Why you should never leave water in a plastic bottle in your car
A man has warned people about the dangers of leaving clear water bottles in cars on hot days.
In a video shared on Facebook, Dioni Amuchastegui, a battery technician from Idaho in the US, said he wanted to share his story after noticing smoke coming from his car.
“I was taking an early lunch [and] happened to notice some smoke out of the corner of my eye,” he said.
“I looked over and noticed light was being refracted through a water bottle and starting to catch the seat on fire.”
The bottle had acted as a lens, and Mr Amuchastegui showed the seat had two small burn marks.
Mr Amuchastegui said he has “surprised” and touched the seat to find it “super hot”.
“It [the light] was hot enough to burn a hole through the seat,” he said.
A co-worker tested the temperature of the seat and said it had gone up to 100 degrees Celsius.
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Firefighters in Oklahoma also conducted a test and found that sunlight magnified by a water bottle can reach 121 degrees Celsius, according to KFOR.
Oklahoma’s Midwest City Fire Department’s David Richardson said the bottle could act as a magnifying glass.
“It uses the liquid and the clear material to develop a focused beam and sure enough, it can actually cause a fire, a combustion,” he said.
The warning comes with spring around the corner, and Australia already experiencing wild weather throughout August.
