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It happened suddenly, and if I wasn't present, it would have taken out my home and killed my pets and possibly my wife.

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.

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The plastic will burn. In addition to HF and other very nasty things the battery fire emits, the burning plastic is also very nasty: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5577247/

Judging by the photo the OP posted it self extinguished. So it doesn't readily sustain a flame even when exposed to fire, and that makes it fire retardant.

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.

No, there is no fire retardant in the thermoplastic. He is not paranoic, he is just explaining the fact.

Why do you call it thermoplastic instead of just plastic

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