WASHINGTON — Safety advocates have warned for more than a decade that someday an air shipment of lithium batteries like those used in cameras, cellphones and countless other products would catch fire, causing a plane to crash and people to die.
That day may have arrived last month.
A United Parcel Service cargo plane with a fire raging on board, and carrying a large quantity of lithium batteries, crashed near Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on Sept. 3, killing both pilots. The cause of the accident isn’t likely to be determined for months, but investigators suspect the batteries were either the source of the fire or contributed to its severity. The Federal Aviation Administration was concerned enough by the accident to warn air carriers about risks posed by lithium battery shipments.
The accident has given new urgency to a high-stakes lobbying struggle underway in Washington. Pilot unions and safety advocates are urging the government to treat air shipments of lithium batteries as hazardous materials. But rules proposed by the Obama administration are opposed by many of the nation’s top retailers, electronics manufacturers, battery makers and cargo airlines, including UPS.
They say the rules would cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in added packaging, paperwork and training for employees. The rechargeable-battery industry alone says the rules would cost more than $1 billion in the first year.
The makers of medical devices say the rules might mean delays in getting equipment to patients, and one electronics lobbyist even portrayed the proposal as a holiday Grinch that could drive up the cost of gift shipments.
“The cost of expedited delivery to stores could become prohibitive and could ruin a lot of Christmases for children,” Christopher McLean, executive director of a retailers coalition that includes Amazon, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Target and Wal-Mart, told Transportation Department officials at a meeting earlier this year, though that’s unlikely this Christmas.
Industry lobbyists say the government already has enough rules to ensure safe battery shipments; they say the problem is that a relative few shippers aren’t following current packaging requirements. They recommend stronger enforcement. Indeed, many of the more than 40 documented incidents of lithium battery fires in flight or at airports involved improperly packaged or handled batteries.
A bill that would prod the Transportation Department to move faster on new rules is opposed by industry supporters in Congress.
Pilots and safety advocates say the industry opposition is typical of the hurdles they face when trying to get government regulators to take action to prevent a tragedy even when there is clear evidence of danger.
Unlike other kinds of batteries, some lithium batteries contain metal that will spontaneously ignite if exposed to air. Also, the positive and negative poles in some lithium batteries are close together, leading more easily to short circuiting, which can cause a fire.
Lithium batteries come in two types: lithium metal, which are nonrechargeable and are used in products like watches and cameras, and lithium-ion, which are rechargeable and are used for products like laptop computers, cellphones and power tools.
