Battery Safety Could Save Your Home

Experts recommend replacing the batteries in your home’s smoke detectors at least once a year. But when you remove those old batteries, what are you supposed to do with them? How you answer that question could go a long way toward eliminating a deadly fire hazard in your home.

Disposing of old batteries isn’t always as simple as throwing them in the trash. EPA regulations govern how batteries should be recycled, as the heavy metals inside can leak out and damage the environment. However, batteries can also cause another potential hazard that should be taken into consideration.

Touching a battery’s positive and negative terminals to a conductor (i.e., metal) allows energy to flow out of the battery. This concept makes household items like flashlights function, but if the terminals are connected to an item with low resistance, the flow of current can cause a fire. To see this in action, watchhow easy it is to start a fire in seconds with a 9-volt battery and a piece of steel wool.

Batteries can be especially dangerous when disposed of together. In one instance from April 2011, a man accidentally burned down his family’s home with nothing more than a few 9-volt batteries.

Continued at:  https://www.lhsfna.org/index.cfm/lifelines/june-2014/battery-safety-could-save-your-home/