My Bose QC-35 II headphones burst into flames and left me with chemical burns
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- Bose is an evil megacorp who recklessly endangered its customers by selling dangerous and poorly designed products.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
Third camp reporting! Here's my take (as a Bose product user):
1) Bose QC-35 II headphones are a hazardous product that, in at least one instance, has spontaneously burst into flames and caused chemical burns while being operated according to the manual
2) This product does not come with appropriate warnings[0] that this is a possibility, while, according to comments here, hazards of the battery used are common knowledge among engineers
3) The product's manual instructs the user to take the headphones off if they experience a "warming sensation"[0], indicating that the engineers were aware of the risks, but neither the risks nor mitigation were not described in the instruction manual (compare this with the labels on something as common as epoxy resin)
4) The OP should report this incident to CPSC (as they did[1]!), since this is the body responsible for keeping track of such incidents and that will be able to act upon them if there's a pattern of them happening
5) The medical injuries sustained by the OP are unacceptable; and at the very least, Bose should pay for the medical treatment and resulting productivity loss, as they occurred at no fault of the OP, who trusted Bose's device to be safe to use as described by Bose. (Reminder for our friends outside the US: we don't have universal healthcare)
6) There needs to be some incentive for companies to ensure the safety of their products or actions. In the US, this seems to be (punitive) damages, whereas in Europe it's more through stronger regulations.[2]
7) If the OPs report is true, I also hope they sue Bose. It is important for all of us - people who use Bose products, their roommates etc - that they thoroughly check this incident and make sure it never happens again. They will not do it unless it costs them money and bad publicity.[3]
Please let me know what's so radical about it, as many people seem to get angry about it.
And fully with you regarding treating others with respect (particularly, it's sad to see the OP being called "hypochondriac" and their concerns dismissed as "paranoid"). It is, as you said, unbecoming.
____________________
Disclaimer: I love my Bose SoundLink Mini II speaker. I bought it, for myself, with my money, which was fully worth it. IMO, it sounds better than any other speaker of the same size that I tried.
That doesn't excuse this situation happening, nor how Bose handled it so far.
[0] Bose QC-35 II manual: https://assets.bose.com/content/dam/Bose_DAM/Web/consumer_el...
[1] As per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29602614
[2] In the words of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29603800
[3] In the words of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29603321
should it? especially when the risk is so low and warnings like "contents may be hot" on coffee cups or " This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm" are widely derided?
Yes, it should, because people expect wireless headphones to be as safe as wired ones, which have exactly 0% (zero, zlich, nada) chance of spontaneously catching on fire.
Wired headphones are still widely used, made, and sold. This would allow the consumers to make an informed choice, and will give the manufactures of safe devices (wired or wireless) the deserved edge in the market.
Also, consider the comments just from this thread about the risks:
>In the end you're carrying a high energy density power source on your head that would love to just catch fire. Don't they teach kids anything in chemistry these days?
>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.
>Nothing is perfectly safe, that is how lithium batteries fail. You should know so you can properly deal with problems.
>Well, at lease EVs are spontaneously catching fire.
>Everyone is aware of the risks, there were a bunch of stories about airplane cell phone fires a few years ago.
>lithium battery fires are really nasty, and that's why he got a chemical burn. LiPF6 is a contact irritant, PF5 it decomposes to is a gas, and also a respiratory irritant, and HF PH5 decomposes in the air is a dangerous poisonous acid. This is what everybody visiting a lithium battery factory is told on safety orientation. In case there is fire in the factory, run, preferably until you are few blocks away.
So, paradoxically, the risks are both negligible and inevitable, something that every consumer should be prepared for because "everyone knows" batteries explode, but no manufacturer should warn about, mitigate, or account for in the design because who'd buy their product then?
I hope you agree that the above is self-contradictory.
Now, ultimately, warnings are not a panacea, but they do work. At the very least, having their product labeled as "unsafe to use in bed" would make the manufacturers invest in research that would result in a better product that doesn't merit such a label.
I think this can all be true. ER doctors say avocados are one of the most dangerous fruits because of knife accidents.
Yet avocados don’t come with any warnings or mitigations. And for the general public, you probably don’t know any one who was severely injured slicing an avocado.
Surely avocado farmers should be working on cultivars that have a small or no pit so people don’t get injured preparing these fruits? (I mean that only half sarcastically, I would enjoy a seedless avocado if it tasted the same.)
I kind of like the giant seeds. It reminds me that this bizarre fruit is a leftover from megafauna eating and pooping out the giant seeds over long distances (you need a big seed to survive dinosaur digestion)
There is also evidence that wired headphones, which don't have batteries in them, do not self-combust and therefore will not require such a label. A label that differentiates products is certainly useful.
There is also plenty of evidence that most people are unaware of the potential dangers of lithium batteries.
There is no parallel with Prop 65 warnings here.
Giving radiation warnings at the level of a banana would be useless. Does that mean we shouldn't use Geiger counters?
And I just think it would be cool if we dropped little hints to people about the best way to do common things, like cutting an avocado. Imagine if the world were filled with little tips and tricks everywhere we went. Tiny changes, but added up, might elevate life as a whole.
>We have GPS, nobody reads directions anyway. You should know your way around these parts. Getting lost is a part of life, deal with it. Using a sextant is easy, just follow these 25 steps in clear weather, and you know precisely where you are, no need for "you are here" displays. Kids these days expect everything to be spoon-fed to them. Nobody gets lost anyway, why should tax money be wasted on this? etc.
> “Americans ate an estimated 3 billion bagels at home in 2011, an average of about 11 per person ... in the course of slicing up all those bagels, almost 2,000 people cut their fingers so badly that they ended up in an emergency room.
> By the finger-cut-to-E.R. metric, that makes bagel-cutting the fifth most dangerous activity in the American kitchen.
https://www.newyorkerbagels.com/blogs/bagels/bagel-safety-do...
A bagel sitting on a shelf isn't going to cut you up.
Bose QC-35 II headphones, apparently, may catch on fire and cause chemical burns when touched.
Analogies are great for illustrating a point, but if you say "this thing is just like that other one", you need to argue why that's the case first.
I don't have an argument here, except that bagels might be a better example than avocados, because bagels are a manufactured product.
In either case, a knife is required for the injury to occur, so I agree that the comparison to spontaneous headphone combustion is not great.
Not if never charged (IIUC). Of course they probably come with chargers and are never used without them, but does anyone buy uncut bagels and not cut them?
If you really want to stick to the bagel analogy, it's as if the bagel stabbed you back with a knife after you cut it and set the knife aside.
I hope you would find such backstabbing bagels problematic.
This analogy doesn't apply. Avocados don't lunge at unsuspecting people with knives while they're not looking.
There is maybe a quarter page of useful text in the average 20 page manual.
Warnings in instruction manuals about novel threats are completely worthless.
There is, however, an American consumer whose only way to get their medical bills paid in case they are hurt by negligence or harmful actions of a corporate entity, is to sue that corporation.
Europe has regulations. We have lawsuits.
Lack of regulation is justified by the possibility of taking the offending party to court. Stop shaming people who are doing just that.
This is not the case. Neither in general, nor, in particular, in the case of Bose QC-35 II headphones.
The worst danger the manual explicitly wans about is the potential of "warming sensation"[1], in which case the user is to take the headphones off. Nothing about an imminent fire hazard, or potential chemical burns.
Compare this to the labels on, say, two-part epoxy glue about the potential hazards, and what to do.
Finally, there are only three possible scenarios:
* Including this information in the manual and packaging will scare away people from buying this product because they are uninformed
* Including this information in the manual and packaging is pointless, because people don't care
* Including this information in the manual and packaging will allow people to make informed choices
Arguably, it should be include in either case:
- If people become scared, the manufacturers will be pushed to innovate on safety, which is a great outcome;
- If "nobody" reads these warnings, there is no reason to add one more about an actual danger that does happen, if rarely;
- Correct product labeling is what makes a free market work.
I urge you to peruse the Bose QC-35 II manual[1] before responding, and come back with the scariest warning you find there. It is a counter-example to all of your claims.
[1] https://assets.bose.com/content/dam/Bose_DAM/Web/consumer_el...
The problem with those warnings is not their existence, but the fact they are unspecific. If the ingredients on food containers just said "This contains an allergen", people would ignore them too. The way to make the California warnings useful would be to list which specific chemical is the problem, so that it is actionable.
Similarly, for the headphones case, listing the specific problem allows the user to take into account their specific situation (climate, usage pattern etc.) to decide if it's applicable to them. Obviously if the warning just said "this is hazardous", it's worse than useless.
How many people here are "engineers" (Licenced P.E.s with EE degreee)? Most people here string npm modules together and aren't qualified to assess LiON battery risks -- myself included.
EEs that work on products fall under the "industrial exemption" - their employers are responsible for having appropriate processes in place for product safety.
The point of the remark you are quoting was that it's unreasonable to think that the engineers that designed that product were unaware of dangers associated with this kind of battery.
I.e. if people here know about these dangers, so does Bose.
Consumers in general are unaware of the hazards and unwilling to learn, mostly because it's very rare for anything particularly bad to happen. You can find thousands of examples of dangerous situations here: https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/
edit: as a tangential story, I once ended up at a battle robot live stream. Turns out lithium battery fires are a normalized part of that, with arenas filling with toxic smoke and volunteers with no PPE collecting actively combusting robots while breathing billowing clouds of thick smoke. It happened to have some affiliated moderators; after pointing out this was stupid and very, very unhealthy, they basically told me to shut up and donate PPE if I didn't like it. I thought it was a fascinating example of the disconnect between OSHA-regulated industry and end consumers.
These modern hieroglyphics a)mean little to nothing, and b)stop existing once you remove a product from its packaging. That's not enough.
>Consumers in general are unaware of the hazards and unwilling to learn
Unwilling? Well, perhaps they would be more willing if the instructions that came with the product contained the information that you'd want them to learn.
According to this thread, this includes:
* Awareness of Li-Ion cell chemistry, normal operating voltage ranges, critical low voltage after which the battery should not be charged, and the possibility of formation of dendrites and runaway thermal reaction;
* Awareness that the said runaway reaction, in practical terms, means that charging a device with a "dead" battery can result in spontaneous combustion;
* Awareness that, given lack of access to internal batteries, and any information about its state, we solely rely on regulating circuitry to prevent that from happening, and that this circuitry might be faulty, resulting in the possibility of spontaneous combustion under normal use conditions;
* Awareness how to handle a Li-Ion battery that caught on fire, and how to dispose of a device with a burning battery safely, especially when it's operated in highly flammable environments (e.g. using headphones in a bedroom/in a dry field outdoors/at a gas station);
* Awareness that the battery catching on fire may result not only thermal, but also chemical burns if it is not disposed of in a safe manner while it's on fire - in addition to toxic fumes;
* Awareness of how to deal with thermal and chemical burns should they happen (e.g. for chemical burns, rinse with cold water for half an hour), as well as consequences of inhaling the fumes;
According to commenters here, all of the above is "common knowledge", "high school chemistry", "middle school knowledge", "easy best practices", etc. - which, at the same time, are virtually unknown by the general public (due to unwillingness to learn, no less).
Also, the manufacturers are under no moral or legal obligation to inform their users of these hazards and procedures, and this information isn't (and shouldn't) be included in product manuals.
Holy self-contradictory Jesus this thread has been quite a read.
I think the money I paid for my Bose SoundLink Mini II is very much well-spent, and I don't know of any other speaker of the same size which can beat it in quality of sound and battery life.
At the same time, some commenters here believe that wanting to hold Bose accountable means I have a bone to pick with them.
I feel like the problem here is that people think that the brands they use represent their personality. I love the product from Bose that I own, and that's why I want to see them held accountable for the self-combusting one.
That's to ensure I can enjoy using their products going forward, and recommend them without being worried about whether their newest gadget may set my friend's house on fire.
Similar in regards to informed consent: if you're even told what the potential consequences are, a layperson may not, likely doesn't, have similar frame of reference to understand what say a potential "side" effect of a medication could be.
So how do we determine what's acceptable? What level of actually understanding, and perhaps confirmation of understanding, should be required? Unfortunately it's likely mostly those who were harmed that try to speak out, but as in the vast majority of cases they are the minority and their concerns drowned out - arguably only monetary losses via lawsuits being the impetus for organizations to change, however so long as it's extremely profitable with no jail time for executives who should be accounting and therefore be accountable.
Yes, and most are entirely unaware of the dangers and best practices. I can see what may have happened is that even if the product was new, it may have sat in inventory long enough for the Li-ion cell to have self-discharged below 2.5V and remained below that critical threshold until purchased. Dendrites began forming immediately upon submitting to charge cycles. The dendrites shorted the cell causing thermal runaway. It could have burned the house down.
And yet, the calls to add labels that would allow consumers to tell which products contain lithium batteries at a glance have been derided here.
To add to this, my pair of wireless headphones can be also used with a 3.5mm cable, and I often do that, as it allows instant switching between devices. You can't tell they have wireless capability (or lithium batteries in them) just by looking.
According to comments, I'm the sole person on this planet who does read the instruction manual. And yet I am learning about thermal runaway in possibility in otherwise non-defective equipment from the HackerNews (thank you for explaining!).
Don't we want things to change for the better?
The best practices are pretty simple. To get the most life out of a cell (and this is true of Li-ion, NiMH, NiCad, whatever), rest the cells for at least an hour after use and before charging, and after charging and before use. Adopting these rest cycles allows the cell to maintain its capacity. Abusing a cell by never resting it between use or charging will decimate its charge capacity and reduce the amount of amps it can provide compared to when it was new and unused.
Do not store Li-ion cells long term at full capacity, but instead at 3.7V. This is actually controversial, but allegedly (though I do not know why) storing at full capacity reduces the life of a cell.
And of course don't drop your cells, as it can and will cause internal damage, reducing the life of the cell.
>Do not store Li-ion cells long term at full capacity, but instead at 3.7V.
These are great suggestions, and also they are absolutely impossible to follow given that we have absolutely no access to the sealed Li-Ion cells in devices that we buy.
How would the OP even know what voltage the cells inside his headphones are at? Even with replaceable cells, we can't expect people to have the tools to measure the voltage - unless the device itself displays it.
And even then, if we know that charging a cell after its voltage drops below 2.5V is dangerous, why do we allow chargers that do that (including devices with internal batteries) to be sold to the public?
Frankly, I am a bit astounded these devices were developed. I'd recommend against wearing Li-ion cells on your head unless you really know the cells, know their age and history.
But the general public can't be expected to know all that without it being even in the booklet that comes with the product.
>Frankly, I am a bit astounded these devices were developed.
Well look at the comments here that say "risk of death is a part of life, deal with it". That kind of attitude is why.
It is very hard to get a device to go below that 2.5V, unless you aim for it by leaving it for many months (and with slightly larger cells years), self discharge at that voltage is extremely low unless the cells have been damaged.
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.
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.
LiPF6 is a contact irritant, PF5 it decomposes to is a gas, and also a respiratory irritant, and HF PH5 decomposes in the air is a dangerous poisonous acid.
This is what everybody visiting a lithium battery factory is told on safety orientation. In case there is fire in the factory, run, preferably until you are few blocks away.
If enough hot aqueous LF6 in solvent gets on the skin, you will get a chemical burn. In worst case, the same thing as HF poisoning will happen (it pulls electrolytes out of blood, and then death from heart failure.)
It's not even clear if the battery caught fire, or if something else shorted out.
We should stop nitpicking of which part of Bose QC-35 II headphones malfunctioned and caused the product to be deadly dangerous. Instead, we should focus on the following problems:
* How do we incentivize the manufactures to take safety of their products seriously?
* How do we make sure the manufacturers don't skirt the responsibility of selling unsafe products as safe ones?
One doesn't get enter the free market without agreeing to some rules first. The rules are what differentiates a market from a scam.
Actually delivering the product for which the money was paid is one such rule.
Clearly warning about lethal dangers of the stuff you try to sell is another.
Violations of either rule come with a cost - because these violations damage not only the customer, but the entire free market.
Hence my suggestions to direct our efforts toward having the responsible government agencies work with Bose on researching and addressing the root issue.
You do realize that there was a quite real chance of someone seeing the OP's autopsy here?
>That sort of paranoia doesn't help
I guess you don't.
I find it fascinating that we get people saying "both of these in this thread:
* The inherent explosive and deadly danger of lithium is well known, the OP should have expected it, and should not complain
* The danger of lithium batteries is overblown, the OP shouldn't complain
It's quite a mindfuck to argue with both simultaneously.
Nitpick: lithium and li-ion are two different battery types.
The former contains metallic lithium, the latter lithium salts.
What went aflame in this accident wasn't the metal, but the liquid electrolyte, which is flammable.
Not sure what your nitpick is about; address it to the people who argue either.
My point is that OP should file a CPSC report (which they did), and contact a lawyer (which, I hope, they would).
It might be my "European" upbringing, but why? Is there any indicating it was the manufacturers fault?
That's you setting things on fire.
Here, the user did not set the headphones on fire.
If normal operation can cause the headphones to catch fire, Bose should market these headphones as such, e.g. "Do not charge these headphones, doing this may cause them to catch fire. Discard after first use."
Don’t try to figure these things out yourself.
1. Fault should be assigned, and those at fault should be paying for the damages to those not at fault.
2. People should be insured against these events, and we should assign responsibility to whoever it makes the most sense to have responsible for obtaining insurance.
If you take the second approach, that party is often the manufacturer. The consumer isn't really in a good position to buy flaming headphone insurance because that is such a rare event that any individual consumer has no idea how much coverage they need.
They could get it covered under their general medical or house insurance, but their insurance companies probably don't have much data on how often that specific issue happens to actually figure out the right price, so it just will get lumped into some general category of unclassified accidents.
The manufacturer, on the other hand, will have data in how often this happens, so a proper price for insurance can be determined. The manufacturer can likely get a breakdown of how often these incidents are due to manufacturing defects, how often they could have been prevented by minor design changes, how often they are due to the consumer doing something stupid, and so on. That can lead the manufacturer to make changes to reduce future such incidents. That would be much less likely if the incidents were handled by health or house insurance.
That's right, and let me fix the rest of the comment:
> Suing Americans can be awarded enough money to pay for their medical bills in some cases, and that's their only recourse when the injuries are severe
That's compensatory damages you will be awarded that in both systems.
The main difference there is that in most European countries medical bills are cheaper, public health care will cover most of the costs and most people are insured for the rest. If the costs are important, your insurance and the insurance of the party at fault will negotiate. They will only involve the justice system if they can't agree.
Because we are not in Europe, and we rely on lawsuits to keep the manufacturers in check instead of having them regulated like they do in Europe.
Also, because we are not in Europe, we don't have universal healthcare, so the OP's visit to the doctor (and any possible medical care they could need for their injuries) is coming out of their own pocket unless they sue.
Also, because the rules of the "free market" we have here require dangerous products to be clearly labeled as such, but the enforcement of this rule is "the consumers should sue if there's a problem".
In short, every time you hear about Americans being lawsuit-happy, it's because we need to sue to get the stuff that you're taking for granted where you're living.
>Is there any indicating it was the manufacturers fault?
Yes, there is. The OP used the product in accordance to the manufacturer's guidelines[1], and adhered to all safety warnings (which, by the way, didn't even mention risk of fire or chemical burns under normal operating conditions).
Given that, the manufacturer's fault appears to be clearly established.
[1]https://assets.bose.com/content/dam/Bose_DAM/Web/consumer_el...
>Yes, there is. The OP used the product in accordance to the manufacturer's guidelines[1], and adhered to all safety warnings (which, by the way, didn't even mention risk of fire or chemical burns under normal operating conditions).
No, the OP claims he did that ;)
But even then...
>Given that, the manufacturer's fault appears to be clearly established.
No, honestly, it isn't. There is such a thing as pure accident. Things break, and you have no expectation things won't ever break. This time it broke in a somewhat dangerous way. To me, in order for the manufacturer to be liable, the manufacturer must have committed an "avoidable" act and not acted negligent, such as a deign flaw or manufacturing flaw that could have been avoided by following current knowledge and best practices, or was negligent testing the product properly before release or didn't do proper, constant product quality assurance especially of the dangerous parts.
There are plenty of other reasonable explanations, such as customer misuse, vendor not storing the product properly in some warehouse, improper shipping, or just "shit happens" were nobody really is at fault and all parties involved didn't do anything that was avoidable wrong.
It need not be a design flaw right away, but it well may be. Of course you could be of the opinion that it should be impossible for something like this to happen, and that is definitely a valid position. But even wired headphones have on occasion killed people (a Swiss HAM, for instance).
You're conflating two different battery types. The lithium in lithium-ion batteries is bound to either the cathode or anode, so it's not readily flammable as metallic lithium would be.
I am conflating nothing as I was summarizing the comments of other people in that sentence. The other comments do conflate different battery types; you can educate the people who make them. Ctrl+F "lithium" in this thread will get you plenty.
That's an overstatement. The batteries in this thing are the most dangerous part, and yet they are too small to explode with a force that could cause an immediate fatality, i.e neither the explosion itself nor the shrapnel it could generate from the casing or the other components in the headphone are powerful enough. The risk here is burns, and maybe toxic exposure. And while burns can be rather bad (especially since it's Lithium), of course, also depending on how much flammable "stuff" you have on your head (hair, hat, headscarf, etc), burns are not the same thing as death.
The risk of a fatality is extremely low. The risk of lasting scars and disfigurement, deafness (on the battery side at least) and even blindness has a somewhat higher chance.
Then again, just look at the picture in the article. You can see how little damage is there to the actual "fragile" head phones plastic casing. Mostly intact. It wasn't a major explosion, it wasn't a major fire, and there probably wasn't any shrapnel whatsoever.
>>That sort of paranoia doesn't help
>I guess you don't.
This was clearly referring to the "toxic fumes" bit. And it is a fair thing to say, in my humble opinion. The fumes from the battery and plastic certainly aren't great, but unless you deliberately stay there and huff them without opening a window, your exposure will be rather minute, especially considering how small this event had to be. Indeed, what you inhale at a barbeque or just from burning food, or staying at the outside of a gas station for too long will be worse.
The "chemical burns" claim in the article is just confusing to me. I'd get it if the claim was that only the hands had a burning sensation like that, but the arms too but nothing besides that? Such a thing is either caused by direct contact (so hands only) or from fumes/spraying (which would mean exposed areas like the face should be affected as well). The way the story represents it makes me think it might be a psychosomatic effect only, but not necessarily of course. There is a "sweet spot" where these things might have sprayed particles only in a very limited area where hands and arms were affected but other exposed skin was too far away, but that sounds unlikely to me at least...
Regardless, nobody should expect these things to blow up, and it's fair to complain when they do. If it was a singular/very rare incident, fine, really bad luck. If there are a number of reports like this, this could indicate a systemic engineering or manufacturing problem.
Sometimes I wear my headphones in bed (not this brand/model, but another wireless over-the-ear sort.) I'm reconsidering that now...
Calling things that spontaneously catch on fire while being worn on one's head a lethal danger is not an overstatement.
For the same reason that smoking in bed is not something you should do: and that's because having something burning in places where fire isn't expected leads to people dying in fires.
>This was clearly referring to the "toxic fumes" bit. And it is a fair thing to say, in my humble opinion.
There is nothing humble about confidently calling the OP's concerns "unhelpful paranoia", and discounting what his doctor said were chemical burns as "psychosomatic effects" based on an armchair analysis of the spray pattern which you haven't even seen.
>Regardless, nobody should expect these things to blow up, and it's fair to complain when they do
Thank you. I don't understand why half the comments here are arguing the opposite.
>If it was a singular/very rare incident, fine, really bad luck. If there are a number of reports like this, this could indicate a systemic engineering or manufacturing problem.
Which is exactly why I urged the OP to immediately report it to CPSC (as Bose is also obligated to do, by law, regardless of whether they can establish the veracity of the claim).
And since CPSC is not very reliable, only legal action might uncover such systemic engineering/manufacturing problem and force Bose to do something about it.
>There is nothing humble about confidently calling the OP's concerns "unhelpful paranoia"
Not even close to what I wrote.
Luckily, it wasn't the latter.
>Whether or not the battery started it or something else did, it is clearly the defective Bose QC-35 headphones that provided the serious problem, so if you have them, the danger is there.
Which is something that they should put on the label.
It might already be there? Just that the warning is so standard and ubiquitous that it is universally ignored (lots of things contain lithium and have the potential to explode).
I prefer the version that takes an AAA battery. A bit safer, especially if you avoid using rechargeables.
No, the warning is not there.[1]
The manual instructs the user to take headphones off if you experience a "warming sensation", that's all.
The generic warnings aren't for normal operation; as in "improper use, like <...>, may lead to <...>". There was no improper use here, which is why it's a concern.
Additionally, there are many ways in which a device can fail. These Bose QC 35 II headphones not only caught fire, but also caused chemical burns.
Clearly, the engineers were aware of the dangers, but the product managers decided they can get away with saying "take them off if there's a warming sensation" without adding "BECAUSE THIS MEANS THEY ARE ABOUT TO CATCH FIRE AND SPRAY YOU WITH HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS, RUN FOR YOUR LFIE".
[1]https://assets.bose.com/content/dam/Bose_DAM/Web/consumer_el...
That's just dismissive attitude that accomplishes nothing and adds nothing to the discussion.
What was in them: we know it was a burning modern electronics, plastic fumes and a battery fire.
Extent of OPs exposure: we know it was one event of fixed duration, close contact with a single burning equipment. Not a chronic exposure, not a pyre of a dozen headphones.
We of course don’t know details on the margins, like which parts did melt on the pcb or how many breaths did the author inhale of this smoke, these are small details.
Even if we assume that these unknown variables fall on the bad side of their respective spectrum, we can still bound our estimation. (Like for example assuming that nearly all the nastines from the single headphone went into the smoke and the author did sit around for an hour in the smooky room.)
This means that we know a lot about both of those questions and can estimate the unknowns with reasonable worst-case thinking. (Which is the conservative thing to do in this situation)
> That's just dismissive attitude that accomplishes nothing and adds nothing to the discussion.
You say that, but it is not true. It is an understandable reaction on OPs part, once the initial shock is over and they see that they are still alive to think about if they have suffered any unknown long term harms. While obviously this kind of exposure is not good, and the OP is unlikely to ask for a repeat it is unlikely to cause lasting harm. In fact worrying about it might actually cause more harm.
Thinking this through calmly and logically is not dismissive, and might actually help the author.
So instead of armchairing the chemical composition of smoke, how about we just not call other people's concerns paranoid, and not excuse others doing so?
This forum's guidelines call for civil discussion, and the OP also commented in this thread. Paranoia is not a word that belongs here.
Because the burning is in the hands and arms not the nose, larynx or lungs...
This isn't even a sentence, much less a coherent thought.
The OP inhaled smoke from a burning device that caused chemical burns on his arms. The smoke from burning electronics is hazardous. OP's concerns are justified, and calling him "paranoid", "hypochondriac", etc. is insulting, and against the rules of this forum (on which the OP is commenting as well).
edit: no idea if the internal thermistor can fail by any means and it could have messed up the charge/discharge logic
Here is one example caught on video:
That said: headphones are subject to all kinds of abuse and that's why I'm particularly interested in what went wrong here, either, as you say, Bose has an inbound quality control issue or there was possibly some thing that this pair of headphones was subjected to that pushed it outside of its design parameters (electrically or physically). It's hard to say for sure without a much more detailed autopsy of the device (fortunately not of the user...).
I have a Sony rough equivalent of this device, and if I would ever drop it on a hard surface I'd stop using it simply because I would never trust a Lithium Ion battery after it has been subjected to a shock load. But I'm a bit paranoid about them, the more you are familiar with some tech the less comfortable you feel while using it.
As for your edit: thermistors can and do fail, but the battery protection circuitry is hip to that and should simply stop charging the battery if the thermistor ever open circuits or short circuits. Theoretically I guess it could fail with a resistance that indicates a safe operating temperature but I have never seen that happen (and I've worked on tons of Li-Ion packs, enough to see a couple of failed thermistors, all of them open circuits).
I was once responsible for figuring out how to track the flight path of an object being towed through the air on a rope. This ended up being a GPS transponder with a ISM band packet radio and a Li-ion pouch cell. Packaging this was difficult, as the device would occasionally be slammed into the ground at at least terminal velocity.
One of my first prototypes was essentially all of the above stuffed into a bit of ABS pipe, with some foam inside for cushioning. We flew the prototype once, slammed it into the ground, and it promptly stopped working. Upon cracking the enclosure open, I found that the battery lead wires had broken free from the PCB under the shock load. As I extracted the pouch itself, I found it had formed itself into an arc segment, with r=1.5", same as the ID of the ABS pipe.
Burning fluoropolymers will produce HF. Lion electrolyte is, besides being rather flammable, nowhere near as dangerous. It's a mild solvent. A leaking cell, if it's not burning, will not expose you to HF. In fact I'd say the risk of chemical burns from a leaking alkaline battery is higher.
I didn't hunt for very long, but a cursory search didn't turn up anything like this with these headphones or Bose for that matter. And while I don't trust corporations implicitly, I do draw distinctions between companies like Ford or Samsung that might wait until absolutely necessary to do a recall and a company like Bose that has always seemed to have a lot riding on their reputation with their target customers.
And given my interactions with other companies after product failures, I would be stoked to be offered the brand new flagship line (QC45) assuming I had no real injuries.
Then again, if I were of a litigious nature (and thought there was a potential payday) I might focus on how the trace amount of "heavy metal" smoke from LIon batteries that lingered after I threw the headphones outside might affect my pets, wife, unborn child and HVAC system instead of being reasonable.
You're not wrong, but I don't think it's an unreasonable reaction when you've literally been diagnosed with chemical burns, especially when it was not initially obvious. If you read the post in full, this is separate from lipo fire event, he tried to retrieve the serial number and later after handling it noticed a worsening burning sensation on his hands and arms... that kind of separation in time from a silent exposure of something to horrible side effects really fuck with your mind.
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.
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.
You deserve compensation for this, and I wish you all the best with extracting it. I hope you recover soon.
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.
You believe that you “deserve” compensation, but at the same time you guys are all crazy on independence and don’t-tell-me-how-to-behave and whatever else. But as soon as a thing goes wrong you want money for it.
It’s like you don’t believe in the concept of an accident.
Assuming for a moment it is, what would be the impact to life expectancy if nobody went and saw a doctor?
But putting that aside, I too found the claim implausible and went looking for data. Here is what the CDC has to say:
Leading Causes of Death
Data are for the U.S.
Number of deaths for leading causes of death:
* Heart disease: 659,041
* Cancer: 599,601
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 173,040
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 156,979
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,005
* Alzheimer’s disease: 121,499
* Diabetes: 87,647
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 51,565
* Influenza and pneumonia: 49,783
* Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,511
> The Johns Hopkins team says the CDC’s way of collecting national health statistics fails to classify medical errors separately on the death certificate. The researchers are advocating for updated criteria for classifying deaths on death certificates.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...
I don't know if this is credible or not, but it's coming from the John Hopkins School of Medicine which I think is broadly credible.
https://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/...
> Using a weighted average of the 4 studies, a lower limit of 210,000 deaths per year was associated with preventable harm in hospitals. Given limitations in the search capability of the Global Trigger Tool and the incompleteness of medical records on which the Tool depends, the true number of premature deaths associated with preventable harm to patients was estimated at more than 400,000 per year. Serious harm seems to be 10- to 20-fold more common than lethal harm.
The parent's point was that, unlike in Europe, when someone is injured by no fault of their own, the expected way for them to pay for the (very high) medical costs is to sue the offending party.
That's the excuse for not offering universal healthcare. Incidentally, it also explains why the doctors need insurance (because malpractice does happen sometimes, and if your health is damaged by it, you won't get a nickel of support unless you sue the offending party - i.e. the doctor).
That wouldn't be such an issue if we had universal healthcare and a support net for people who can't work.
What a great way to describe libertarianism in a single sentence. The vast majority of their talking points and ideas fall apart quite easily under any sort of scrutiny or contact with the real world.
I prefer that a decently regulated or public health insurance system covers costs instead of letting the risk to the consumer. The insurance can claim damages from the corporation if there is neglect.
Uhmm, no, at least not here in Germany. The amount on compensation is related to the severity of the injury. For things that heal you will get Schmerzensgeld ("pain" money), as well as compensation for things that broke (e.g. your car or bike in a traffic accident). If the injury takes a while to heal, in which time you're unable to work, you get compensated for that as well. If it's lasting damage, you will get disability money. If you need care/help (from grocery shopping and cooking, to full blown 24/7 nurse care) that is compensated as well, and may amount to tens of thousands of euros per month. If you're permanently unable to work you will get compensated for that in a "reasonable" way (you won't be poor), and the liable party will also have to pay your retirement insurance dues[0]. If you requires changes to your living situation[1], you will get "reasonably" compensated as well. And so on. Basically, every damage that can be monetarily valued or at least estimated will be "reasonably" compensated.
>In US you could sue for millions.
Where you're right is that you won't get rich from such a lawsuit. Regardless, the total amount in compensation you will receive over a life time could as well amount to millions as well. The amounts awarded in the US may seem large sometimes, until you realize that it's a one time thing, and the health and care costs over a lifetime you will incur may still not be covered by that lump sum.
The only thing here in Germany that isn't really direct compensation but "extra" money is the Schmerzensgeld, and that's usually a one time pay of a couple hundred bucks for light injuries up to low six figures for major injuries.
And it might be harder to "fully" win such a lawsuit too, as in Germany you don't have jury trials[2].
[0] Retirement insurance dues may have to be paid even if the injured party was not working yet, e.g. when the person was still in school.
[1] E.g. you need a wheel chair ramp, or move to a wheel chair accessible place, or need to make changes to your bathroom to get in and out of the shower/bathtub. In some cases, defendants were ordered to pay the difference for getting a larger house so family providing some care could move in.
[2] Tho, there are Schöffengerichte, with "regular" people sitting on a panel with a judge, usually 2 regular people and 1 judge in the lower courts. While the judge can be outvoted in theory by the 2 other, the judge is part of the deliberations and therefore has great input into the decision finding.
Trust me. I have recent first-hand experience in the healthcare of Australia, and my sister has recent first-hand experience with the (lack of) healthcare in USA. I'm nearly 100% recovered, only because of the recency of injury, while she nearly died for the incredibly rare condition of giving birth, through a surgeon causing internal bleeding during a c-section. And no-one noticing she was dying for hours.
I am glad to hear your sister survived that ordeal.
In the US, doctors that have maimed and killed patients can switch specialties and become a lucrative medical marijuana prescriber:
https://www2.mbc.ca.gov/BreezePDL/document.aspx?path=%5cDIDO...
https://www.laweekly.com/after-almost-30-years-as-a-surgeon-...
We, in the US, have to rely on lawsuits to impose a cost on companies for violating the rules of the market.
That's not to mention that we don't have public healthcare which will pay for medical expenses, like seeing a doctor from the chemical burns that you got while wearing Bose QC-35 II headphones as they exploded during normal operation.
It's just one of these weird quirks of The Land of The Free™, where if you want to get medical care for the bodily injury caused to you by a negligent corporation, you have to sue them.
I know it's difficult to understand to an Australian, but the lawsuit is what pays the medical bill.
That might be a fine attitude. Until you get terribly injured and now you seek tens of thousands of dollars from someone else.
Who do you think that this someone else is? Don’t you realise that it’s just all of the other Americans?
You don't seem to understand. It's those Americans who assume they would be able to get money for health in case they are injured through no fault of their own by filing a lawsuit.
They are also in the minority; 63% of Americans want universal healthcare[1]. Including the one you are talking to right now.
Perhaps your sample isn't representative?
[1]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/29/increasing-...
We are pushing for ranked choice voting[1], which is slowly gaining acceptance in the public consciousness.
I don't think most people here were even aware of the complexities of the electoral system until the 2016 election (when, for example, millions of people in NY could not vote for Bernie Sanders because they were required to register a year in advance as Democrats to participate in that election - so first-time voters were effectively excluded -- and it was a NY-specific rule; primaries are effectively unregulated on a federal level).
With ranked-choice voting, the hope is that people will be able to vote for candidates that represent them without fear of "the other side" prevailing. Unsurprisingly, the two-party system is quite reluctant to introduce changes that threaten it.
Read this comment for a polite and concise explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29112349
The specific way the justice system operates in the US isn't the way things are done in Europe or China. In particular, lack of regulations is justified here by the logic of "we don't need regulations; if there's any harm done, one should take the offending party to court".
If you're talking about how no system is truly democratic, or that majority rule is bad, that's a whole another can of worms, and outside the scope of this discussion.
At the end of voting day they do something you would expect everywhere: count all votes the same. And then whoever got the most votes has won. I think the US would really benefit from a system that's more like "everyone can vote, most votes wins".
Well, in the case of a lawsuit, it's just that specific, negligent American (or company) that caused damages and owes that compensation. There needs to be some kind of system for compensating victims when an accident happens. With socialized medicine, everyone compensates a little, in the American system, the entity judged to be at fault compensates a lot. Not saying which one I believe is better, but they both make sense.
Do you believe that all Americans share these exact traits?
However, this also legitimizes dealing with the potential of human tragedy or injury as a mere financial risk. Companies are already terribly dehumanized, and I don't think this legitimization helps for this. At least with regulation there is a direct effort to prevent tragedy, and the framing is also closer to this objective. Of course, the goal for companies will still be "we have to adhere to the regulation", but at least the question "why does the regulation exist?" remains nearby. I think it's also the more democratic approach: rather than putting the incentive mechanism in the hands of a judge, democratically elected governments take direct measures to protect their citizens.
Also, note the stigma and shaming of "lawsuit-happy Americans" who are "entitled" and "sheltered", etc. - even in this forum, where people should know better!
So not only people don't understand that the lawsuits are a compliance enforcement mechanism, but they are actively preventing it from working by saying things like "nothing is perfectly safe, hurr durr".
Anyway. Thank you for putting it this succinctly; I wish your comment was at the top:
>There needs to be some incentive for companies to ensure the safety of their products or actions. In the US, this seems to be (punitive) damages, whereas in Europe it's more through stronger regulations. The nice thing about damages is that it's in terms of moeny, and since companies optimize for money, this does sorta make sense.
Everything about it is quite unfortunate.
if you buy a product that comes with a pamphlet telling you how safe it is, you have to trust the manufacturer. you are also trusting that the product has passed all the necessary safety requirements. if that product is food or for children, that trust is even higher.
if an accident happens to you, you need to contact the right people so: 1. it does not happen to others 2. your damages, if possible, are covered.
that's how we make it safer for everybody.
Not if there's a recall.
Which, by all means, should happen, and not just for that particular model.
The flip-side, that Lithium batteries should probably not be present in body worn gear is something that I would subscribe to but at the same time I'm aware of people wearing stuff like that by the 10's of millions in their ears and so far it seems to work well enough that the number of incidents is low and in most cases can be traced back to gross abuse of the devices.
Finally: charging Lithium Ion batteries of any kind is where the risk is, it's always a good idea to charge them in a spot where you can keep an eye on them, and to watch them closely just after you have charged them (especially to full capacity, which I would recommend against) for a little while after because that is when if things go wrong they will go wrong.
That said: it is still body worn lithium ion tech and you should definitely be careful with them, especially if you ever suspect they may have become damaged (from dropping or impact). Be nice to your headphones. And never ever leave them hooked up to the charger once they are charged and if you can only charge to 90% or so.
What's the assumption? Based on information given, the headphones exploded during normal operation, and have been previously treated well[2].
The OP is commenting in this thread. If you think they are misleading us, go ask them[2].
Further, nothing in the official documentation for the product[1] indicates the possibility of fire and chemical burns during normal operation, regardless of how they have been treated so far.
> Before you jump to the 'sue', 'recall' and 'Bose sucks' conclusion
It seems to me that you are jumping to these conclusions.
My conclusions are:
1) Bose QC-35 II headphones are a hazardous product that can spontaneously burst into flames and cause chemical burns while being operated according to the manual
2) This product does not come with any warnings that this is a possibility, while, according to comments here, hazards of the battery used are common knowledge among engineers
3) The product's manual instructs the user to take the headphones off if they experience a "warming sensation", indicating that the engineers were aware of the risks, but neither the risks nor mitigation were not described in the instruction manual (compare this with the labels on something as common as epoxy resin)
4) The OP should report this incident to CPSC, since this is the body responsible for keeping track of such incidents and that will be able to act upon them if there's a pattern of them happening
5) The medical injuries sustained by the OP are unacceptable; and at the very least, Bose should pay for the medical treatment and resulting productivity loss.
As you said, this shouldn't be a big deal for Bose if this is a one-off freak accident. And if it's a systemic issue, it better become a big deal.
Finally: I have a Bose speaker. I have no idea what kind of battery is inside it, but all I know is that the manual didn't instruct me to take the precautions that you just listed:
> charging Lithium Ion batteries of any kind is where the risk is, it's always a good idea to charge them in a spot where you can keep an eye on them, and to watch them closely just after you have charged them (especially to full capacity, which I would recommend against) for a little while after because that is when if things go wrong they will go wrong.
Bose Soundlink speakers are designed to sit at a dock, where they are continuously charged. The later models don't even have an off switch.
So I'm all over the thread with one huge assumption: that any reasonable person would agree with my points 1-5 above.
Sadly, this assumption has been repeatedly proven wrong.
[1]https://assets.bose.com/content/dam/Bose_DAM/Web/consumer_el...
Once more: you do not know what that set of headphones have gone through and you do not know the finer details of the charging setup. Both of these matter enormously and until that data is available anything you add to it in terms of conclusions is speculative.
For some reason you seem to be either in a panic or overreacting but this whole thread isn't even about you. So why the over the top responses, including suggesting that something exploded, that this is a systemic issue, that somebody died and so on, it makes no sense to me. Count to ten and relax, the world will continue to turn even if one Bose set of headphones came to a bad end (which is all the evidence we seem to have) and let's learn what we can from this instance to ensure that if (which we do not know for sure) there is a quality control or a design issue that it gets found.
And that's not just because of Bose but also because of the 10's of millions of other devices using similar setups.
As for the warning: that warning applies to any device that contains rechargeable lithium ion batteries. Shape change or warming up when they shouldn't be is a very strong indicator you have a problem that is about to get a lot worse. Not having that warning in their manual would have been irresponsible, of course Bose - and every other LiIon powered device manufacturer) is aware of that and instructs their customers accordingly.
Not that anybody ever reads the instructions. And if they did I'll bet that people would not be so happy with Lithium Ion any more. But after having used a couple of hundred cells in various shapes and sizes and advising on the way a certain piece of consumer electronics was put together (wearable, LiIon powered) I think I have a reasonably good idea of what it takes to get one of these cells to misbehave and my list of suspects would be, in order:
- charging circuitry
- impact or drop damage
- cell piercing
- repair gone bad (either of the headphones or of the charging circuitry)
- temperature damage / operating / charging outside of allowed temperature envelope (charging circuitry should protect against this)
and finally
- manufacturing defect (either at Bose, or their supplier) implying at least a quality control issue at Bose
- design error
You seem to jump to 'structural manufacturing defect' as your conclusion without having the required data to establish that that is indeed what happened here.
Repetition, my friend, is the mother of learning.
My comments resulted in the OP reporting the incident to the CPSC[1]. That's my contribution.
The rest is pure fun.
>Not having that warning in their manual would have been irresponsible, of course Bose - and every other LiIon powered device manufacturer) is aware of that and instructs their customers accordingly.
OK, let's just focus on that one word: irresponsible.
Count to ten, and quote me the warning from the manual that would indicate that OP's experience is a possibility.
(It's not there. Bose was, as you said, irresponsible, and there is only one way to force companies to be responsible in the US).
You're spamming the thread with dramatic comments that are premised on this not being a one-off freak accident. Nice of you to finally acknowledge the possibility.
My bad. I've been led to believe that the batteries in these headphones are inherently dangerous and that the OP should have known better by the commenters that defend Bose elsewhere in the thread:
>In the end you're carrying a high energy density power source on your head that would love to just catch fire. Don't they teach kids anything in chemistry these days?
>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.
>Nothing is perfectly safe, that is how lithium batteries fail. You should know so you can properly deal with problems.
>Well, at lease EVs are spontaneously catching fire.
>Everyone is aware of the risks, there were a bunch of stories about airplane cell phone fires a few years ago.
>lithium battery fires are really nasty, and that's why he got a chemical burn. LiPF6 is a contact irritant, PF5 it decomposes to is a gas, and also a respiratory irritant, and HF PH5 decomposes in the air is a dangerous poisonous acid. This is what everybody visiting a lithium battery factory is told on safety orientation. In case there is fire in the factory, run, preferably until you are few blocks away.
Combining this, we have on our hands an inevitable freak accident that every consumer should be prepared for, but no manufacturer can expect to happen or do anything to mitigate the damage.
Got it.
As far as strategy goes, mission accomplished. The purpose of further discussion is that I enjoy it; these are not the views I thought needed to be advanced on the account of being self-evident.
I am very disappointed that this is not the case.
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.
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 wrote this not to shame Bose. But to highlight the risk of personal wearables and lithium ion technologies.
What are suggesting people do? Headphones only function while on your head.
Everyone here, maybe. Almost everyone I know of is certainly not aware of any dangers (or goes with the classic "it will certainly not happen to me, what are the chances of that?").
I still have to remind my relatives not to just throw a charging phone wherever it lands (like under the pillow). The risk of it going off may be small, but the cost would be very high.
Wisconsin and France have had notable butter fires. So I guess even butter fires can be bad news.
No harm warning about these risks on the label, then?
Everyone is aware, so it surely won't hurt the bottom line.
Do you know how any chemicals got on your arm? Was the smoke itself the likely chemical that your arm was exposed to? (Did it not affect your lungs and eyes?) Or did something drop/drip from the headphones on your body? Or is it that when you grabbed it while it was burning, some part of it that had burned also rubbed your arms? Did your ears feel chemically burnt the same way?
Also, "lipo" batteries are actually the least safe configurations for liion. LiFePo and LiTi are inherently safer, but liion pouch cells are probably the worst even amongst other batteries of the same chemistry. A regular 18650 is very hard to puncture or deform, does not swell and has built in vent ports on the top- a li-po usually doesn't. So they have very little structural integrity, can be easy to puncture (which sometimes lead to internal shorting), have a hard time venting gases when they overheat, and need to be kept compressed to avoid swelling.
The reason they are still used is because of the huge weight savings that comes with not having a heavy steel casing and because they are a lot more modular. That also means they can be made larger and push a much higher amperage. At the very high end you can go up to 200-300 amps per cell vs 30-35 for high current 18650s.
Please, don't cut Bose any slack. They deserve to be shamed.
If someone were to make a self-exploding car, they'd be out of carmaking very fast. If Bose can't make headphones that don't self-ignite, they should not be making headphones.
Consider that Bose is breaking the law if they don't report this incident to CPSC[1].
And if you have a spare minute (which you seem to, given that you wrote the post and comment), please file a consumer safety report[2] and report the Bose QC-35 II headphones as unsafe product.
It is a simple form, and it is the way to make sure that this doesn't happen again to someone else. Aside from that, consider filing a lawsuit to get compensated for the damage to your physical health. Talk to a lawyer that can take your case pro-bono.
Thank you for the time you took to report this here, and I am very sorry that Bose screwed you over like that. Please let me know if I can help with the CPSC report to prevent them doing this to others.
[1]https://www.cpsc.gov/Business--Manufacturing/Recall-Guidance...
I fully agree with the rest of what you're saying, but that's simply not true.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/04/tesla-f...
https://www.inquirer.com/business/cars-battery-fires-fear-la...
>“We don’t think every vehicle has this rare manufacturing defect,” General Motors spokesman Dan Flores said. “But we can’t take a chance, so we’re recalling all the vehicles.”
I mean, that comes pretty close to be out of electric car making.
The same should happen to Bose. A total recall of all wireless headphones they ever made would be a good start.
-------
PS: I'm spending more time in headphones than I do in my car; it's fair to hold them to the same standard.
Now, if you have energy to simply talk to a lawyer, I suspect it's going to be a slam-dunk case (I'm not a lawyer). They shouldn't get away with offering you a new pair of headphones to replace the one that almost killed you, and caused bodily damage.
If someone threw acid on you in the street, it would be considered assault, and they'd spend years in jail if found and charged. We really don't need to let corporations get away with the same.
Intentionally?
Bose engineers surely understand the risks inherent in their batteries.
Depends on whether Bose engineers were unaware of risks of lithium batteries to the extent that they didn't put any warnings on the product, safe from a recommendation to "remove" the headphones if the user experiences a "warming sensation".
Could it be the case that Bose thought that "warming sensation" is the worst that could happen? Let's see what the comments here say!
>In the end you're carrying a high energy density power source on your head that would love to just catch fire. Don't they teach kids anything in chemistry these days?
>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.
>Nothing is perfectly safe, that is how lithium batteries fail. You should know so you can properly deal with problems.
>Well, at lease EVs are spontaneously catching fire.
>Everyone is aware of the risks, there were a bunch of stories about airplane cell phone fires a few years ago.
>lithium battery fires are really nasty, and that's why he got a chemical burn. LiPF6 is a contact irritant, PF5 it decomposes to is a gas, and also a respiratory irritant, and HF PH5 decomposes in the air is a dangerous poisonous acid. This is what everybody visiting a lithium battery factory is told on safety orientation. In case there is fire in the factory, run, preferably until you are few blocks away.
I don't even know what to think. I guess they just didn't know.
- What happened: exactly what you said, you can replace this as 'item X with a lithium-ion battery'. This is an event that could happen to any lithium-ion device, is scary and is something that we should be aware of and is scary
- Bose's customer support is abysmal at handling it (I wonder how first-line support for other companies would be)
Thanks for sharing the post, I'm sorry it happened to you and I hope you burns recover very soon!!
Here's a response I expect. Take this as a model customer service response if you are in the business of selling (potentially) self-exploding devices:
-------
Dear <Customer Name>. Thank you for reporting the incident to us. I have escalated your report to the engineering team.
A representative of our company will be reaching out to you to inquire for further details to find out the exact cause of the malfunction to prevent it from happening in the future.
As our product have caused you harm, I may not assist you further, as all I can do is offer a replacement product. I have therefore forwarded your request to our Consumer Relations team senior specialist <Firstname Lastname> who will reach out to you by <timeframe> with regards to settling this in a manner satisfactory to you. They can be reached directly by <phone x extension> or by email at <email address>.
We take safety seriously, and we are immediately reporting this incident to CPSC, as we are obligated by law. You can do your part at the following web address: https://www.saferproducts.gov/IncidentReporting
Thank you so much for reporting this incident in detail, and helping us make our products safer for everyone!
Great point!
So what I'm hearing is that Bose should recall all wireless headphones they ever made, and continue selling their new products with appropriate warnings.
In fact, I think it will be a great improvement of their slogan:
BOSE. Better sound through research. Scary, and something you should be aware of is scary.
Until then, It's safe to assume that people think their products are safe, not scary, because that's how they market them as.
I highly doubt that, but don't let the paranoia get to you and start thinking of all the bad things that could've happened, because they didn't. In fact, I'd say the fire retardants in the plastic did exactly what they were supposed to do, given that you only mentioned smoke and not actual flames.
It probably does emit some very nasty gases while it does that, plastics are, as a rule, not nice to be near when they are burning or exposed to flames, all kinds of nasty stuff can come out of them, including dioxins.
Yeah, and when it does, the manufacturer of that lithium bomb should pay for it.
And not just to compensate the victim, but to make the cost of negligent manufacture higher than the savings it brings to the company in engineering, QA, and production.
Numbers are not an excuse. There is over a billion cars in the world, most filled with highly flammable gasoline that actually burns inside them. Yet none are spontaneously exploding.
Self-immolating headphones - small speakers that you put on your head, mind you - are an egregious abuse of safety, public trust, and all reason. By an ostensibly "luxury" brand, no less.
There is no "but" about it. If they can't make safe headphones, they should not make headphones period.
OP, please report them to CPSC here: https://www.saferproducts.gov/IncidentReporting
Yes, the OP prefaced with a number of common reasons this might happen that do not apply in his case, but that does not mean the root cause is faulty manufacture.
Hell, it's possible that a high-energy particle from space hit the battery in his headphones in just the right spot and that's why it exploded. Would you hold Bose responsible in that case?
That decision is, indeed, up to Bose.
But should they choose to continue making a headphones that have a 1-in-N-million chance of exploding, this should be clearly indicated on every pair they sell.
So that their competitors who choose to invest in safety would be able to reap the fruit if their labor in the free market.
Also nobody has died so...
You are aware that wired headphones exist, right?
Also, quite a leap from "Bose shouldn't make headphones that explode while being used, like QC-35 II" to "if we ask for that, this will make all headphones heavy enough to cause neck problems and cost North of $600".
Self-exploding headphones were not a problem we had for most of the time headphones existed. There's no reason to introduce it, nor accept it.
>Also nobody has died so...
Oh, so someone has to die instead of merely being injured for you to care? That's hardly compassionate, but understandable.
How about we settle for the middle ground of the following being included with each pair:
"BOSE Quite Comfort QC 35 II. You might experience bodily injury during normal operation of this product. Also nobody has died, so..."
Lithium-ion are the best we have right now, and they "explode" (catch fire I think is more accurate) when damaged.
Do I want better battery chemistries that are more robust? Of course.
Am I going to hold this against Bose or any other battery-powered device manufacturer until we do? No.
The problem here being.. that Bose loses money?
Or maybe, just maybe, they figure out a way to make headphones that are both safe and marketable?
The idea of free market includes the notion of failing in the free market. Which is exactly what Bose did here.
1/1,000,000 chance of getting chemical burns is fine by me.
That's fine by me too, and Bose should market the headphones with the description "1/10^6 chance of getting chemical burns".
Then the people who don't find it fine by them can make a rational choice about buying or not buying that product.
See, the public has this unreasonable expectation about wireless headphones being as safe as wired ones. Silly public. Can't fathom why they would think that way, with all the warnings of potential chemical burns in the product manuals.
Oh wait.
I'm not entirely sure why this got downvoted (bit of a personal gripe with YC (anonymous down voting/spamming without a direct comment).. buuuut
This idea is only 'silly' if you think of it as a large amount of lead lining.
In this day-in-age, I'm sure the idea of a material/substance around it that stops combustion when something like this happens is surely not out of reach.. I'm as far away from a chemical engineer as you can get, but, if it requires oxygen to burn, maybe some incredibly strong substance around it to contain the chemicals if the battery expands. Or some to absorb oxygen around it.
I dunno, maybe I'm incredibly naive, but it feels like something that, if a portion of the companies that manufacturer/use the batteries put effort into something, it's something that could be made _more_ safe in some way?
Because we are on HackerNews, where the consequences of their own actions only exist for individuals and not the corporations they hope to be CEOs of one day.
I didn't realize that I'd need to argue, in 2021, that selling people dangerous products as safe is, in principle, wrong, but here we are.
To people asking "What did the OP expect", the answer is: whatever the instruction manual said on Page 1. And it surely didn't say: "WARNING: MAY KILL YOU DURING NORMAL OPERATION".
Once it does, we can have a discussion about everything else.
Tbh it probably wouldn't take much to get that added to the boilerplate warnings of every battery product sold, just in case.
Heck, wired headphone makers will get a boost from that.
Surely the idea of the world putting some effort into producing a material that can help stop this happening isn't completely stupid...?
HN, the forum of innovators who are vehemently against innovation if it's for the sake of consumer safety.
I mean, come one people, it's a business opportunity. Figure out how to make non-self-exploding headphones, with a guarantee, and crush Bose in the free market on that selling point.
Sigh.
Bit of a stretch to say you're "pro-innovation" in this context.
The cosmic particle idea isn't completely outlandish, but it's impossible to prove, and it's statistically far more likely that it was a human failure. Given the rarity of spontaneously exploding batteries, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the particles are responsible for less than 1 in a million incidents, so yeah, the company should be liable. That's the cost of business, and on a humanistic note, making things better for the guy would just be the good thing to do.
Nothing is perfectly safe. People should deal with it, and remember that they don't live in a fairy tale.
Including the business of selling self-exploding headphones.
Corporations should deal with it, and remember that they don't live in a fairy tale where they can pull off shit like that off without consequence.
Can't make safe headphones? Leave it to someone who can. Free market or something.
(In case you're not getting it, it's not about living in fairy tales, it's about increasing the cost of failure to corporations to a high enough point that they will put some money into safety instead of pocketing it.)
NASA has a hard time doing this for their vehicles that are intended to be in deep space.
Whether it can be done within the constraints of mass, volume, and expense that keep the headphones competitive is another (hard) question.
I hope statistics exist on how many of them burst into flames. I'd like to compare it to the number of people who choked on a cereal breakfast, or fell from a stairway at home, or other such random accidents with normally benign things. I suspect that the headphones will be no worse than many other common household items, including the low-tech ones.
Yes, and it's not my business to find out. It's the job of CPSC and investigators to find the reasons. Which is why I insisted the OP should file a report.
And as for establishing certainty, I'm not a judge or a jury, whose job it is to do so. Which is why I suggested the OP should take it to court.
>Hell, it's possible that a high-energy particle from space hit the battery in his headphones in just the right spot and that's why it exploded. Would you hold Bose responsible in that case?
I can't hold Bose responsible, the courts and CPSC can. Since it's also possible that OP was, you know, correct in his assessment, this case should get their attention.
Unless the device was mishandled in some unusual way, the manufacturer should bear this burden because they are/were in the best position to implement mechanisms to avoid the harm, from improved QA to a better design and, ultimately, to rhe informed decision not to sell the device.
Not anymore.
Nothing is perfectly safe, that is how lithium batteries fail. You should know so you can properly deal with problems.
There is an annoying trend among people that expect everything to be perfectly safe. It seems to be a symptom of an overly sheltered existence.
Yeah, how overly sheltered to not expect your headphones to not catch on fire and kill you. It's a symptom of not believing when someone pisses in our eyes and tells us it's raining. Especially when it's happening on our own dime.
>Nothing is perfectly safe, that is how lithium batteries fail.
Then lithium batteries should be banned from headphones.
>You should know so you can properly deal with problems.
Good point! And where would the customer learn about this? From HackerNews?
Last time I checked, Bose devices didn't come with a self-combustion warning.
And until they do, my point applies.
When was the last time you actually read a product manual? Many of them actually are full of warnings about how things fail. I have no idea about Bose headphones, I definitely threw away everything but the headphones immediately.
No we should not ban everything that doesn’t have a zero percent fault rate. This weird angry response is a symptom of this sheltered fear which comes from not understanding that the world isn’t ever going to be perfect. You make really bad decisions when you’re in denial about the impossibility of safety perfection.
And where would they go to fulfil that interest? HackerNews? Or maybe, just consider it, the instruction manual that comes with the device?
>We don’t need cushioned guard rails on literally everything.
Sure. Just labels on self-exploding products saying that they may self-explode.
>When was the last time you actually read a product manual?
Yesterday. I got an Ikea ENEBY speaker. Your ignorance and lack of having interest in the world around you, which includes product manuals, is on you.
"Remove headphones immediately if you experience a warming sensation or loss of audio." [1]
Probably could use a few more words for good measure.
Also, they do not explode. Explode has a specific meaning. Lithium batteries experiencing thermal runaway get rather hot and then burn quite vigorously, but they do not explode.
1. https://assets.bose.com/content/dam/Bose_DAM/Web/consumer_el...
A "warming sensation" is not what the OP has experienced.
When Bose augments this to the following, you may have a point:
>Remove headphones immediately if they spontaneously ignite and start emanating smoke and hazardous chemicals that cause chemical burns to your skin. Failure to do so may result in death. Rinse all exposed skin with running cold water immediately, and see a medical professional ASAP in such case.
You seem to have no problem with this scenario actually happening to someone, so there should be absolutely no reason not to have it in the same manual in these exact words.
A warming sensation is the first thing OP noticed: "I took them off of my charger, put them on my head, and noticed they were suddenly getting very warm".
Taking them off at that point does remove _some_ of the risks.
I agree with the feeling, but flammable batteries are one of the less risky and stupid thing humans are doing.
I mean, we are literally littering the sky with swarms of useless satellites for the rich hikers in the global north (one example among many of totally idiotic behavior) - I can live with batteries.
(btw. I don't even have a smartphone or a cellphone in general, i know i'm a bit of a radical - and i use only wired stuff, because i find it more practical, durable and ecological - point is, people accept very stupid stuff for their convenience, that's why we are slowly killing our planet and ourselves - your points are valid, but it won't deter people from using dangerous chemicals in their lives, and the throwing them away and poison nature and themsleves)
but they are ruining the sky for 100% of us, for the benefit of some rich techbro that want to check emails in some remote place.
Very. In the end you're carrying a high energy density power source on your head that would love to just catch fire. Don't they teach kids anything in chemistry these days?
I just love how this comment appears in the same thread as this one:
>That sort of paranoia doesn't help. In fact it may cause psychosomatic symptoms (nocebo effect).
Anyway, if it's common knowledge, there's no harm to put a big label warning about it on the instruction manual, right?
Last time I checked, passing chemistry isn't a requirement for purchasing Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones, which spontaneously catch fire and cause chemical burns.
Yes. One says “yes lipo batteries can have thermal runaway” and the other comment says “don’t twist yourself into knots by worrying over this one time bad exposure”.
They talk about two different things in two different way. Your comment makes it sound as if they are somehow contradicting each other? They don’t.
So yeah, big difference in safety, not really a difference in the chemistry.
The above was explained to me by someone I believe knows what they're talking about. But I may have misunderstood; if I have, please let me know!
Manufacturers sometimes use deceptive labeling and given that the form factors are somewhat interchangeable it really is a confusing mess. Unfortunately both chemistries have 4.20V as their 'charged' voltage and 3.0V as their discharged voltages because of the underlying chemical similarities so looking at the voltages won't give you a good idea either.
In the end, the electrode is what matters, but getting to that requires destruction of the cell. One non-destructive way of figuring out if a cell has a liquid electrolyte is to see if you can shift the center of gravity by tilting the cell slowly. If you can then it is most likely a Lithium Ion battery, if you can't then it is a most likely a Lithium Polymer one.
They absolutely are. 170,000 a year in the US alone. Some are even due to known design faults. A few years ago Ford recalled almost a million pickups due to a fire risk, and then recalled half of them again because the first fix caused another fire risk.
The probability of injury or death from a vehicle fire is probably much higher than the risk of injury from wireless headphones.
https://www.consumernotice.org/personal-injury/vehicle-safet...
What's your point? Mine was that Bose should do the same thing with their headphones, and they won't do it out of their own accord.
Also consider that there are billions of porcelain dishes made in the world, and somehow, they don't self-explode. If headphones are different in that regard, they should be, at the very least, clearly labeled as such - which is not the case.
If you're concerned about exploding lithium ion or lithium polymer devices in your home the only recourse available to you is not to buy any.
If you do that you should also be aware that corded devices also catch fire sometimes though. You should avoid those too.
Maybe just avoid electrical systems entirely.
The risks from burning wood in your living room are higher. My wife got burned badly when she was a small kid. We have freezing temperatures 7-8 months a year in this country. So heating requires a lot of energy and with a lot of energy there is always higher risk, whether electric or not.
Did you ever pause to think why that's the case? That wasn't the case 100 years ago, when Radium was a fun new chemical to paint your teeth with.
We are pretty close because of government regulation, warnings, and yes, lawsuits that punish the companies for being negligent on safety.
>Obviously manufacturers should attempt to minimize the risk but they'll never reduce it to zero.
And obviously, the manufacturers need incentives to do so. Safety warnings aren't just for the consumer - they also make safer products more marketable. And penalties for not doing due diligence won't happen by themselves unless the consumers take an active position, report safety violations to CPSC, and sue to recover the damages.
Someone has to enforce the rules. In the US, the enforcement is shifted to the consumer and the legal system. We have CPSC, NHTSA, FAA - and their reach is still limited, the justification being that it should be up to the courts.
What has this got to do with exploding ICE cars?
> What's your point?
I think GPs point was pretty clear. You made a completely unfounded claim, ICE cars don’t spontaneously explode, despite the fact that evidence shows they clearly do, and do so at a rate higher than headphones or EVs.
Take into account the probability of a costly failure, and increase the price to account for it. And compensate victims to a certain extent, but quietly. I suppose they would fight any publicity of such incidents, since that would have a huge impact on sales, I have read a few such stories, and usually they disappear from the news pretty soon, likely because the victim agreed to be quietly compensated. I could be wrong.
Yes they do, and this is why we have CPSC and lawsuits: to increase the cost of failure to the point where it's not a wise business decision to allow one to happen.
Nothing is 100% fool-proof, but the difference between 99.9% safe and 99.99% safe is 10x decrease in incidents.
Well, at lease EVs are spontaneously catching fire.
Bose aren't luxury: they're premium mediocre. They're expensive - overpriced in fact - but have a supremely competent marketing team who are probably responsible for mopping up a good portion of that premium.
That doesn't make this incident any better or more excusable but it does go some way to explaining why it happened: the product is poor quality and cheaply engineered.
You get what you pay for, and with Bose you are paying to be hoodwinked by flashy marketing and "brand equity".
I'll probably swap to Sony next, but when I bought them there wasn't really a viable competitor.
It is a shame that Bose's lead in noise-cancelling isn't matched in the quality of their sound.
I'm quite impressed with them. Both the noise-cancelling and sound quality are better than the QC35s I used to use.
Thanks, "premium" (also in scare quotes) is the word I was looking for.
Thing is, small lithium bombs do less damage than large ones. Now Bose makes a point of advertising the long battery-life of these devices; 20 hours, they say.
Doesn't that mean that Bose is profiting from the long battery life, while failing to mention that their competitors sell cans with smaller ear-bombs in them?
What negligence?
It could be the former. But it could also be the latter, in which case the OP taking legal action might save a few other Bose users some pain and suffering. Which is partly why he should escalate this.
Imagine there are N = 3 safeguards in the product design (note: I have no idea how many there are in reality), and imagine 1 of them is defective across the whole line. That means the other 2 remaining ones would still prevent almost every incident, and you'd indeed need to be unlucky for all 3 to fail. When you observe the first failure, the only thing you can conclude is that, in your particular case, all the safeguards failed. You cannot conclude (with any useful degree of confidence) that there was no common defect across the entire product line, given there are 2 other safeguards to prevent disasters. To figure that out the only practical way (without risking more incidents) is to actually examine the product and the failure mode.
(Now, admittedly I'm oversimplifying a bit here, but the point stands. e.g. if there are 2 safeguards, each with an independent 1/10k chance of failure, and you get 2 failures within the first 20k items manufactured, then you know that's incredibly unlikely without a defect. But even this reasoning only works after the 2nd incident (not 1st), and it still requires you to know the characteristics of all the safeguards... which is not information consumers have immediately available, and neither of which is the case here AFAIK.)
The amount of chemical energy released by burning of the electrolyte, and graphite is many times higher than battery's stored electric energy.
Most of what burns in a lithium cell is electrolyte, and later graphite.
Do you know what the percentage is? Some Googling suggests around 4% by weight or so?
However, my Sennheiser over-ear ANC headphones (MB660) have a much better ANC effect compared to the AirPods but the strain on the ears is a lot less intense. I would expect, that the Bose QC-35 II are much closer to the MB660 than to the AirPods Pro.
I've got a sony wh-1000xm2, some inear Jabra and the Bose 700, which came with my Pixel 6 purchase the other day.
It really is something the potential buyer should check out themselves in a store before buying, because they're really variable in quality.
According to mkbhd the Sony one's are the best at it, but they have very strong white noise background at least with my older model.
I actually had the same issue with that pressure on my ears, though it slowly went away and haven't noticed any displeasure in a long time now.
If you model the noise canceling as a superposition of the input signal with the generated signal, where the generated signal is specifically designed to account for the processing delay and hence only targets lower-frequency noise, then wouldn't 2 things be true:
1) Any residual from imperfect cancellation would only be at the lower frequencies (because the generated signal itself contains no high frequencies, and we a linear superposition). Of course, the original high frequency content from the input that was never cancelled will still be present but this isn't any worse.
2) Even in the worst case that we completely mispredict, we will only double the sound intensity which is a 3db increase. This seems relatively safe?
That said, while it seems physically safe it's possible that ANC still wreaks havoc with the brain's audio processing. Maybe the brain relies on the existence of the low frequency content as a sort of gain control mechanism or something (there are anecdotal reports by some users of increased tinnitus with long-term ANC use, but it's also possible that it only increased their awareness of it). I've also read that some people are sensitive to this lack of low-frequency noise since the brain interprets it as a pressure differential.
If you take a sinusoids, invert it, slightly offset it, and combine them. You get a smaller signal always, unless you’re delay is larger then 90°.
I would recommend playing with some audio signals in an online simulator and see what you get, you realise that your 2D intuition does not apply well to analogue 1D signals. The strict digital nature of image processing done on a computer creates the possibility of results not easily possible when working on analogue signal. After all you can one pixel on a screen at max brightness, and it’s neighbour completely of, but it’s impossible to recreate a similar hard edge with an audio signal because it would require the speaker to be capable of infinite speed and acceleration.
Not that any of this is relevant to the original problem.
> 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.
From GP:
> I can see quite clearly that the high frequency noise happens when you subtract two images, one of which is shifted by half-pixel for instance. What you are left with is the edges (high frequency) of the image.
Show me the part where the word “amplitude” appears in any parent post.
Additionally as mentioned in parent posts, noise cancelling headphone run a low pass filter over the input to the ANC system, specifically because achieving good alignment between your ANC signal and original signal is basically impossible at wave lengths shorter as you can’t know the exactly which direction the original signal came from (direct perpendicular to the head, or at a close tangential angle), and thus can’t compensate for the offset needed to ensure the two signals arrive at eardrum at the right time.
However, I don't agree that ANC always uses a low-pass filter, and it seems from kalal's followup that they are also talking about the using the full original signal. So the two of us were not talking about introducing high frequencies but about somehow enhancing the high frequencies already present, and that's what the figures I gave above are for. So we've been talking across each other. I apologise for my part in that.
("Amplitude" was a simple technical term to replace woolly terms that were being used, just as you are the first in the parent-chain to say "low pass filter".)
> What you are left with is the edges (high frequency)
So you subtract a slightly phase shifted high frequency signal, you're left with a high frequency signal that may be amplified at the edges depending on your phase shift. Nothing surprising here?
The question is can you create a high frequency residual by subtracting a lowpass filtered (gaussian blur?) image? I don't think so. You're just left with whatever high frequencies you had but you aren't creating any new ones.
But the noise cancellation is subtly audible. I'm not a sound engineer, but it feels a little bit like sound compression being too high.
https://www.howtogeek.com/423960/why-do-noise-canceling-head...
There are lots of other sources of pain, fatigue and discomfort, though. Essentially, since the noise cancellation isn't perfect, you can hear some subset of the sound, varying across the frequency spectrum. This can cause a feeling of being underwater, of having blocked ears or simply of having to listen more closely, all of which might cause ongoing muscle tension of different muscles.
On the good news side, a lot of people who find discomfort with one brand of noise-cancelling can find other brands fine, so it might be worth trying some other brands. (For Bose, the main similar-quality competitor is Sony.)
Finally, in the simplistic model, there does not have to be a delay. Sound only travels at 340 metres per second, so for every 10mm distance between the microphone and the emitter, one can have around 34 microseconds of processing time.
I took the time to run ethernet cable to my home office because while the wifi works well 99% of the time, I don't want to be in a situation where I'm in a work meeting and it cuts off or starts becoming choppy.
Wireless headphones introduce multiple new modes of failure, like connection issues, and running out of battery. If you want reliability, it's good to stick with safe, reliable technologies, and eliminate potential modes of failure.
Sure, you could also use a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse while you're at it, but then, between your wifi, your wireless headset, your wireless keyboard and your wireless mouse, the odds of a connection or battery failure happening when you need your computer to work is quite a bit higher.
One of my colleagues uses a wireless headset and it's happened at least 10 times during meetings that people tell him "sorry, we can't hear you, could you check your audio". Don't be that guy, use wired headphones ;)
Just to be clear, "noise cancellation and so on" doesn't in any way require the headphones to be wireless.
I think many people would appreciate it if features, which are typically found in wireless headphones, were available in wired headphones too (which have some other benefits, like lower weight, no charging...). There's a reason many of us prefer wired mice and keyboards, even though the wireless alternatives are pretty decent nowadays.
A couple of questions for you:
- were the headphones recently dropped?
- otherwise damaged?
- what was the environment like at the time of charging (extreme temperature / humidity)?
- 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?
- 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?
- Was there any sound (not headphone sounds, but sounds of something popping or cracking) prior to the combustion?
- Do you know what kind of batteries are in the QC-35, are these Lithium Polymer or something else?
- Approximately how many charge/discharge cycles did your headphones have?
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.
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.
On the other hand, it doesn't seem that the amount from rechargeable lion is anywhere near as much, or we'd be hearing a lot more about everyone who got lung damage from all the "stupid things people do with lithium batteries" videos on YouTube...
But this story, together with my own 2 warranty repairs, confirms my suspicion that Bose has serious QC issues.
If I were in this guys shoes, I probably wouldn't even want a Bose aux cord.
Excellent customer relations by the way.
But also on the subject of risk vs reward, I think its pretty clear that cars cause more deaths than terrorism, if you want a clearer example of society deciding risks are worth the rewards
In a public discussion about whether it is appropriate to continue using Li-ion powered portable electronics, it seems natural that it's an entirely different discussion.
It solves disposal, storage and transport problems and it decouples device lifetime from battery lifetime.
Alkalines are nice but produce a lot of waste. Lots of things don't work quite right with rechargeable AAs but I agree, the things that do are perfect also.
NiMH is rechargeable and seems better than alkaline in almost every way. It also doesn't spontaneously combust. Energy density is not quite as good as lithium ion but for something like headphones it is fine.
Off topic - Jorg Baller's comment on the blog post is confusing and seems rude.
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.
Also interesting that the author uses "portable" as the other selling point, as if the alternative were to use a boom mic.
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.
If you don't, why bring it up? Nothing in your comment is about burns.
The "I'm not saying <something>, but...." is just a roundabout way to imply <something> without being held accountable for saying it directly. Please avoid this in your communication.
> I stopped reading here. The "echo" effect is caused from somebody using speakers instead of headphones
...which is exactly why the OP suggested they use headphones.
The echo appears when they start speaking while other people speak. It doesn't happen when they're on mute. And echo cancellation does a great job if only one person speaks at a time.
But echo cancellation is complicated when a person's speech is mixed with the speakers output. Hence, if you have a bad setup, there's going to be an echo when you speak.
>You could use a pair of $20 earbuds to solve this.
Yes. And? We can't recommend things we like because there are cheaper things?
>they'd be wiser to not eviscerate their own credibility as an engineer
The author is not writing as an engineer. Also, given the above, I hope you heed your own advice.
Saying that the OP has, quote, "eviscerated their own credibility as an engineer" without adding anything of value to the discussion (aside, possibly, from eviscerating your own credibility as an engineer; not that it matters) was uncalled for.
When people get to this point in a back-and-forth, it's a clear indication that the thread should have stopped a while ago. Believe me, I realize it's not easy to pull away, but it's necessary.
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 feel bad for OP, but this is just a "luck-of-the-draw" thing. Trying to make it into anything else is disingenuous at best. I don't think these "negative" comments are as negative as you are reading them, I think they're being realistic.
I worry about this too. Cripes!
You get out of the car.
They don’t tend to explode like in an action movie.
Like any of dozens and dozens of things, they might burn down your house albeit quite rarely.
People really need to start accepting that risk is never zero.
Not always.
Electric cars are also quite dangerous for firefighters to put the flames out (you can't use water for instance and it's even more dangerous in rain) and since they are relatively new not all firefighters know how to extinct them properly.
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 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.
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.
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.
Agreed that every LiIon powered product carries these risks, but even when you are very careful material defects can and do occasionally crop up. But here there is - for now - not enough information to determine whether this was a a charger issue, a manufacturing defect, a case of abuse or even a combination of some of these.
In any case, it's reasonable for someone to be bothered at being burned by their headphones and certainly not something to be expected, as you imply.
That said, beyond 24 hours not sure how useful it would be.
Lithium Ion batteries don't have heavy metals in them, so there's no risk there.
One Chinese company actually invented a flexible and solid battery that can even be cut without a risk of explosion but it doesn't scale to bigger capacities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJXRyWQgOY4
Which is why some of us here are urging the OP to sue: to make sure the safety innovation has demand in the free market.
Nope, we aren't.
We, as the consumer, say this on HN:
>There is an inherent risk of loss of life whatever you do. We as a society just agreed that there's an acceptable level of it. Lithium-Ion batteries are on the higher level of it but their usefulness outweights it completely. To answer your question, there's a lot of things that have much higher chance of happening on an airplane e.g. a bird flying into the engine or a terrorist attack.
Why push for innovation when you can just accept the inherent risk of death?
> I used the stock USB charger connected to a Macbook Pro.
The headphones were connected to charger or MBP? (MBP uses USB-C, QC35ii uses micro-USB, are there cables like this?)
Yes and they’re not super rare
Last time I heard they were buying from Goertec.
A cat chewed one of the cables, and I had to replace the ear cushions (for a few bucks from eBay) but they're otherwise going strong, despite a fairly tough life.
I posted another comment about this recently.
It appears that NYC is having about 1 e-bike fire per year, per 100K persons. (see below)
It also appears the NYC is having about the same rate of e-bike fire injuries: About 1 injury per 100K persons, per year.
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.
References: https://www.consumerreports.org/electric-bikes/how-to-preven... "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."
It is the most common type of batteries on the planet, which has been used for decades. What is your estimate on when the risk will be well understood, if ever?
Asbestos for example was used for quite a few years and seen as a safe and cheap building material. Then it turned out that it gives people cancer. A similar thing happened with lead, although some people knew how dangerous it is but kept quiet about it for profit.