back to article Bezos battery-box bomb beef brouhaha begins as UK watchdog hauls Amazon to court

The court date for a legal showdown between Amazon and the UK's Civil Aviation Authority has been set, with the parties to fight it out over allegations that Amazon broke safety rules in transporting lithium ion batteries. The CAA claims Amazon flouted rules for shipping lithium-ion batteries, which are potentially highly …

  1. Elmer Phud

    I doubt if Amazon will find this taxing.

  2. GlenP Silver badge

    Coincidentally...

    Just had a load of WEEE collected which included some laptops. It so happened that one of the batteries was separate, he couldn't take it that way (wrong paperwork) but could if it's attached to the laptop.

    Still needed a hazardous waste note for the monitors though (lead phosphor).

    Can't really figure why it needs a hazardous waste note for the minimal amount of material in a monitor or for a Li-Ion battery on its own but not for a battery that's attached to a laptop.

    1. Jim Mitchell

      Re: Coincidentally...

      Lithium ion batteries in their device are safer than those that are loose, as the terminals are not going to get shorted accidentally.

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Coincidentally...

      >Can't really figure why it needs a hazardous waste note for the minimal amount of material in a monitor

      Traditional CRT monitors are considered hazardous waste whilst the tube is intact, once the tube is broken they are uprated to biohazardous waste, due to the compounds contained within the display tube now being open to the environment. Hence a big mistake many make is putting old CRT's (and TV's) in a skip, little realising that in so doing they are converting the entire skip's contents to biohazardous waste (a CRT is unlikely to remain intact once placed in a skip). Any on the ball skip company will promptly demand a premium for taking said waste away...

      Because of this and the ramifications of not disposing of CRT's correctly (£££ in fines) WEEE companies will be more careful and tend to charge a fee for the safe disposal of CRT's, whereas they are likely to take IT kit away for free.

      Just be sure to put on file the certificates from the WEEE contractor, so that you can produce them if anything happens and an inspector comes calling.

      1. jabuzz

        Re: Coincidentally...

        A CRT will never be bio-hazardous waste. That is a term reserved for biological based material that is potentially hazardous, think hospital waste or material from bioscience laboratories.

        On the other hand a CRT is full of heavy metals (lead in particular) and is therefore hazardous waste. That said the recovery of the lead from a CRT makes it a roughly cost neutral process, aka the value of the recovered lead is about the same as the cost of recovery.

        Note that putting any electronic waste into general landfill has been illegal in the UK for quite a few years now.

  3. MacGyver

    Not being able to ship electonic devices conitaining batteries is a joke in 2015.

    There is a BIG difference between a pallet of LIon cells, and Johnny's new Iphone.

    Flip the problem around, it's not really the battery with the problem, it's all the air around it. Just make vacuum sealed containers for shipping scary items. Or pressurize the cargo holds with some inert gas. Lithium can't react violently with oxygen when there is no oxygen. The alternative is shipping the electronic items that make the modern world work via ship and that's nuts.

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: Not being able to ship electonic devices conitaining batteries is a joke in 2015.

      @MacGyver - Pressurise the cargo hold with an inert gas...

      There is often live cargo in the hold, so this might not be a great plan...

    2. dcluley

      Re: Not being able to ship electonic devices conitaining batteries is a joke in 2015.

      Why is it nuts to ship them via ...errr... ship? If the documentary I was watching the other day got its figures right the item shipping cost of moving goods from China to here are less than the costs of delivering to me from the local shop. And batteries are not exactly urgent perishable items with a short sell-by date.

      1. John Tserkezis

        Re: Not being able to ship electonic devices conitaining batteries is a joke in 2015.

        "Why is it nuts to ship them via ...errr... ship"

        Because it's ...errr... slower.

    3. Mage Silver badge

      Re: Oxygen

      Lithium packs / cells, even the single use coin type can explode/burn without extra air, to an extent. It's stored chemical energy. It's like claiming explosives need air. They don't, or they would be very slow an pretty useless.

    4. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: Not being able to ship electonic devices conitaining batteries is a joke in 2015.

      It is not the violent reaction of Li with O2 which is the issue. It is the violent reaction inside the battery (which accelerates as heat is emitted during that) is the problem. While the most common scenario is a short, it can go nuts even when not shorted if it has been subjected to rapid pressure and temperature changes (which is what happens in a cargo hold).

      The only thing inert gas will help with is to prevent the fire from spreading. In that function it is as effective as the fire suppression system in the hold which most modern aircraft have anyway.

    5. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Not being able to ship electonic devices conitaining batteries is a joke in 2015.

      " Lithium can't react violently with oxygen when there is no oxygen."

      Lithium doesn't need oxygen. There's enough to react with inside the battery case to allow it to catch fire. Once burning it will quite happily use atmospheric nitrogen as the oxidiser. It's not quite as energetic as Magnesium, but it's close.

  4. Commswonk

    Actually it's worse than that...

    Tried to send a parcel containing a battery by Royal Mail recently? They're verboten. Completely. A few years ago I had some old but still useful electronic items "donated" to me on the proviso that I didn't try to make money by selling them; that really would have been naughty. As it happened I had several contacts who were interested and I was able to post them off, complete with batteries, with no problem other than the eye - watering cost.

    I simply couldn't do it now; batteries are forbidden. It seems that Royal Mail now work to ICAO Regulations, and may even have enhanced them to boot. If my reading is correct batteries (not Li-ion, perhaps) are permissible in their original packaging but not otherwise; RM don't seem to allow batteries at all. I haven't checked but this ban seems to have been introduced around the time that a large chunk of Her Maj's Mails were sold off, but that might just be conicidence.

    If I was still at work this would have been a real headache; we used to send out replacement batteries for portable radio equipment to whichever bit of our organisation (spread across the UK) needed them, and I used to insist that dead ones were returned to prevent them remaining in service and continuing to cause problems. I simply couldn't do it now. Thinking about it I suspect that I wouldn't be able to send out new batteries in the first place.

    Doubtless this restriction could cause problems with people posting Christmas presents for children where batteries are involved; the senders might not even know there are batteries enclosed.

    Now if I am sending a parcel and get the evil eye from the other side of the counter asking what it contains I am sooo tempted to say "soiled underwear" but unfortunately I think that's banned as well, because it would be classed as a biohazard. Quite how small stool samples posted as part of the bowel cancer screening programme are allowed escapes me.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Actually it's worse than that...

      "RM don't seem to allow batteries at all."

      That is not what their website says and not what I have experienced.

      You can send new non-wet batteries by post subject to some restrictions (and you shouldn't be sending wet lead acid batteries anyway).

      You can send phones, laptops etc. which contain batteries up to a maximum of 100WH.

      Bizarrely, you can send a lithium battery "with" an electronic device, so presumably if you want to send a spare phone battery you had better send a micro-SD card with it (!)

      The rules are different and less restrictive for businesses.

      The main oddity is that you are not allowed to send used zinc-air batteries (which are usually tiny and metal cased.) You appear to be able to send mercury and silver oxide batteries without restriction.

      Link

      Also, do not send ice by post.

      You are also only allowed to send stuff made in foreign prisons if it is not made in the UK, which is really not much of an ethical commitment.

      1. Commswonk

        Re: Actually it's worse than that...

        I stand (slightly) corrected. The problem I would have encountered on the domestic front would still apply on the grounds that the batteries involved had been used. Given that when the parcels in question were sent I was never asked what was in them I have to assume that the published restriction is a more recent embuggerance.

        The "work" problem would still have arisen. I would still be able to issue new NiCd / NiMH battereis in their original packaging* (had they still been in use, which they aren't!) but I would not have been able to get the defective ones returned. I would not have been able to send out replacement Li-ion batteries other than in equipment, which would not have been appropriate for a number of reasons.

        It seems that retirement has more to commend it than was immediately obvious at the time.

        * Which in some cases consisted of no more than a turn or two of bubble - wrap.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Actually it's worse than that...

        Bizarrely, you can send a lithium battery "with" an electronic device, so presumably if you want to send a spare phone battery you had better send a micro-SD card with it

        No problem, send the pack with its cell balancer. That's good for a few op-amps and comparators, thus should count as "electronic".

        The "work" problem would still have arisen. I would still be able to issue new NiCd / NiMH battereis in their original packaging* (had they still been in use, which they aren't!) but I would not have been able to get the defective ones returned.

        How does a postal worker tell the difference between a new battery and an old one? Make sure the old one looks like a new one, then send it in the new battery's packaging.

        1. Commswonk

          Re: Actually it's worse than that...

          What strikes me as odd is that I have been able to order spare Lithium ion laptop batteries (for domestic use) without any difficulty; they were both delivered by courier. I wonder if Royal Mail has put itself at a competitive disadvantage by having a rather prescriptive list of banned items. I can understand a strict banned list for carriage by aircraft, but ordinary mail..?

          How does a postal worker tell the difference between a new battery and an old one?

          The ladies in the local sub post office may not strictly be postal workers but I can feel the "death stare" reaching the inner parts of my soul. On a more general level I am not personally in favour of wilfully breaching regulations even if they may seem silly and be a personal inconvenience. I may be in a minority of one, though.

      3. Peter Higgins 1

        Re: Actually it's worse than that...

        AFAIK

        there are no foreign prisons in the UK so EVERYTHING made in a foreign prison is NOT MADE in the UK

  5. Your alien overlord - fear me

    Yep, it grounded my revolutionary electric scram jet because it runs on Lithium Ion batteries. Oh well, let's hope all that AvGas doesn't heat up the atmosphere and kill all life on the planet.

    1. Commswonk

      Avgas?

      JetA1 / Avtur please! I know there are a few piston engined aircraft around but I suspect their contribution to global warming is fairly modest.

  6. gon

    lithium in the avionics bay, in the passenger areas and the cockpit but not in the hold then...

    well lets look at the Dreamliner then....lithium batteries in the avionics bay, lithium batteries in the passenger areas in laptops pads and phones, lithium batteries in the cockpit with the pilots phones and the flight pads , but it seems that there is a problem carrying some watch batteries in a padded envelope in the hold.???? completely mad..!!!!

    1. MD Rackham

      Re: lithium in the avionics bay, in the passenger areas and the cockpit but not in the hold then...

      If there's a fire in the cockpit or passenger compartment, someone will notice far sooner than a fire in the cargo hold. Plus there's a huge difference between the individual batteries used/stored there and a pallet of batteries in cargo.

      A flaming iPhone may badly burn an individual passenger, but doesn't threaten the aircraft. In the hold an ignited pallet of batteries is likely to compromise the airframe. A bad day indeed. The "fireproof" cargo containers and fire suppression systems cannot deal with a large lithium fire as they were designed for more conventional fires.

      The avionics bay is a bit of a special case as they have more monitoring/alarms and are designed to contain/vent a fire.

      1. Martin an gof Silver badge

        Re: lithium in the avionics bay, in the passenger areas and the cockpit but not in the hold then...

        If there's a fire in the cockpit or passenger compartment, someone will notice far sooner than a fire in the cargo hold...

        The avionics bay is a bit of a special case as they have more monitoring/alarms and are designed to contain/vent a fire.

        The fire aboard Ethiopian Airlines B787 ET-AOP was caused by shorting of a Lithium battery pack in the Emergency Locator Transmitter which is stashed behind a panel above the cabin ceiling. As it happened, the 'plane was parked and unoccupied but had it been in flight, there was no warning system and no fire-suppression system. It would have been difficult to locate the source of a burning smell and if the source was located fighting the fire would have meant removing ceiling panels and standing on seats (this is all in the AAIB report).

        The fire was so hot that the Carbon-fibre material from which the aircraft is constructed was damaged enough to make the cabin structurally unsound ("unable to sustain normal flight loads") - the glue, effectively, caught fire. The report contains the small crumb of comfort that, had the 'plane been in flight, much of the damaging heat would have been taken away and the cabin might have held together, though it would probably have decompressed.

        The report - though long - makes fascinating reading, particularly for the forensic methods used and for the detail about how Lithium batteries are constructed and what their dangers are. It is available on the AAIB website.

        M.

    2. jonathanb Silver badge

      Re: lithium in the avionics bay, in the passenger areas and the cockpit but not in the hold then...

      Last time I was on a plane, you had to carry batteries in hand luggage. This is because if it catches fire in the cabin, the crew will be able to deal with it, but not if it is in the hold.

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