MEDIA ALERT

USDOT Travel Safety Tips Illustrate Hazards of Lithium-Ion Batteries

Zinc Matrix Power Offers Travelers a Safer Solution

CAMARILLO, CA – March 28, 2007 – The U.S. Department of Transportation has issued a list of safety tips for airline travelers flying with batteries and the devices commonly powered by them. The agency compiled the recommendations following several recent incidents where lithium-ion and lithium batteries caught fire on board commercial airliners. The tips include: avoid dropping laptop computers and cell phones with lithium-ion batteries, bringing on board spare batteries in passenger’s carry-on baggage, keeping those batteries in their original packaging to prevent unintentional activation or short-circuiting, placing tape over battery terminals to also prevent short-circuits, and keeping batteries isolated from other batteries and metal objects.

On February 10, a fire started in the overhead baggage compartment of a JetBlue flight that had departed from New York’s JFK airport. Flight attendants on an American Airlines flight had to react quickly on March 18 to extinguish a fire on a flight from Argentina. Both situations resolved without serious injury to passengers or damage to the aircraft.

“Both incidents clearly demonstrate the high risk of fire associated with lithium-ion and lithium battery powered devices, such as cell phones, laptops and digital cameras,” said Ross Dueber, president and CEO of Zinc Matrix Power, Inc.  ”Passengers can take any number of precautions while transporting batteries, but the inherent danger of fire and release of toxic fumes remains with these particular kinds of batteries.”

Zinc Matrix Power’s silver-zinc rechargeable batteries have an aqueous chemistry that is not flammable or toxic. As a result, the battery technology has powerful safety advantages over traditional lithium-ion batteries.  The battery contains no lithium or flammable liquids and is therefore free from the problems of thermal runaway, fire and danger of explosion.  As a result of the inherent safety, silver-zinc batteries are not subject to airline restrictions, and passengers can travel without worry.

The safety features of Zinc Matrix Power rechargeable batteries make them unique. However, there is more offered by the intrinsic safe design. Zinc Matrix Power batteries also deliver improved runtime over traditional lithium-ion batteries. And the key components of its silver-zinc battery technology can be 100% recycled and reused, making it an earth-friendly alternative to many of today’s existing battery technologies.

During 2006, Zinc Matrix Power introduced and demonstrated its rechargeable battery technology at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) Conference in San Francisco, CA, during which it won Intel’s “Technology Innovation Accelerated” (TIA) Award in the Mobility category.  Zinc Matrix Power is currently working with major electronics companies to incorporate its batteries in their future products beginning in 2008.