A man has died tragically after his vape pen exploded and set him alight.
Tallmadge D’Elia from Florida, US, is reportedly the first person killed by an electronic cigarette, Metro News reports.
Firefighters found the 38-year-old’s burnt body in his bedroom after his neighbour saw flames coming out of his home in St Petersburg.
“I saw the smoke coming out of the roof and we were hoping that nobody was home, but then we found out that he was home,” the unidentified neighbour said.
According to New York Post, the former TV producer suffered 80 percent burns on his body and also sustained skull injuries, after a fragment of the device penetrated his skull and became lodged in his brain.
“It can explode and at that point it can project either the pieces of the lighter itself or the vape pen,” deputy fire marshall Steven Lawrence said.
County medical examiner Bill Pellan, who confirmed the cause of death was a “projectile wound to the head”, told Tampa Bay Times that at least two parts of the exploding vape pen were removed from Tallmadge’s head.
A spokesperson for Smoke-E Mountain Mech Works said the horrific accident wasn’t his company’s fault, adding that the battery or atomiser might have caused it.
More than 195 of e-cigarette fires and explosions were reported from 2009 to 2016 in America, according to a US fire authorities report.
“No other consumer product places a battery with a known explosion hazard such as this in such close proximity to the human body,” the report stated.
“It is this intimate contact between the body and the battery that’s mostly responsible for the severity of the injuries that have been seen.
“While the failure rate of the lithium-ion batteries is very small, the consequences of a failure, as we’ve seen, can be severe and life-altering for the consumer.”
Sources: metro.co.uk, wtsp.com, nypost.com, nytimes.com