The latest air-safety threat

[mdlbear]

Now the TSA is afraid that spare lithium batteries will spontaneously combust. Or that somebody will try to light them instead of their shoe, but if so why are thay banned from checked baggage and not from carry-ons?

Never mind that they're just as likely to combust inside a laptop. Maybe more, since an external short might develop. (Added 08:55 sbisson points out that there's a real reason for the apparent anomaly: cabin fire extinguishers can cope with lithium fires, while the automatic ones in the baggage hold can't. But you can still check a laptop through, and those have been known to burst into flames.)

(From BoingBoing.) Note that most batteries installed in devices are permitted, and even a lot of add-on batteries. Forget about checking through a big pile of camcorder batteries, though.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

It's not actually a security issue.

The TSA is enforcing a DOT ruling, which resulted from a fire on a cargo DC8 last year that was tracked down to a set of batteries. It turns out that most standard hold fire extinguishers can't cope with lithium fires. However apparently cabin fire extinguishers can, but only for certain classes of fire.

So not really stupid, just awkward.

[mdlbear]

Point taken. Title changed from "security theater" to "air-safety threat".

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Yaknow, given that the FAA ruling stemmed not only from the DC-8 fire but from a recommendation from the NTSB concerning these things back in 2000 (the triggering incident being in 1999), and the fact that there are other known incidents of these things just going kaboom...

I think we need some serious research into Li-I batteries just from a consumer product safety standpoint, forget security theatre.

Dang. New-gen OLPC's have LiFePO4 batteries. Now, these are different from the usual LiCoO2 camcorder bats.... but expect a TSA flunkie to know the difference? OTOH, (1) you ain't gonna *need* an extra battery for the OLPC, given how long it runs and given the manual recharger... (2) I bet if you did carry one and just told him, "This isn't a lithium-ion battery" (it's not, it's a lithium-*phosphate*, which do have the characteristics of running much colder than LiI's) he wouldn't bother reading it... but the way the rules read, they don't seem to care about the ion part, only the lithium content.

As usual, the law is an idiot.