Exploding Cell Phone Kills South Korean Man

[sce56]

Police want to know why a 33-year-old quarry worker was found with broken bones, heart damage, and a melted cell phone in his left chest pocket.

By K.C. Jones
InformationWeek
November 28, 2007 04:22 PM


South Korean authorities are investigating whether an exploding cell phone battery killed a quarry worker at a job site.
The Korea Times reported Wednesday that co-workers found a 33-year-old colleague, identified only by a surname, dead next to an excavator, outside of Seoul Wednesday morning.

Police and doctors told the newspaper that the man was found dead with a melted cell phone in his left chest pocket. The man had suffered burns on his chest, fractured ribs and spine, bleeding of the lungs and a damaged heart.

The newspaper reported that the police did not release the name of the cell phone manufacturer, but an electronics company, requesting anonymity during the investigation, acknowledged that the phone was Japanese and runs on batteries from two Korean companies. The Associated Press reported that police identified the maker as LG Electronics and said a company representative confirmed it was the maker but said it was unlikely the cell phone caused the death.

An LG representative told the BBC that the cell phone is only available in Korea and it has been tested rigorously. A company representative told the Korea Times that the lithium-ion polymer batteries are covered with foil and should melt, rather than explode, even if they receive an external shock. Doctors told the newspaper that an explosion caused the lung and heart damage, which killed the quarry worker. It's not the first time that an exploding cell phone has killed someone. Chinese media reported that a welder died in June after a cell phone exploded in his chest pocket, breaking his ribs and blasting bone fragments into his heart. The 22-year-old worker was exposed to high temperatures in a plant.

The Chinese welder's phone was a Motorola (NYSE: MOT). At the time, Motorola representatives, like their counterparts at LG, said the phone was unlikely to have caused a death.

Authorities said at the time that the cell phone battery quality may have cause the explosion and killed the man but they were not sure. They ultimately concluded that high temperatures caused the explosion.

The Korean quarry worker, who was found dead on Wednesday, had been working in cold temperatures, according to local media reports.

[jbonkowski]

1. This makes no sense

The phone was melted, undoubtedly due to a problem with the battery. There are pictures online showing the melted blob of plastic that was the phone.

And yet a medical examiner is claiming the phone fractured bones of the ribs and spine. The phone has to explode pretty hard to do this through the body, especially on the spine.

Either the phone exploded, which would break it into pieces, or it melted into one blob. It can't do both.

Now if something happened, like the guy got hit with something heavy (he does work in a quarry), that could break his bones, kill him, and damage the phone in a way that it started melting, either after he was dead or as he lay dying.

Or the phone could have started melting first, causing him to fall from a height or get hurt by heavy equipment.

I think this is a case of a company trying to cover up an industrial accident. Or at least overlooking the real cause of death.

jim

[sce56]

2. You are probaly right we were talking about it in the shop seems

like your explanation is a good one besides that I have lived in Korea I know they have no real OSHA and building codes are next to nothing! But then again the phone looks like it did blow up with no damage to the front other than the outward bulging!

[RebelOne]

3. There are doubts about this story.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The South Korean man who was believed killed in an accident involving a cell phone may not have died of an exploding phone battery, a news report said Thursday.

The quarry worker was found dead Wednesday with a melted phone battery stuck in his shirt pocket. His heart and lungs were damaged, and his spine and some ribs were broken, police had said.

The National Institute of Scientific Investigation said the body had a burn but the scope of damage to internal organs was too extensive to have been caused by a cell phone explosion, Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed official who performed an autopsy.

"It is difficult to conclude that the damage of internal organs was caused by the cell phone battery explosion," Yonhap quoted the official as saying.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/11/29/cell.phone.ap/index.html