I suggest you try googling “lithium battery explosion”. You may then want to modify your last comment.

Personally I have had a rechargeable camera battery overheat whilst in use. Not an explosion, but we know that problems do exist and that explosions do occur. Given the temperature these things create when they do go off it is wise to be concerned. How concerned is another matter and one for the experts. Also look at youtube to see how easy it is to get one of these things to explode.

I have to agree with the FAA on this one. It has always amazed me that lithium batteries and 12″ steel knitting needles get past security but nail clippers and small bottles of mouth wash do not. Just browse for videos on-line about what a laptop battery can do to the inside of a pickup truck.

I think some reactions here are wrong. The blurb says “lithium” which was a problem battery type for aircraft emergency beacons in the past. This is not the type of rechargeable battery ordinarily used in cameras, which is “lithium-ion”. Lithium cells are not rechargeable and only recently have become available in AA sizes with voltage suitable to replace alkaline AAs. They are longer-lived, both on shelf and in use, than any other type of AA cell, so are attractive for a disposable cell, but they’re not lithium-ions as used in computers and cameras, etc.

Vic and Dan, the ruling is against not in use loose batteries. The examples you both state are ones in which the batteries reacted while being used. The ruling actually allows these types of batteries, as my laptop battery in my laptop is allowed, but a laptop battery protected from metals is limited. The safe battery is the one not being used, and THAT is what the FAA is limiting. If they really want to “save” us from batteries, then they should be banning the “unsafe” uses of them, which they are not going to do, because how can they charge for in flight wifi when there are no devices to use it allowed on the planes??

Don, do you think the average TSA worker is technically apt enough to make this distinction? I’m afraid not.

I read also the previous article (December 2007), and I was wandering what really means 2g or 8g lithium equivalent…

For me it means nothing, I do not know how much lithium equivalent is in one battery. It could be from 0.001g to about 25g for each AA cell equivalent…

Up to the moment we will have proper labels on products (like this Li-Ion laptop battery or this AA cell contain 0.33g lithium - hence for 2g you should have ~6 batteries), you have no reference…

The problem is when you have a huge pack (like presented in Full Press Release), but you have none info about the lithium content. Maybe the custom port officer will retain it, in plastic bag or not…