of hours into the device's regular operation, but it gives me a false sense of safety.
I mean I’m glad it didn’t happen to me, but a billion people are carrying around billions of Lithium-ion batteries. Those batteries sometimes catch fire because Lithium is highly flammable. It’s gonna happen.
I purchased Bose QC-35 II as well. I don't have chemical burns, but after a while of wearing my ears become really sensitive. I feel strange pain while wearing them. This applies only when the noise cancelation is ON. When it is off the pain immediately disappears. My explanation is that these phones actually generate inverse signal to the noise, but due to various factors such as delay, the cancellation is not perfect and what I am actually getting into the ear is the residual high frequency noise, which may in fact be quite dangerous. Anybody else experienced this? There might be some study about it ...
I bought my kids a hover board for Christmas a few years back. Then it was in the news that some, a different brand, were catching fire on people. I never liked the thought of lithium ion batteries charging unattended after that. I started placing it to charge away from the walls on on ceramic tiles in case it start to burn. Even cell phones I feel better with them charging in a glass dish. Call me paranoid but I’ve seen too many internet videos of these types of batteries spontaneously bursting into flames.
This is one of the reasons why unnecessary complexity and the general wireless trend is a bad thing. Wired headphones cannot have this problem. They can't have bluetooth syncing issues, they can't rarely catch fire or explode, and their batteries never need to die or be replaced. Reliance on these sorts of technologies is a new kind of sloth.
This obviously should not have happened, and I hope that you will get this resolved to your satisfaction, I also applaud your effort at documenting this.<p>A couple of questions for you:<p>- were the headphones recently dropped?<p>- otherwise damaged?<p>- what was the environment like at the time of charging (extreme temperature / humidity)?<p>- what exactly was the charging setup, I don't quite understand your description about the 'the stock USB charger connected to a Macbook Pro', do you mean you used the stock charging cable? Or that you used a Macbook Pro charger? Or something else?<p>- Was there anything that might have given an earlier warning? Such as: the last charge cycle not working well requiring a recharge much sooner than you expected it, a deep discharge or other anomaly?<p>- Was there any sound (not headphone sounds, but sounds of something popping or cracking) prior to the combustion?<p>- Do you know what kind of batteries are in the QC-35, are these Lithium Polymer or something else?<p>- Approximately how many charge/discharge cycles did your headphones have?<p>Thank you for answering these, if you can, it may help get a grip on how bad the risk is for other users of these devices and whether or not there are any special circumstances that may have caused this.<p>I have a long article about Lithium Ion battery safety in the works and this is a pretty heavy thing that happened here, it could have easily been a lot worse though, but to imagine what could have happened had you not been in the house or if you had responded even a little bit slower is horrifying, you were - in spite of the bad stuff - extremely lucky that this ended the way it did.
HF exposure is a possibility from lithium battery fires. It's definitely something to be aware of, although it sounds like the doctor(s) you spoke with might be aware.<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577247/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577247/</a>
My bose QC-35 II broke twice during the warranty period. Additionally, one of their temporary failures was that suddenly the music stopped and instead they froze while playing a very loud high pitched beep. It was so painful in my ears that I literally punched them off my head. I've been hesitant to use them since.<p>But this story, together with my own 2 warranty repairs, confirms my suspicion that Bose has serious QC issues.
Imagine having your pair of expensive headphones exploding, leaving chemical burns only to be offered another pair of potentially explosive headphones.<p>If I were in this guys shoes, I probably wouldn't even want a Bose aux cord.<p>Excellent customer relations by the way.
There's a lot to be said for products which take traditional disposable alkaline batteries, such as my pair of older Bose noise-cancelling headphones. Alkaline cells don't spontaneously combust and may be packed in checked airline baggage. Products themselves are easier to dispose of and recycle without the concern of residual charge in an integrated lithium-ion power cell. If the user desires rechargable or longer-lasting lithium batteries, these can still be obtained in disposable battery form factors.
I, for one, am happy the author made this post. I never considered this a possibility and while i probably wont change my current headphones ill hopefully be vigilant to excess heat coming from them in the future, and not touch the product afterwards with my bare hands to avoid the described chemical burns.
I use these headphones.. I think I will continue to use them even after reading this. They're expensive and I have nothing to replace them with..<p>Off topic - Jorg Baller's comment on the blog post is confusing and seems rude.
A few years ago, the charging port in my Samsung Galaxy S7 caught fire while charging in my car. Luckily in this case I was present, and was able to disconnect the phone when I smelled the smoke. The fire just fizzled out as soon as I disconnected the charger. In this case it wasn't the battery burning, but something else in the system. It took a bit of arguing with the technician at the Samsung store, however in the end they just replaced the phone. In this case there was no damage to anything else, so I was happy with them just replacing the phone.
> "Occasionally you have the teammate without an optimal AV setup for conference calls where everytime they speak there's an echo, and I'd be like, "psst... get a pair of these, the mic quality is great and they're portable." I knew a lot of people who grabbed a pair."<p>I don't dispute the possibility of the burns, but I stopped reading here. The "echo" effect is caused from somebody using speakers instead of headphones as an output device during a call. Sometimes, having a good microphone or good software noise removal can mitigate this, but to solve the problem at the root, simply stop using the laptop speakers as the sound output device during meetings. You could use a pair of $20 earbuds to solve this. By the way, the echo isn't caused from them speaking, and if it is, the configuration fault lies with someone other than the speaker.<p>Also interesting that the author uses "portable" as the other selling point, as if the alternative were to use a boom mic.<p>If the author is thinking about suing, they'd be wiser to not eviscerate their own credibility as an engineer, in comments that could become designated as evidentiary material in such a case. It may not change the fact that they were burned and deserve compensation, but it may make it harder to win in court. The optimal thing to do is to say nothing public at all until clearing it with legal counsel. I'm not a lawyer though.
I’m not sure which is more alarming - that this happened in the first place, or reading some of the hateful negative comments here and on his post. Can we not just acknowledge that a fellow human got hurt and see how we can do better?<p>Personally I find OP’s experience helpful - it never occurred to me that a failure like this might happen, and it causes me to question if I want to keep using my wireless headphones.
I wondered how long it was going to be before this happened. As the amount of devices with lithium ion batteries increases the risk of house fire increases.<p>To the OP I wish you a speedy recovery from your injuries and would encourage you to seek legal recourse so that bose is fully motivated to resolve this issue for you and other Bose customers.
I'd take up on his offer.<p>I also have this exact model, bought them in 2019 at an airport and right at the time when they were warning about a particular Samsung device bursting into flames before every flight. There must be hundreds of thousands of them in the wild. I won't charge mine when I'm not around anymore.
So you accidentally pierced the lipo battery and it spewed hot lithium juice on you. It sucks but it's not horrendously dangerous and obviously they should replace the product if it doesn't turn out to be due to personal negligence.<p>Every wireless product you buy is almost guaranteed to have this same "flaw". If the battery gets damaged, it can ruin your product and maybe even hurt you. Why did you switch from the wired version? You never explained.<p>I got into Remote Control quadcopters this last year and some of the bare unprotected lipo batteries I have bought as part of this hobby could probably burn my whole house down. You just have to be careful and follow the guidelines given when buying these sorts of products.
This is an important reminder to all of us using battery-powered devices: there is just a tiny bit of electronics separating us from a fire. There is a non-zero risk this electronics can malfunction. It does happen en-masse like with Samsung Galaxy Note 7, and it happens in individual cases like with Samsung Galaxy A21. It is important to be always aware of this possibility, because the consequences can be fatal. For that reason, unless it's necessary, I prefer not to keep my phone in my pocket. I know I will probably be fine, but if there is a safe option, I prefer to reduce the risk.
The chemical burns part seems the worst to me. I suppose the thing to do (from a little light googling) is to quickly remove any visible stuff on you and then wash with lots of water ASAP. Anyone correct me on that?
Calcium Gluconate gel would be a good idea for the burns. If you were exposed to any HF from the battery fire, it's the standard low-dose treatment used in laboratories where HF is handled (source: worked in a lab where we handled HF, was hit by a tiny droplet once).<p>That said, beyond 24 hours not sure how useful it would be.<p>Lithium Ion batteries don't have heavy metals in them, so there's no risk there.
I once considered buiyng Bose noise-cancelling headphones to use them on the plane or in the train. Turned out I am not as much music fan, and a good book has similar noise-cancelling effect for me (like in I stop paying attention to noise). I wonder what would happen if those earphones got burned midflight. My guess is urgent plane landing.
@OP: can you clarify on this? What brand of cable/charger? I wonder if this can play any role<p>> I used the stock USB charger connected to a Macbook Pro.<p>The headphones were connected to charger or MBP? (MBP uses USB-C, QC35ii uses micro-USB, are there cables like this?)
It’s interesting that the author notes taking them off the charger. Those headphones charger really fast. Like in 20 minutes when you first get them. I wonder if they were overcharging them and if that contributed to this.
I don't think the big picture on lithium ion battery fire risk is well understood yet.<p>I posted another comment about this recently.<p>It appears that NYC is having about 1 e-bike fire per year, per 100K persons.
(see below)<p>It also appears the NYC is having about the same rate of e-bike fire injuries:
About 1 injury per 100K persons, per year.<p>I actually bought a nice e-bike and returned it, cause I didn't want to lose sleep over the possibility of an e-bike fire. The estimated probability is very low, granted.<p>References:
<a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/electric-bikes/how-to-preven" rel="nofollow">https://www.consumerreports.org/electric-bikes/how-to-preven</a>...
"E-bike ownership has skyrocketed in New York since the pandemic began, and with it, e-bike fires, according to the New York City Fire Department (FDNY). There have been 75 e-bike fires so far this year, which is on pace to double last year’s total, officials said. The fires have caused 72 injuries and three deaths."