Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/11/recall-issued-for-candles-due-to-fire-risk.html
…
2 Likes
Reminds me of my favorite food label for peanut butter…Ingredients: Peanuts. Warning: Contains Peanuts. 
22 Likes
In retrospect, Baby’s First Demon Summoning Candle Set™ was flawed in concept from the beginning.
I wonder if this also has something to do with intentionally mis-catagrozing imports to avoid tariffs. And then getting burned (pun intended) by extra safety regs.
10 Likes
Or - trim the wick?
14 Likes
What would the candle be miss-categorized as?
My uneducated guess is that they spec’ed the wax pour, jar, and wick to work together, a cheaper alternative to one of them was found (if the original spec was 2 oz of both waxes into a 6 oz candle jar; but a differently shaped but still suitable jar that didn’t leave enough head space, or a wider wick) that cost less. The new met the paper specs but didn’t hit the product specs. The company doing the pour may not have noticed, and it doesn’t look unsafe.
2 Likes
There was a major issue in a few cities with those saint candles in a few years back. The issue was apparently a combination of the quality of glass and the size and shape of the candle. Because they’re tall and narrow, there’s often a lot of empty glass above the flame where the heat is most intense. If the glass isn’t heat safe (like the thick, tempered soda lime glass we use for cookware and canning) it can shatter from thermal shock after a couple of cycles. Because the jar both catches wax, and spreads heat to all of the wax, melting it. That means you basically got an exploding jar of flammable wax next to an open flame.
A couple buildings in the neighborhood I was living in at the time burnt down due to this. Popular press and innernets blamed Orisha, Santeria and other “occult” shops, since such candles have a lot of ritual use there. Even though they’re just as commonly sold at Christian Bookstores and Catholic Churches. Ultimately the problem candles were traced to:
Dollar Tree and other dollar stores. Nobody mis-specced anything here. Those venues sell cheap candles made in the sketchy, counterfeit end of Chinese manufacturing. Nobody checked to see if a new or different jar matched the specification, cause there is no specification. Candles from such places are known fire hazards. I once bought a candle in one of those places only to find it was made of soap instead of wax.
11 Likes
“What do I look like, a Mohel?”
10 Likes
6 Likes
Yeah, this is no joke. This is just the kind of candle many people leave burning unattended for a while, because glass don’t burn, right, so what could happen? But the glass doesn’t just crack, it will split open.
Which doesn’t do much as such - but more likely than not, there’ll be a spill of molten wax with the still burning wick merrily floating on top of it, and that can set the tablecloth on fire, or decorations (like the ever polular so-dry-they-will-flare-up-like-a-match-head fir tree branches), or any other flammable stuff lying about.
If you don’t deal with that right now you’ve got a problem and gather valuable data on the local fire brigade’s response time.
Had that happen once, thankfully while sitting right next to it, so no biggie. Might just as well have happened while I was somewhere else in the house and then, who knows.
10 Likes
I can’t leave this unattended, or I’ll never beat my best time.
9 Likes
There are two practical solutions to this problem:
- put the candle on something non-flammable (like a metal pan, plate or trivet)
- NEVER LEAVE OPEN FLAMES UNATTENDED.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
