The BATTERY may hot get hot, but whatever gets between the contacts can. Take some steel wool and put it on a 9v battery's terminals. Oooooooooooo.
There's lots of little things in the garbage that they can contact with. Foil. Gum wrappers. Food wrappers. Cans. Just like the hose in the yard, if there's one TINY thing the hose can get caught on, it heads for it like the hose has a brain.
I am going to do some reading and Googling, and see if I can get some stats on battery caused fires.
Still, by your own words, it is not definitely 100%, and when you multiply that out, it comes out to a definite number of incidents and fires.
Not true - it can heat up over almost a minute and stay hot for a while. It is also not discharged as effectively while getting bubbles of gas or steam.
The battery is dead or "fairly dead" if it does not heat up from a sustained short.
Throwing bare batteries into dumpsters is something I avoid.
Even though that should only start a fire every several blue moons, I don't want my tossed battery making just the wrong resistive short, such as against someone else's steel wool or fragment of bicycle brake cable or something carbonized or graphite pencil lead.
I also do not want to see what happens if a 9V battery with 1 of its 6 cells more discharged than the other 5 gets shorted when buried in paper. Maybe 99.9999% or so of the time everything is fine and hunky dory - cells have to have moisture to conduct.
One thing I do is use rechargeable batteries when I can. Then I don't have to throw out so many batteries. I also have an easier time having only dead ones to get rid of - for one thing, rechargeables self-discharge more.
When I throw out dead batteries, I usually dump them in a municipal trash can well removed from buildings when I cycle by that trash can on my way to work.
Although dumped batteries rank low on the list of causes of fires, I get a bit paranoid here - I have been burned out of my apartment twice from fires started by neighbors, and I do some fair amount of electronics work and LED lighting device prototype development work. I have more than my share of batteries and I do not want any fire problems that I can possibly avoid - especially any that can be blamed on me!
I already have lamps on 9V battery connectors. Not much time wasted to drain the duds.
As for other sizes - I toss them in a municipal trash can far enough from buildings (in a township with an aggressive fire department and only a few blocks from the nearest fire station) when I cycle by that trash can on my way to work. Heck, I dump 9V ones there also.
Nothing is a cause of a majority of home fires. Some college campus areas have exceptions to that - either from overcooking of microwave popcorn (awfully easy to do very spectacularly, easily catastrophically) or horseplay with fire.
Other more significant fire causes are smoking in bed, children playing with matches/lighters, unattended cooking, malfunctioning/abused/substandard electrical products (extension cords rank somewhere significantly here), misused space heaters, and somewhere after that malfunctioning home wiring.
My experience has shorted alkalines getting plenty burning hot.
Usually - only usually!
Actual fire rates are low enough to produce nationwide data saying "low on causes of fires", and battery manufacturers actually do produce products that allow them to make money in the litigious USA.
However, as catastrophic as a fire can easily be, I like to reduce risks where I can without going too far out of my way.
Sorry, but I have to differ with you. Cooking is by and far the largest culprit:
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says: Cooking
a.. Cooking fires are the #1 of home fires and home fire injuries. b.. In 2005, cooking equipment was involved in 146,400 reported home structure fires, the largest share for any major cause. These fires resulted in 480 civilian deaths, 4,690 civilian injuries, and $876 million in direct property damage. c.. The majority of home fires - 40% - start in the kitchen. d.. Unattended cooking is the leading factor contributing to ignition in home cooking fires, accounting for one-third of such fires. More than half of all cooking fire injuries occurred when people tried to fight the fire themselves. e.. Most home cooking fires (67%) in 2005 started with the range or stove. f.. Electric ranges or stoves have a higher risk of fires, deaths, injuries and property damage, compared to gas ranges or stoves.
Sorry, D a.. Cooking fires are the #1 cause of home fires and home fire injuries. b.. In 2005, cooking equipment was involved in 146,400 reported home structure fires, the largest share for any major cause. These fires resulted in 480 civilian deaths, 4,690 civilian injuries, and $876 million in direct property damage. c.. The majority of home fires - 40% - start in the kitchen. d.. Unattended cooking is the leading factor contributing to ignition in home cooking fires, accounting for one-third of such fires. More than half of all cooking fire injuries occurred when people tried to fight the fire themselves. e.. Most home cooking fires (67%) in 2005 started with the range or stove. f.. Electric ranges or stoves have a higher risk of fires, deaths, injuries and property damage, compared to gas ranges or stoves.
The stats are indeed complicated because although there are a lot of kitchen fires, the much fewer number of space heater and tobacco smoking fires prove far more deadly on a "per fire" basis, probably because the residents are asleep when most space heater or cigarette fires begin. More than half of all home fire deaths result from incidents reported between 11:00 p.m. and
7:00 a.m., but only 20% of home fires occur between these hours.
You can reduce your risk of death by one half, simply by using enough smoke detectors. Stealing just a little more from the National Fire Protection Association site:
a.. 65% of reported home fire deaths in 2000-2004 resulted from fires in homes with no smoke alarms or no working smoke alarms. a.. The fire death rate in homes with working smoke alarms is 51% less than the rate for homes without this protection. a.. In one out of every five homes equipped with at least one smoke alarm installed, not a single one was working. a.. When smoke alarms fail it is most often because of missing, disconnected or dead batteries. Nuisance activations were the leading cause of disabled smoke alarms.
The fact that electrical wiring is indicted in so relatively few fires (20K) is really a testament to the continual advances in electrical safety technology that tend to protect all but the most stupid. One interesting fact from the above site is that cords and plugs were involved in one-eighth (12%) of the 2002-2005 home electrical distribution and lighting equipment fires, but roughly two-fifths (39%) of associated civilian deaths.
Someday, all stoves and ranges will have built-in fire supression systems that are computer controlled and can easily distinguish between someone cooking cherries flambe and a towel leaning against a burner. Compared to the safety interlocks on most furnaces, stoves and ranges have a long, long way to go before cooking drops out of the top spot as an ignition point for home fires.
Historically, SLC has always had a large section near downtown for adult shopping. Of all sorts. Lately, mostly streetwalkers, but before that, many houses. Guess they're like the mob. They don't care what you do, just pay the man every week and there won't be any trouble.
They still don't know what caused the Hindenberg fire. I can remember in my lifetime numerous personal incidents and those in the news where fires were started by the darndest things. Cat knocked over candle, hamster chewed wire and spontaneously combusted, stuff like that.
I love people who say it can't happen. I love to stay from them.
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