Off The Record
Don’t Sleep With Your Phone! NYPD Tweets Pics Warn About Dangers Of Charging Your Cell In Bed
The New York Police Department issued a warning on social media, displaying burning bedspreads, to discourage people from sleeping with their phones nestled beneath their pillows.
Four images of pillows with holes burned in them were posted by police after the cell phone beneath them overheated and caught fire.
Fire chiefs have issued earlier advisories stating that placing a charging phone between a mattress and a pillow can lead to battery overheating, which could result in an explosion or fire. The cell phone was left on the bed, according to Hamden, Connecticut, fire chief David Berardesca, who spoke with NBC. “These devices need areas to be ventilated.”
“It is recommended that you leave these type of devices on a hard surface so the heat can dissipate. The batteries heat up, they could melt – in some cases, explode – and cause a fire.”
He was speaking following the evacuation of a 15-year-old’s home at around 4am after his bed caught fire due to a charging cell phone.
Ariel Tolfree, a 13-year-old from Texas, was similarly lucky to escape severe burns when her Samsung S4 phone caught fire from under her pillow while it was charging.
Thomas, Tolfree’s father, stated that the phone was probably slid beneath the pillow before it overheated in 2014 as it was charging by her bed.
Don't put your cellphone under a pillow when sleeping or when charging your device.Please share this tip and b safe! pic.twitter.com/uwD3PXgVQf
— NYPD 33rd Precinct (@NYPD33Pct) February 16, 2016
“The whole phone melted,” he said to Fox 4. “The plastic, the glass. You can’t even really tell that it was a phone.”
The NYPD posted four photographs, one of which included Tolfree’s bedspread. A spokesperson said the tweet was a general safety alert rather than being particular to any one event.
Two of the photos, at least, seemed to be from the UK; father Dwayne Blanchard of Leicester shared one of them in November of last year.
Blanchard related how his son Brandon had left a cell phone beneath his pillow, waking him up with a smoke alarm and finding his bed on fire.
In a another instance, Kent resident Holly Hewett, 25, woke up to discover her Samsung phone had started to sizzle while she was asleep.
The gadget started sparking as soon as she picked it up, and the battery grew larger and melted through the plastic back cover when she was removing it from her bedroom, according to the Kent Messenger.
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