2 Investigators: Exploding Glass Oven Doors
(CBS) -- Around your house you may see numerous items made of tempered glass, including your oven door, television stand, shower door and patio table.
The lack of mandatory manufacturing standards for this type of glass could put you at risk, CBS 2's Dave Savini reports.
Josi Rein says she set her oven on the cleaning cycle. It heated up and then the door glass suddenly shattered.
"There was hot glass all over the place," she says.
Rein says parts of her wood floor was scorched and even buckled.
Television stands made of glass are another product known to shatter. Ken and Karen Rimkus say they came home one day to find their glass television stand had broken into pieces.
Ken Rimkus says the glass flew all over the room and could have been dangerous had someone been home.
"There should be some standard," Karen Rimkus says. "Because I do think it's the safety for the consumer and for children."
Around the country, other glass television stands and glass oven doors from varying manufacturers have shattered for no apparent reason. That includes an oven owned by Bonnie Blair.
"Based on the number of complaints I saw online, I just thought other people should be aware," she says.
A microscopic imperfection during the manufacturing process of tempered glass can grow and migrate, weakening the glass until it suddenly shatters. Last year, CBS 2 showed how tempered glass shower doors are exploding and causing injuries.
It happened to Larry Kucharik, who has a scar on his leg from shower door glass.
Tempered glass patio tables are shattering, too -- injuring those nearby. Online, with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, hundreds of complaints have been filed involving all these different tempered-glass products.
In Rein's case, because of how her wood floor lays out -- it is one continuous floor -- she says the burn marks are expensive to fix.
"It's over $20,000 worth of damage," says Rein.
Ken Rimkus, an engineer, says it is time to implement tough manufacturing standards for tempered glass.
"You can never argue with safety," he says. "It's like motherhood and apple pie."
The television stand owned by Rimkus was a Samsung product. The company replaced it and a spokesman tells CBS 2 reports of these stands breaking are extremely rare and they have no reports of injuries.
In Rein's case, her oven is a KitchenAid. A spokesperson for the parent company, Whirlpool, says product safety is a top priority and that they set up a warranty service to correct the issue.
"We continuously strive to improve our products to increase customer satisfaction over time, and over the years we have worked both with our glass suppliers and within our own manufacturing divisions to improve manufacturing and handling processes and to reduce or eliminate the chances that glasses will be scratched and stressed during those processes," a statement from the spokesperson said.
If you have a glass product that you believe may have exploded or shattered for no apparent reason other than a possible defect in the glass, you can report the incident to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
