>You do realize that there was a quite real chance of someone seeing the OP's autopsy here?
That's an overstatement. The batteries in this thing are the most dangerous part, and yet they are too small to explode with a force that could cause an immediate fatality, i.e neither the explosion itself nor the shrapnel it could generate from the casing or the other components in the headphone are powerful enough. The risk here is burns, and maybe toxic exposure. And while burns can be rather bad (especially since it's Lithium), of course, also depending on how much flammable "stuff" you have on your head (hair, hat, headscarf, etc), burns are not the same thing as death.
The risk of a fatality is extremely low. The risk of lasting scars and disfigurement, deafness (on the battery side at least) and even blindness has a somewhat higher chance.
Then again, just look at the picture in the article. You can see how little damage is there to the actual "fragile" head phones plastic casing. Mostly intact. It wasn't a major explosion, it wasn't a major fire, and there probably wasn't any shrapnel whatsoever.
>>That sort of paranoia doesn't help
>I guess you don't.
This was clearly referring to the "toxic fumes" bit. And it is a fair thing to say, in my humble opinion. The fumes from the battery and plastic certainly aren't great, but unless you deliberately stay there and huff them without opening a window, your exposure will be rather minute, especially considering how small this event had to be. Indeed, what you inhale at a barbeque or just from burning food, or staying at the outside of a gas station for too long will be worse.
The "chemical burns" claim in the article is just confusing to me. I'd get it if the claim was that only the hands had a burning sensation like that, but the arms too but nothing besides that? Such a thing is either caused by direct contact (so hands only) or from fumes/spraying (which would mean exposed areas like the face should be affected as well). The way the story represents it makes me think it might be a psychosomatic effect only, but not necessarily of course. There is a "sweet spot" where these things might have sprayed particles only in a very limited area where hands and arms were affected but other exposed skin was too far away, but that sounds unlikely to me at least...
Regardless, nobody should expect these things to blow up, and it's fair to complain when they do. If it was a singular/very rare incident, fine, really bad luck. If there are a number of reports like this, this could indicate a systemic engineering or manufacturing problem.