Over 8M Thermos jars and bottles recalled after 3 people lost vision(goodmorningamerica.com) |
Over 8M Thermos jars and bottles recalled after 3 people lost vision(goodmorningamerica.com) |
Turns out people leave perishable and fermenting foods in the thermos, and after a while when opened, the pressure lifts the lid of the thermos at quasi-unimaginable speeds, striking the curiously unsuspecting humans straight in the face, with some instances causing permanent damage to vision.
Coffee is hot, but a pressure release system is cool too..
> Incidents/Injuries: Thermos has received 27 reports of consumers who were struck by a stopper that forcefully ejected from these containers upon opening, including complaints of impact and laceration injuries requiring medical attention. Three consumers suffered permanent vision loss after being struck in the eye.
That's an awefully large amount of reports about this. I wonder what about the design makes it a rocket compared to what I would assume is a pretty standard design?
> The Stainless King™ 470ml Vacuum Insulated Food Jar is the ultimate day to day companion to keep your food at optimal temperatures. Keep fruit fresh and vegetables cool for up to 14 hours while you take on the day. For your favourite soups, pastas or stir fry, they’ll stay warm for up to 9 hours – ideal for taking last nights left overs. You can be sure that your food will be perfect for consumption at lunchtime after you pack it in the morning. The wide mouth makes it easy to fill and clean, and comes crowned with a stainless steel lid that doubles as a serving bowl. Plus, it comes with a handy stainless steel spoon that fits neatly into the lid compartment.
It's meant for storing food, for anyone who is confused why someone would be.
Injuries nonwithstanding, the quality of the seal means it was an exceptionally well designed item for the purpose of storing 99% water.
side note: there's a reason you get a visit from the FBI if you buy ten pressure cookers (e.g. if you find a great Black Friday deal and have a large family and plan Christmas gifts...)
If you were purposely fermenting something, you could build enough pressure to pop the bottle.
Needless to say, storing food in a thermos as advertised is different than coffee is hot and should have been foreseen by the team who supervised the approval of "Oh we need more sales.. Oh right, let's double down on our market and tell customers to put food in their Thermoses!"
(to be fair, I don't think an externally threaded cap will solve this problem. If the thread held to a higher pressure, then the core part of the plug will eventually blow out even more energetically. An overpressure vent port is still necessary)
Scroll down in that article to the section with photographs of "recalled" and "not recalled" lids side by side.
The original cap from the store has no pressure-release mechanism, other than the breaking of the seal when unscrewing it. The cap has an integrated carrying handle, which can also help when turning the cap one way or another.
The accessory cap has a "sippy cup" feature along with a pressure-release valve. It is very common to have a second valve with any vessel that pours or dispenses liquid, even a lemonade tank, because that's how pouring works. When you remove liquid from the container, it must be replaced by a commensurate volume of air.
I assume people forget they had food in them
It can be seals that buckle before the lid. It can be a tiny hole with a soft rubber stopper. It can be one of many things that cost a couple of cents extra and a bit more engineering and testing effort.
The cheapest disposable coffee cups I've used have a tiny hole for the express purpose of not pressurizing and spilling hot liquid everywhere.
There's a lot of conversation in the comments about "was there was an expectation that the pressure release valve would be there" There absolutely is a safety expectation that a sealed container of hot food is designed with a pressure release system.
BTW the fermented food thing is a misdirection. The pressure release system should have released pressure way before it even reached ballistic territory.
The malfunction is due to multiple models of containers missing a pressure relief function in the center of the stopper.
But then I read the words "The malfunction is due to multiple models of containers missing a pressure relief function in the center of the stopper."
How non-existent does your quality assurance have to be in order to miss such a critical, obvious and easy to identify flaw ?
Looking at the published photographs, you don't even need training to identify that manufacturing defect. A five year old could spot the difference between "lid has a hole" and "lid does not have a hole".
Not all safety features have to be obvious/obtrusive.
Seems logical to then be recalling any that are out there without the safety feature.
I didn't consider it a defect, though. I can hardly imagine cheap products adopting this solution.
† "Knife skills" automatic habits = things such as, • always cut away from yourself; • whenever holding something down with the non-knife hand to be cut, curl that hand's fingers under, so that the non-knife hand's knuckles serve as a guard for that hand's finger tips.
with Champagne the injuries are probably more numerous, but this risk is part of the expected behavior.
Me standing there, kombucha and peach slices pulverized against the cap, kombucha leaving a large mark on the ceiling it all happened so fast, glad I was wearing my glasses.
No injuries except my pride, but it did take some hours to clean up.
I wouldn't do it in a thermos, but I guess those are mostly accidents?
Tasted okay though.
My mate brewed his bramble beer by putting his brambles through a juicer and only adding the juice and pulp, because he's cleverer than me and has a certain amount of foresight.
Looking at the version that's not recalled, I would guess it costs more to make.
My partner has one of these so just checked it. It does have the pressure relief feature, but it turns out it's also missing all the seals anyway so never would have been a problem!
That's not very empathic of fellow people who might just have mistakenly forgotten food in the container.
It's not like they were intentionally using this for brewing some illegal substance or misusing it in a way specifically forbidden in the manual or obviously unsafe (e.g. removing a magnetron and all of its protections from a microwave to make pretty wood carvings).
In case anybody's wondering, as I did:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/11/60/41/116041120bb6e701bd47...
If you ask me, that's how the protomolecule got out
Can you also guarantee with absolute certainty that you'll never forget them anywhere another person who's unaware of the contents or the danger could find them?
Why does he need to do that?
We're talking about a product that lightly injured ~20 people for ~8mil units sold and seriously injured ~3.
Should be be keeping his champagne in a protective enclosure?
Luckily I got one of the valveless models, and you bet your ass I'm keeping it. Maybe I'll stick an "open away from face" label on top or something, but I'm not about to go increasing my risk of food contamination.
I'd rather they slap a warning on it, like everything else that you can't safely point at your face.
If the difference is, say, a full 360° turn, pressure will get relieved before the lid can come off.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48006887. Apparently, many bottles have discontinuities in the threading to allow for that.
Fermentation is still possible. Likely, even, if slower to start.
I can totally see how that would fly straight up at your face.
Without arguing your point there are a couple more things to consider from the perspective of the company and the society at large.
From the company perspective, if their product gets a bad reputation the sales will be worse. This could even extend beyond the one product. It doesn't matter if it is fair or nuanced at all. Even if everyone is a moron, investing in protecting the morons from themselves could be a good business decision.
From the society perspective, there is a positive-for-business intent in forcing a baseline for consumer safety and satisfaction. Threading that needle is of course hard but it makes it easier for a free market of consumer products to exist as a whole if the consumers can offload some of the investigation required before committing to something. The idea is that in a 100% buyer beware situation there is less buying overall and the market can't be big and as full of options because the cost/risk of buying isn't worth the end goal. You can make the counter argument that the trust should be part of the brand value but it might enable new companies and new products more effectively (making more good options in a free market) to reduce the consumer risk of purchasing their products.
Additionally, if everyone is doing the same prerequisite research (is this safe before I buy), it makes sense to consolidate this step either through curation/certification groups (the people who care fund it themselves - makes sense for specific preference choices [eg "plant based", "cruelty free"] or niches [eg "gluten free", "non gmo"]) or regulation (everyone funds it collectively - makes sense for broad application like "will I get food poisoning" and "am I risking being maimed").
Beyond personal purchases there's also society wide implications worth preventing for things like if a million cars exploded or if 10% of profession X and profession Y ended up losing fingers.
Like I said, not arguing with you about if people are dumb and if companies should be required to pay to deal with that, just pointing out there are other reasons a system might be in place beyond just a patronizing nanny state situation.
I also found this the hard way, once you open a bottle of kefir or yogurt and then close it again to drink/eat later, the fermentation process speeds up due to the additional oxygen, building up pressure until you open it the next time. Fortunately no one got hurt.
That by far is not enough to forcefully yeet out the cap, probably not even if you take it to an Antarctic research base in -40 °C outdoor weather.
People forgetting about content that ferments however? Kaboom.
Happy now?
Boston marathon worked because - well pressure cookers at the time didn't draw much attention to them.
That beggars the imagination. You think the FBI is monitoring the sales of every restaurant supply store?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-polic...
Though it turns out the truth might be more complicated and it may have been her husbands employer triggering the search, not the FBI? https://www.darkreading.com/cyber-risk/pressure-cooker-flap-...
I was initially surprised too, because I mostly know Thermos from their coffee/water/etc bottles, but apparently they're also selling these with the intention of storing perishable goods, and in that case a pressure relief system of some kind is a necessity.
Often bottles have special threads with holes in them to let out the pressure when you twist them open, but it appears they didn't do that here.
What point are you trying to make here ?!?!
Given that it should be there, it is quite clearly a product feature on Thermos jars.
So, of many examples that cross my mind.... let's say you were a long-term user of Thermos products. There's your "expectation".
I assume it probably features in the product literature that comes in the box too.
I've never seen a thermos-style container with a pressure relief in my life. However, I'm European, it appears that in the US (a country where you have to write disclaimers on microwaves that you shouldn't dry hamsters in them) common sense has been going down the toilet.
Frankly, I'm all for a bit of darwinism here. It's bewildering that there are people who think it's a good idea to open a thermos that has been fermenting for days if not weeks without a lot of caution!
How many people do you think realize that pressure can build up in a thermos if leftover food or drink ferments in it?
And even if you know the danger, how do you know if the thermals bottle you are holding is dangerous or not? Should people call the bomb squad every time they see a thermos with unknown contents inside?
If I have made an accidental kimchi bomb then I will want to defuse it safely before I dispose of it. If I put it in the trash and leave it for the refuse collector there is risk that it blows up in their face without any warning. That's a much worse outcome. The root issue here is that this thermos design doesnt have a way to safely defuse it.
Seems to be like they sold a bottle designed for a pressure relief cap with the wrong model cap, turning food storage containers into launchers.
(That hamster-microwave thing is a disinfo campaign from manufacuturers to limit liability of corporations, BTW, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...)
I said "given it should be there" because Thermos have just issued a recall notice where they openly admit liability and they openly state it should be there (see side by side photos in the recall).
I was never seeking to pass judgement on the factual element of whether "it should be there" in the pure definition of the term.
I was just saying "it should be there on THAT product because Thermos says so".
