HEALTH AND SAFETY INFORMATION BULLETIN

No.9, February 2013

Hazardous Mobile Phone Chargers / Accessories

Incident Details:

An incident has been brought to our attention,via one of our partner organisations, whereby an employee plugged his personal Apple iPhone and power adaptor / charging device into a 4 way extension lead. After a short while of charging there was a loud bang. They looked down and the 3-pin plug on the adaptor/charger had exploded.

The base of the plug had melted into the extension lead, and the top of the plug complete with USB connection lead had become separated altogether.

As a result of this incident some of the electrics had tripped out in the office. The employee immediately unplugged the extension from the mains and informed his manager who asked for an electrical engineer to check and restore power to the office.

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Lessons learnt:

Key Findings:

This iPhone adaptor/charger was bought from the internet for around £3 or £4, so it is not likely to be a genuine Apple iPhone USB power adaptor. Upon inspection of the Apple web site, the genuine USB power chargers are on sale for £15, but can be bought elsewhere on the internet for a lot less. While checking the reviews, a similar incident was described – obviouslythis has happened before and will happen again.

This could easily happen in the home; iPhones are very popular especially with young children / teenagers and cheap imitations are very tempting when bought over the internet from reputable sites.

Preventive measures to be taken:

Only genuine manufacturer’s mobile phone chargers should be used.If you are unsure of the authenticity of any mobile phone equipment or accessories, please consult the manufacturer.

This could also occur in the home so you are advised to only use manufacturer’s approved equipment particularly as these mobile devices are use widely by children / teenagers.

If you have any queries on this or any other health and safety matters please feel free to contact a member of the team using the contact details below.

Health, Safety & Wellbeing Team

Level 2 Civic Centre

Hartlepool TS24 8AY

Tel: 01429 523551

Fax: 01429 523198

E-mail: H&

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