plug-in air fresheners

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james wuebker

Senior Member
Location
Iowa
Re: plug-in air fresheners

Here is one article I found and several more if you what to search for them. I point I'm making is that they do cause fires.
Jim
Subject: Fwd: FW: Fire Hazard ?... - Plug in air fresheners

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 down homes.



didn't
 
B

bthielen

Guest
Re: plug-in air fresheners

Don't mean to be picky but how does the fact that the air freshner has been completely destroyed accept for the prongs in the receptacle prove that the air freshner was the cause? My guess is that no matter where the fire started, if the house was destroyed as indicated, the same thing would happen to the air freshner.

It sounds to me that this investigator only found something to blame because he had nothing else to go on.

I'm not saying the air freshner could not have caused it but I don't see how the evidence is very clear cut.

Bob
 

apauling

Senior Member
Re: plug-in air fresheners

I agree with Bob, no way to get to proof. The fact that the air freshener was not there was part of a lot of other stuff that wasn't there. he just needed something to pin it on. This is relatively benign. He could have asked where all the candles are and accused the homeowner of starting the fire.

But articles like this aren't proof of anything except that some fire investigators will blame them for the fire without proof. If that was an investigation, we are paying too much for insurance. They can just fire all the BS middle people and pay the claims; probably would be a wash.
 

jimwalker

Senior Member
Location
TAMPA FLORIDA
Re: plug-in air fresheners

I still question his 25 % figure.But then if he automatically blames fires just because it had an air freshner he might reach that number.I am sure that hair blower was burned up too.How can we be sure it didn't cause the fire ?I would say based on her staement of it having problems that in this case it may very well been the cause.Now do we blame the device or the owner for not being smart enough to remove it in the early stages ? I have made many many calls to fire jobs and often did not believe what the report said.It was the second day of demo that i found the real cause on 1 house.The real cause was blown in insulation over non ic cans.Up by the scuttle hole was the sticker dating the extra insulation a few months prior.
 

realolman

Senior Member
Re: plug-in air fresheners

By that logic it was something that completely evaporated, which my second cousin's wife says has caused 37 percent of all fires, but a trace of which has never been found, so no one knows what it is. ;)
 

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
Re: plug-in air fresheners

IMO it would be imposable for one product to cause 25% or even 5% of all home fires and escape scrutiny from the CPSC or the NFPA.
 

jimwalker

Senior Member
Location
TAMPA FLORIDA
Re: plug-in air fresheners

The 25 % figure makes me question anything that man says.Now if he came up with a solid backable number like 2 or 3 % i might believe him.25% of all homes don't even have them and if they did then i guess they ALL burned down. :roll:
 

james wuebker

Senior Member
Location
Iowa
Re: plug-in air fresheners

Mr. jimwalker, If you did read all of this thread I wrote earlier that after thinking about it I really didn't agree with the 25%. As a Master Electrician I just wanted to see what kind of input I could get out of everyone. It's a good learning experiment which I can use.
Jim
 

hbiss

EC, Westchester, New York NEC: 2014
Location
Hawthorne, New York NEC: 2014
Occupation
EC
Re: plug-in air fresheners

iwire, We're electrician's and I believe fire fighters know a little more about this than we do...

Well, we are electricians and I think we know a little bit more about this than firefighters do.

Read the post above. I too agree that anytime the cause of a fire isn't crystal clear it's always blamed on an electrical problem.

-Hal
 

rattus

Senior Member
Re: plug-in air fresheners

I received an email message which concluded that the air freshener caused the fire because all that was left of it was the two prongs! Of course the plastic would burn away whatever the cause! I also find it hard to believe that a 7W lamp, which I can hold with my bare fingers, would start a fire.

Now it is conceivable that high current passing through the unit might start a fire. Then again, so might loose connections in a receptacle or any number of other malfunctions.

With due respect to the investigators, I think they are too quick to blame an electrical problem. "Must have been a short", right?
 

apauling

Senior Member
Re: plug-in air fresheners

this device also has to start the surface below the device on fire, and that takes more heat. These are usually bath counter tops, similar to kitchen counter tops. I've put extremely hot pots on my old top without a mark, go figure.

I looked in Iwires link and could not figure which category this type of fire would be in, any help with that/

paul
 

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
Re: plug-in air fresheners

Originally posted by apauling:
I looked in Iwires link and could not figure which category this type of fire would be in, any help with that/

paul
I could not really figure that out either.

The first category on the list that I think it may be covered in is Appliance, tool, or air conditioning at 5.7%. But that is all those items combined.
 

Matt Harp

Member
Re: plug-in air fresheners

I do a lot of fire loss restoration. I have seen for myself the frequency of mis-identifying the cause of a fire.
The best one was an appt. fire that was blamed on an electric stove. I looked at the stove when I got there. It was an old gas stove that didn't even have electric controls. No clock, no nothing. As it turns out, the tenant was using the oven to heat the place while the maintainence guy was working on the gas line that fed the furnace. You can guess the rest of the story. Miracle was that noone was hurt in the flash and fire that followed.
 

LawnGuyLandSparky

Senior Member
Re: plug-in air fresheners

Originally posted by haskindm:
Fire investigators are sometimes very quick to put blame. I was personally involved in a case where the insurance investigator determined that a fire had been caused by a "defective baseboard heater" which my company had installed. Fortunately the fire Marshall did his own investigation and determined that the fire was caused by the homeowner installing paneling using 10-penny nails that had pierced the wiring in several locations. Since then, I am very sceptical of reports of electrical fires. It seems that unless there is a gas can and book of matches discovered on the scene, all fires are electrical. It is usually assumed by the public that some electrician messed up.
You'd be suprised at the type of human being that is most commonly attracted to firefighting.
 

jimwalker

Senior Member
Location
TAMPA FLORIDA
Re: plug-in air fresheners

"You'd be suprised at the type of human being that is most commonly attracted to firefighting. "
I wouldnt be.Some are in both buisnesses,setting and putting out
 
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