Over 8M Thermos jars and bottles recalled after 3 people lost vision

https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/living/story/8-million-thermos-jars-bottles-recalled-after-3-132568152

by taubek • 3 months ago

114 108 3 months ago

Initially assumed it was due to some sort of contamination or production defect.

Turns out people leave perishable and fermenting foods in the thermos, and after a while when opened, the pressure lifts the lid of the thermos at quasi-unimaginable speeds, striking the curiously unsuspecting humans straight in the face, with some instances causing permanent damage to vision.

Coffee is hot, but a pressure release system is cool too..

jmalicki2• 3 months ago

I'm a little surprised it's a recall - is there some expectation that it should have pressure release? Can you not sell simpler products legally?

traceroute664• 3 months ago

is there some expectation that it should have pressure release?

Scroll down in that article to the section with photographs of "recalled" and "not recalled" lids side by side.

globular-toast3• 3 months ago

The whole point of Thermos is to keep things warm for a long time. That means pressure. It's a basic safety feature.

alentred• 3 months ago

Yes, the article seems to be not detailed enough. They show the pictures, and it is evident what the pressure release valve is, but I agree that by this logic any container or any steel water bottle is dangerous. Maybe there is some other additional feature that makes it particularly dangerous compared to other models (like, the new seal keeps higher pressure, or the lid needs fewer rotations to disengage, etc.) that is not explained here and makes all the difference. Older models didn't even have a pressure relief valve, did they?

iammjm2• 3 months ago

Isn't the point of a thermos to put "perishable and fermenting foods" in it, like coffee or tea? Like this could totally have been me, like make a thermos-full of coffee one day, then forget about it only to come back to in some weeks just to open it and have one of my eyes blown off

rimliu• 3 months ago

good luck of anything fermenting after dousing with boiling water..

triceratops3• 3 months ago

You ferment coffee? Tea I can understand if you're making kombucha, but coffee?

jofzar3• 3 months ago

I really hope we get a video out of this to see how bad it actually is and how much "pressure" is needed for this.

Incidents/Injuries: Thermos has received 27 reports of consumers who were struck by a stopper that forcefully ejected from these containers upon opening, including complaints of impact and laceration injuries requiring medical attention. Three consumers suffered permanent vision loss after being struck in the eye.

That's an awefully large amount of reports about this. I wonder what about the design makes it a rocket compared to what I would assume is a pretty standard design?

The Stainless King™ 470ml Vacuum Insulated Food Jar is the ultimate day to day companion to keep your food at optimal temperatures. Keep fruit fresh and vegetables cool for up to 14 hours while you take on the day. For your favourite soups, pastas or stir fry, they’ll stay warm for up to 9 hours – ideal for taking last nights left overs. You can be sure that your food will be perfect for consumption at lunchtime after you pack it in the morning. The wide mouth makes it easy to fill and clean, and comes crowned with a stainless steel lid that doubles as a serving bowl. Plus, it comes with a handy stainless steel spoon that fits neatly into the lid compartment.

It's meant for storing food, for anyone who is confused why someone would be.

baq2• 3 months ago

I wonder what about the design makes it a rocket compared to what I would assume is a pretty standard design?

Injuries nonwithstanding, the quality of the seal means it was an exceptionally well designed item for the purpose of storing 99% water.

side note: there's a reason you get a visit from the FBI if you buy ten pressure cookers (e.g. if you find a great Black Friday deal and have a large family and plan Christmas gifts...)

2muchcoffeeman• 3 months ago

The pressure build up can be quite a lot from fermentation. I’ve accidentally fermented drinks in glass swing top bottles. And upon attempting to open the bottle the pressure ripped the stopper and the metal parts right off the bottle at high speed.

If you were purposely fermenting something, you could build enough pressure to pop the bottle.

numpad0• 3 months ago

Thermos jars have interior threads for an inner plug and an exterior thread(singular) for the cosmetic cap that doubles as a drinking cup. Maybe there's a condition where the external cup would be holding the inner plug from releasing, and then upon removing the cap, the entire lip starts tapering outward and lets go of the plug without gradually relieving pressure.

(to be fair, I don't think an externally threaded cap will solve this problem. If the thread held to a higher pressure, then the core part of the plug will eventually blow out even more energetically. An overpressure vent port is still necessary)

thedougd• 3 months ago

I'm guessing pressure is not allowed to escape before it's on the last thread.

x______________2• 3 months ago

Found a comical video of the situation which required no intervention from the user[0].

Needless to say, storing food in a thermos as advertised is different than coffee is hot and should have been foreseen by the team who supervised the approval of "Oh we need more sales.. Oh right, let's double down on our market and tell customers to put food in their Thermoses!"

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rTQ6c-_QYW4

ButlerianJihad• 3 months ago

I own a vacuum-insulated flask that is not Thermos®. I purchased it with a one cap and immediately purchased an accessory cap.

The original cap from the store has no pressure-release mechanism, other than the breaking of the seal when unscrewing it. The cap has an integrated carrying handle, which can also help when turning the cap one way or another.

The accessory cap has a "sippy cup" feature along with a pressure-release valve. It is very common to have a second valve with any vessel that pours or dispenses liquid, even a lemonade tank, because that's how pouring works. When you remove liquid from the container, it must be replaced by a commensurate volume of air.

perarneng2• 3 months ago

Turns out people leave

I assume people forget they had food in them

EDM115• 3 months ago

it's literally written on my thermos instructions to NOT put any carbonated drinks inside for this exact reason lol

pizza234• 3 months ago

Happened to me once. I was emptying one of my child’s thermoses in the bathroom when it suddenly "exploded" and sprayed the contents all over the bathroom walls. Quite a remarkable day :)

I didn't consider it a defect, though. I can hardly imagine cheap products adopting this solution.

ludicrousdispla• 3 months ago

I would have thought they could design the screwtop so that it would relase pressure before fully disengaging the lid from the flask.

teruakohatu• 3 months ago

That is what I was wondering. I would have thought it would need to be opened at eye level for the contents to hit the eye before being depressurised.

traceroute664• 3 months ago

I too from the headline assumed it was some sort of chemical contamination during manufacturing.

But then I read the words "The malfunction is due to multiple models of containers missing a pressure relief function in the center of the stopper."

How non-existent does your quality assurance have to be in order to miss such a critical, obvious and easy to identify flaw ?

Looking at the published photographs, you don't even need training to identify that manufacturing defect. A five year old could spot the difference between "lid has a hole" and "lid does not have a hole".

_ink_• 3 months ago

I would assume that it was some cost optimization that led to the removal of the pressure relief.

fuzzfactor3• 3 months ago

OTOH I would assume that they didn't add the pressure relief until after finding out that people were getting hurt.

Seems logical to then be recalling any that are out there without the safety feature.

Aachen2• 3 months ago

I've never seen a thermos bottle with a relief valve. Not sure if all manufacturers in Europe have nonexistent QA or if it's just not a thing that's commonly needed since you can't heat the contents up in there anyway (it's not like an insulated water boiler, which does have a release valve). Never considered that someone might leave food in there long enough to build up explosive pressure. Feels a bit like saying a missing cat detector function in microwave ovens points at them having no quality control

gcr2• 3 months ago

I bet you’ve been using these your whole life without knowing it: in non-USA thermoses, the lid releases pressure before becoming mechanically free. You’d hear a “pop” and then the lid has to be twisted slightly further before it can be removed.

Not all safety features have to be obvious/obtrusive.

globular-toast3• 3 months ago

So who decided to cut costs by "simplifying" the lid design? A case of Chesterton's fence perhaps?

My partner has one of these so just checked it. It does have the pressure relief feature, but it turns out it's also missing all the seals anyway so never would have been a problem!

bilekas• 3 months ago

This is wild.. It looks like they changed their lid to be a bit cheaper ?

Looking at the version that's not recalled, I would guess it costs more to make.

jofzar3• 3 months ago

The one that's not recalled has a pressure release button

roel_v3• 3 months ago

The one without the relieve valve is nicer to use because it's (much) easier to clean. Source: I've cleaned these things pretty much every weekday for the last 2 or 3 years.

kjuulh• 3 months ago

Had this happen to me once, though totally my own fault. Was brewing kombucha, and left it out in the bottles a little too long before burping.

Me standing there, kombucha and peach slices pulverized against the cap, kombucha leaving a large mark on the ceiling it all happened so fast, glad I was wearing my glasses.

No injuries except my pride, but it did take some hours to clean up.

I wouldn't do it in a thermos, but I guess those are mostly accidents?

ErroneousBosh• 3 months ago

It was bramble beer for me. Put a load of lovely ripe brambles in a batch of homebrew beer, one of the little pithy bits on the inside wedged up against the bottom of the airlock, and overnight the pressure built up enough to pop the cork out and spray the ceiling with brambly splats and beer.

Tasted okay though.

My mate brewed his bramble beer by putting his brambles through a juicer and only adding the juice and pulp, because he's cleverer than me and has a certain amount of foresight.

_trampeltier2• 3 months ago

There is a well known solution. Look at most PET bottles. The thread (mostly on the cap) is not continuous. That's for the pressure to relieve before the cap is off, and that could happen from a coke bottle or so to you.

thomascountz• 3 months ago

   The malfunction is due to multiple models of containers missing a pressure relief function in the center of the stopper.

They have a well-known solution, but it was not implemented.

_trampeltier2• 3 months ago

You have to activate it manually?

ZpJuUuNaQ5• 3 months ago

I hate life a little bit more every time I stumble upon stories like this. Anything and everything can happen to you, suddenly, without warning, without planning, not necessarily because of any obvious fault of your own (from your perspective, at least). "Oh, you thought you already had enough problems and worries as it is? Congratulations, now you are blind in one eye, forever, because you wanted to keep your coffee warmer for a little longer."

roel_v3• 3 months ago

That sucks. I have both and the ones with the pressure relieve valve are a pain in the ass to clean. You have to pull out the rubber inner thingy, you can't get a towel inside the hole that thingy goes into, and in general the rubber thing gets lost easily. I wish Thermos would send me a few of those 8 million stoppers, I'll promise I won't be a dumbass with them :(

edwcross• 3 months ago

I promise I won't be a dumbass with them

That's not very empathic of fellow people who might just have mistakenly forgotten food in the container.

It's not like they were intentionally using this for brewing some illegal substance or misusing it in a way specifically forbidden in the manual or obviously unsafe (e.g. removing a magnetron and all of its protections from a microwave to make pretty wood carvings).

sebastiennight3• 3 months ago

removing a magnetron and all of its protections from a microwave to make pretty wood carvings

In case anybody's wondering, as I did:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/11/60/41/116041120bb6e701bd47...

If you ask me, that's how the protomolecule got out

brazzy• 3 months ago

I'll promise I won't be a dumbass with them :(

Can you also guarantee with absolute certainty that you'll never forget them anywhere another person who's unaware of the contents or the danger could find them?

cucumber3732842• 3 months ago

Can you also guarantee with absolute certainty that you'll never forget them anywhere another person who's unaware of the contents or the danger could find them?

Why does he need to do that?

We're talking about a product that lightly injured ~20 people for ~8mil units sold and seriously injured ~3.

Should be be keeping his champagne in a protective enclosure?

roel_v3• 3 months ago

If I buy a lawn mower, I don't expect anyone to guarantee with absolute certainty that there will never be a person who thinks 'hey maybe I can just stick my hand in there to unclog it' and gets their fingers chopped off. Probably a wrong analogy but I can't even be bothered to think it through, of course fermenting food causes things to explode, how is that even remotely the fault of the manufacturer? I loathe the times we live in where everything needs to be padded and cushioned because heavens forbid we start expecting people to think for a second. I mean, the valve requires a crevice where all sorts of things can grow (I've seen them, I've cleaned these things after they were left in a school bag throughout two weeks of school holidays with food in them), I'm not going to complain that it would somehow be Thermos' fault if one of my kids got sick off something getting stuck in there. At some point, there is such a thing as 'personal responsibility'.

pibaker2• 3 months ago

Forget about other people. Let anyone who hasn't ever let food expire under his own watch open the first thermos.

myself248• 3 months ago

I wonder if they track how many people are sickened by the difficult-to-clean valve, because I bet it's a lot more than 3.

Luckily I got one of the valveless models, and you bet your ass I'm keeping it. Maybe I'll stick an "open away from face" label on top or something, but I'm not about to go increasing my risk of food contamination.

dlcarrier• 3 months ago

There's not really any way to make anything containing hot pressurized foods safe from people pointing it at their face. Either you get the lid in your face or you get steam in your face. The poor hygiene the vent creates is just an added bonus.

I'd rather they slap a warning on it, like everything else that you can't safely point at your face.

nirava• 3 months ago

Any (sealed) container designed to hold hot things should have a pressure release system.

It can be seals that buckle before the lid. It can be a tiny hole with a soft rubber stopper. It can be one of many things that cost a couple of cents extra and a bit more engineering and testing effort.

The cheapest disposable coffee cups I've used have a tiny hole for the express purpose of not pressurizing and spilling hot liquid everywhere.

There's a lot of conversation in the comments about "was there was an expectation that the pressure release valve would be there" There absolutely is a safety expectation that a sealed container of hot food is designed with a pressure release system.

BTW the fermented food thing is a misdirection. The pressure release system should have released pressure way before it even reached ballistic territory.

odie5533• 3 months ago

My steam cleaner recently was recalled and sent me a new cap with a built-in pressure-locking valve. People were opening it too early and getting burns. Heat and pressure can be very dangerous.

ziml77• 3 months ago

Wow I'm amazed that they shipped it without that. That's a standard safety feature as far as I know.

deadbabe• 3 months ago

Imagine the last thing you ever see is a Thermos exploding in your face… then you still have to live the rest of your life.

harrouet• 3 months ago

Thanks god they don't do this with Champagne!

perarneng2• 3 months ago

Couldn't this affect other brands as well? I would not assume many have thought of this

dctoedt• 3 months ago

This suggests a "knife skills" automatic habit to cultivate:† Whenever opening anything, point it away from your face, or at least move your face out of the line of fire. (Champagne, soda bottles, whatever.)

† "Knife skills" automatic habits = things such as, • always cut away from yourself; • whenever holding something down with the non-knife hand to be cut, curl that hand's fingers under, so that the non-knife hand's knuckles serve as a guard for that hand's finger tips.

fuzzfactor3• 3 months ago

I would say this is a big factor for Thermos.

with Champagne the injuries are probably more numerous, but this risk is part of the expected behavior.

btach• 3 months ago

This happened at the hospital I currently work at a couple years ago. A patient was brought some chicken noodle soup hot in the thermos but didn't open it. A few days later I was working night shift on that floor when we all heard a sound resembling a cross between a BOOM and a BANG (something you don't expect at 2AM). There was his thermos at the bedside table with no lid, still sitting upright. Scattered around (both floor and ceiling) was some fermented soup smelling of fermenting vomitus. And a lid-sized-and-shaped hole in the ceiling.

whackernews• 3 months ago

At this point it’s basically a risk to buy anything new from a large company who’s products are most likely worse than ever in terms of cost-cutting materials, build quality, and design.

jadence• 3 months ago

Walmart had a similar recall last year for their Ozark Trail bottles. https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/Walmart-Recalls-Ozark-Trai...

Over 8M Thermos jars and bottles recalled after 3 people lost vision

Related Stories