Article by Eric Worrell
Mike Gallagher, CEO of Ports Australia – “You can't get them out. So if you can't put them out, you can imagine them on the streets, you can imagine them on ships at sea or in ports.
Warning for e-scooter and bike batteries in everyday fires
By: 9 News Staff September 22, 2024 8:24 pm
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Firefighters have noticed a series of explosions caused by lithium batteries in e-scooters and e-bikes, which can occur even as they are being transported to stores.
“The fires we see almost every day are caused by small e-scooter, e-bike type batteries,” Darren Mallouk from Queensland Fire Service's investigation team told 9News.
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Australian Ports chief executive Mike Gallagher said ship fires caused by these flammable batteries were nearly impossible to put out safely.
“They're packaged like sardines in a can, except these are very dangerous sardines,” he said.
“You can't get them out. So if you can't put them out, you can imagine them in the streets, you can imagine them on ships at sea or in harbors.
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In 2022, a cargo ship carrying luxury cars, including electric cars, sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
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Find out more (including video): https://www.9news.com.au/national/lithium-battery-fires-firefighters-warning-over-electric-vehicles-ships/a1496745-3ef2-4660-be8d-c91f93713d04
The ferocity and speed of lithium fires cannot be overstated. Lithium fires are more like throwing a match in a fireworks box than a normal fire. The man in the video below was lucky enough to survive and had no time to do anything but run away.
If professional firefighters work hard to put out lithium fires, no one else should try. Not only are you at risk of severe burns from explosive fragments hot enough to melt steel, but the fumes produced by lithium are also highly toxic.
Lithium is a powerful psychoactive substance. Small doses of lithium have therapeutic value in treating bipolar disorder, but patients taking lithium must have regular blood tests to minimize the risk of lithium toxicity. Even at therapeutic doses, lithium can cause a variety of short-term and (unfortunately) long-term underlying physiological conditions, including brain damage such as dementia, known as lithium neurotoxicity.
Even if firefighters control the fire and save the house, do you really want to live in a house contaminated with lithium? Sooner or later, insurance companies will realize that even if neighboring buildings survive the blaze, there is a significant lingering risk of lawsuits from people claiming their health was damaged by lithium exposure.
Ship transportation is the only part of the lithium risk profile that appears to be addressable with current technology. Lithium can be transported in non-flammable forms such as lithium carbonate, minimizing the risk of fire. Although lithium carbonate remains a dangerous toxic substance, applying similar protocols to the transport of other toxic substances should be sufficient for non-flammable forms of lithium.
But converting the non-combustible form of lithium into batteries is energy-intensive, requiring vast amounts of cheap energy — which the green-obsessed West is struggling to provide to industry. As a result, ships and their crews continue to risk their lives transporting unstable forms of lithium, such as finished lithium batteries, to help green politicians maintain the illusion that they are reducing CO2 emissions.
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