Good info--Bad hazard

[Chopsticks]

A friend sent me this......

Friends: My brother and his wife learned a hard lesson this last
week. Their house burned down...nothing left but ashes. They have
good insurance, so the home will be replaced and most of the
contents. That is the good news. However, they were sick when they
found out the cause of the fire.

The insurance investigator sifted through the ashes for several
hours. He had the cause of the fire traced to the master bathroom.
He asked my sister-in-law what she had plugged in in the bathroom.
She listed the normal things....curling iron, blow dryer. He kept
saying to her, "No, this would be something that would disintegrate
at high temperatures." Then, my sister-in-law remembered she had a
Glade Plug-in in the bathroom.

The investigator had one of those "Aha" moments. He said that was the
cause of the fire. He said he has seen more home fires started with the plug in
type room fresheners than anything else. He said the plastic they are made
from is a THIN plastic. He said in every case there was nothing left
to prove that it even existed. When the investigator looked in the
wall plug, the two prongs left from the plug-in were still in there.

My sister-in-law had one of the plug-ins that had a small night
light built in it. She said she had noticed that the light would
dim....and then finally go out. She would walk in a few hours later,
and the light would be back on again. The investigator said that the
unit was getting too hot, and would dim and go out rather than just
blow the light bulb. Once it cooled down, it would come back on.
That is a warning sign.

The investigator said he personally wouldn't have any type of plug
in fragrance device anywhere in his house. He has seen too many
burned downhomes.

Thought I would warn you all. I had several of them plugged in my
house. I immediately took them all down.

 

[Simply In The Red]

from Snopes.com

Origins: In Early 2002, manufacturer SC Johnson invoked a voluntary recall of their Glade brand 'Extra Outlet Scented Oil Air Fresheners' (a plug-in air freshener which included its own outlet so that consumers wouldn't have to give up an outlet space to use it) because they had found a loose connection inside the extra outlet that might pose a fire hazard. There had been no actual reports of fires property damage associated with the product prior to its recall, however:




In October 1994, Johnson recalled five million Glade plug-in fresheners sold between 1992 and July 1994 as a "precaution" after receving 600 complaints, including "12 allegations about the fresheners being involved in fires."

In 2002, WABC-TV reporter Tappy Phillips covered a story about a possible connection between plug-in air fresheners and home fires, but nothing conclusive was determined. Phillips said the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC) showed them "scores of reports from consumers, chronicling fire hazards associated with plug-in air fresheners from various manufacturers," but the CSPC also acknowledged "some fires attributed to air fresheners may be caused by faulty electrical wiring." WABC looked at two instances where air fresheners were suspected in house fires, but the causes of the fires had not been definitively established. (Both cases involved not Glade brand products, but Wallflower, a plug-in air freshener manufactured by the White Barn Candle Company.)

We haven't found a conclusive study establishing that plug-in air fresheners pose a significantly higher fire hazard than other electrical devices. Although fire officials will often recommend that consumers not use plug-in air fresheners, it could be the case that air fresheners are mistakenly being blamed for fires started by other causes (such as faulty wiring), just as cell phones are often falsely cited as the cause of gas station fires attributable to other causes (usually static electricity).

A representative for SC Johnson told us that they were aware of the e-mail being circulated about Glade Plug-ins, that they have had Glade plug-ins tested by the Underwriter's Laboratory (UL) and by independent laboratories, and that testing has not found Glade Plug-ins to pose any abnormally heightened fire danger. She also told us they had contacted the fire engineer whose name appears in one version of the message quoted above, and that he acknowledged he had seen no evidence that a plug-in air freshener was the cause of the fire cited.

 

[Agent 0659]

Dam thanks Chops, Im unplugging mine now.