E-Cigarettes Safe? Watch This Guy Get Victimized By Exploding One

An e-cigarette explodes violently in
this guy's jacket pocket, in an image from a security camera.

We've all heard of the new Samsung phones bursting into flames, but it turns out e-cigarettes are just as dangerous.

According to Slate, a French nightclub owner was badly hurt when his e-cigarettes blew up in his jacket pocket. Dramatic surveillance video of the incident is at the bottom of this post.  

Amine Britel was outside his nightclub last week in Toulouse, France

Says Slate:

"'All of a sudden I heard a loud band and a noise like a flare had gone off, only ten times louder. After the shock of the explosion, I realized that I had caught fire,' Britel said, according to Ubergizmo. 'I did not really understand what was happening to me. The pain only came afterwards.'"

Britel was hospitalized with severe burns and his fingers melted to his jacket. He plans to sue the Chinese manufacturer of the e-cigarette batteries.

E-cigarette batteries have caused all kinds of mayhem, it turns out.

According to Wired, a Colorado man broke his neck, lost some teeth and had burns and facial fractures when his e-cigarette blew up. Teenagers in California and Tennesee were badly injured by exploding vaping devices.

The e-cigarettes are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which are in many, many gadgets, including the laptop on which I'm writing this.

However, most computer and mobile phone manufacturers have exacting standards for batteries, notes Wired, but not all less sophisticated devices like vaping things are so carefully built.

Plus, some people are altering their e-cigarettes, which makes them more dangerous.

Smoking regular cigarettes is known to be very dangerous. Vaping is dangerous too, for some of the same reasons, and as it turns out, because a few explode. Explosions are dangerous, as the Frenh nightclub owner found out in the video, below.