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3 On Your Side: Exploding Danger

By Jim Donovan

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A boom. A crash. Pieces flying in every direction. Ordinary items in your home exploding without warning.

We've told you about it in the past, and it's happening again. 3 On Your Side consumer reporter Jim Donovan tells us this time it involves TV sets.

It happens without warning, catching people off guard. Toppling tables, shattering shower doors, exploding ovens and now we're seeing it happen with Televisions.

"I hear this screaming, 'come here, uhm there's glass everywhere.' I said, what happened? They said the tv just blew up. I said what do you meant the tv just blew up?," said Denise Young.

The glass base of Denise Young's Philips TV shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces.

"It was a a mess. When it exploded it went in every single direction," said Young.

"Suddenly that glass will break all by itself with nobody there," said glass expert, Mark Meshulam.

Meshulam has heard the horror stories.

"Spontaneous tempered glass breakage is really a wild phenomenon," said Meshulam.

It certainly caught the Doylestown mother by surprise.

"I actually thought my tv stand was made of plastic, because that's what it looked like. I never would have thought in a million years it was made of glass," said Young.

Actually the base was made of tempered glass.

Instead of splintering into jagged shards as plate glass will do if it breaks, tempered glass is different.

"When it breaks, it breaks in very small pieces and so you might get cut but it will not be deep serious laceration," said Meshulam.

So what can cause the breakage? Well sometimes microscopic imperfections can occur during the manufacturing process of tempered glass.

While it's not clear what caused the Young's breakage imperfections in the glass can grow and migrate, weakening the glass until it suddenly shatters without warning.

Philips wouldn't tell us if others have reported similar problems with their tv sets.

But hundreds of complaints have been filed with the consumer product safety involving different tempered-glass products.

"It was the worst feeling in the world to have something like that and know that your kids could have been hurt. I think that people need to be made aware of this hazard that could be in their home," said Young.

When the Youngs reached out to Philips the company replaced the family's tv set with another television, one that doesn't have a tempered glass base. In fact the Philips tells us that all of their tv bases, or tv stands as they call them, are now being manufactured using a combination of acrylic and plastic.

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