Why your laptop battery will not kill you

NEW YORK (AP) — News today that major U.S. airlines are no longer going to ship powerful lithium-ion batteries might lead some to fret about the safety of their personal electronic devices.

Those people can relax.

A kitchen grease fire or drunken driver is more likely to harm you than the battery powering your laptop, iPhone or Kindle.

The concern for airlines is that many of these batteries — more than you would ever have in your home — are tightly packed together when shipped. How many? More than 5,000 in a single container. If there were to be a fire, the fear is that it would quickly spread in a chain reaction and could incapacitate a plane faster than the pilots could safely land it.

That packing density is an issue for trucks and trains as well, but they aren't 35,000 feet up in the sky. Also, both of those modes of transport ship much more dangerous items: gasoline, tanks of oxygen and hydrogen, hazardous chemicals like sulfuric acid and even nuclear waste.