A reconstructed computer tomography image of the e-cig injuries
Primary Children's Hospital/The New England Journal of Medicine
Posted on 06/20/2019 4:36:15 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Katie W. Russell, the pediatric surgeon who treated 17-year-old Austin, compared his injuries to those seen in “high-speed motor vehicle crashes.” Her colleague, pediatric ear, nose and throat surgeon Jonathan Skirko, says it looked “kind of like a close-range gunshot wound.”
Burton and her maimed son first headed to the local hospital in their hometown of Ely, Nevada, but were turned away for lack of resources. Doctors said they’d have to drive 200 miles to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City.
They filled the teen’s mouth with gauze and gave him a “vomit bag,” says Burton, noting he didn’t receive any pain medication, then set off on a five-hour journey — almost hitting a wild horse in the process — and finally arrived around 1 a.m.
“He had a very swollen lower jaw and lip, a small burn on his lip and a huge cut in his mouth,” says Russell. “A 2-centimeter [¾-inch] piece of his jaw was just blown to pieces.”
Austin’s injuries required two surgeries to repair, the doctors say, which included adding a titanium plate to stabilize his jawbone and stitching the flesh wounds. The hole in the young man’s chin could have been caused by e-cig shrapnel or a wayward tooth.
E-cigarettes contain lithium-ion batteries — the likely culprit in some 2,035 vaporizer explosions occurring between 2015 and 2017, according to a British Medical Journal report. The U.S. Fire Administration says these batteries are “not a safe source of energy for these devices.”
A reconstructed computer tomography image of the e-cig injuries
Primary Children's Hospital/The New England Journal of Medicine
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Batteries pack a lot of energy into a small volume. And, we are continually trying to increase how much energy we can store per unit volume.
Poor kid... not a case of “mother knew best.” Glad he’s OK.
Just a tiny battery, too. THink of how much more energy is in automotive EV battery, comparable to a tank of gasoline.
Regulated mods are the way to go. Mechanical mods have no safeties. People should know the difference.
Well damn, just damn.
I do feel sorry for the kid.
I don’t think many of us really give any thought to the potential risks of batteries.
The worst thing is -- the battery designers do this on purpose!
That ain’t a Lucky Strike.
At least tobacco doesn’t blow up.
This guy does awesome and hilarious e-cig reviews:
https://www.youtube.com/user/vapel1fe
He may end up the lucky one as he probably will now, probably not try these dangerous and potentially addicting devices again.
Putting dangerous things into your body is what is ridiculous.
Something is very wrong here. The description of the wound here does not comport with what I am seeing in the 3D-tomography of the jaw wound and what I know of the way e-cigarettes are constructed.
The e-cigarettes have a mouthpieces connected to a tank like container with the juice, either a nicotine containing flavored, or non-nicotine flavored, vegetable glycerin or propolyn glycol. The battery is NOT close to the face.
Here is a typical commercial e-cigarette design:
As you can see the Lithium Ion battery is actually several inches from the lips and jaw. . . and nothing explosive should be anywhere close to the face.
The damage shown, and the wounds described, indicate to me that the teenage had something else in his mouth, perhaps the battery itself, not the mouthpiece. The jaw damage just is NOT accountable to a Lithium Ion batter explosion (they really do not explode, they burst into flame). The force required to break a jaw, one of the strongest bones in the human body, is much more than can be accounted for by the story told here!
He is MUCH more likely to have damage to his hand if the battery exploded than to his jaw, inside his lips.
Many of these e-cigarettes are user re-loadable. Is it possible this teenager tried to load this e-cigarette with something NOT suitable for vaping, that might itself be explosive? I think that is a distinct possibility.
My BS-o-meter is pegged and bent around the stop!
see, illegal for teenagers to buy cigarettes but not prohibited to smoke them.
see, illegal for teenagers to buy cigarettes but not prohibited to smoke them.
“E-cigarettes contain lithium-ion batteries — the likely culprit in some 2,035 vaporizer explosions occurring between 2015 and 2017”
Seems like this ain’t the first time this has happened.
Again, the battery is inches away from the lips and jaw. Something else happened than what was described as the initiating event. Glycol and Glycerin are not explosive and are normally used as food additives.
I am wondering if he wasn’t trying to vape alcohol, but even that should not have split his jaw and shattered his teeth. Burned his lips and mouth, yeah, that I can see, but splitting the jaw? What could do that? One thing might be holding a high powered gun too close and getting hit by the recoil when he fired it.
Why were the upper incisors broken? They are certainly weaker teeth than the jaw below? If he were gripping the mouthpiece of the e-cigarette with both upper and lower teeth, then certainly both should have been broken. Why was the force transmitted only downward? Strange.
They are asked to. Think about this, though: They have only succeeded so far in packing about one-tenth as much electrical energy into a given volume as would be obtained from a petroleum product, like gasoline or butane. It's rare, but when a butane lighter seriously malfunctions and spews ignited contents, its a flamethrowing disaster.
But, we all want our batteries to be smaller, more powerful, and last longer. We just want the failure modes to be rare and gentle.
A pile of gunpowder that is lit will just burst into flame. BUT... if you put it inside layers of paper and then ignite it... BOOM. I suspect this is what happens with e-cigs. The battery ignites, but is sealed inside the plastic cartridge of the 'pen'. The expanding gas can't go anywhere until it bursts the plastic open.
BOOM !!!!!
Ouch!
I can’t believe he wasn’t air lifted with that serious an injury. Horrific.
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