Willie Mae Truesdale was startled by a loud explosion emanating from her kitchen. Upon investigating, she discovered her glass oven door shattered into pieces on the floor. “It was shocking, you had to really see it to believe it,” she said. “Glass shattered, glass was out here on the floor.” Adding to her astonishment, her oven wasn’t even turned on when the incident occurred. Truesdale’s experience is not an isolated incident.
This phenomenon, known as the curious case of exploding glass oven doors, has also affected others like Cheryl, a suburban mom who during the COVID-19 quarantine found her baking attempt thwarted by an oven that was not heating correctly. Her oven, only three months old and set on a self-cleaning cycle, unexpectedly exploded near the cycle’s end. Similarly, Michelle Wheat encountered an explosion with her three-year-old oven that was also switched off, thankfully without injuring any of her four children.
These incidents are part of a larger pattern, as the Consumer Product Safety Commission has received around 450 reports of similar occurrences since 2019. Following the incidents, each woman faced challenges with manufacturers. Truesdale’s oven was still under warranty, yet she had to pay for a new door herself after the technician blamed her family for the mishap. Cheryl, after some media intervention, had her oven replaced by Bosch. Wheat, whose warranty had expired, paid over $400 to replace her oven door after a costly technician visit.
Experts like Mark Meshulam offer insights into why these explosions occur. According to him, there are two main types of glass used in oven doors: soda lime glass, which is common window glass tempered to handle heat, and borosilicate glass, which is more heat-resistant and commonly used in laboratory glassware. The shift towards using soda lime glass in ovens has increased these incidents due to its lesser tolerance to thermal stress.
Moreover, imperfections such as nickel sulfide inclusions can also cause glass to shatter spontaneously, particularly during high-heat events like the self-cleaning cycles of ovens. Meshulam notes, “That little ball has some strange properties… over time it’s fighting to get out. And sometimes the high heat event like oven cleaning event can bring about that finally that spontaneous failure that was in there.”
Despite these risks, Meshulam reassures that using an oven’s self-cleaning feature is generally safe and that catastrophic failures are relatively rare. However, he warns that damage can occur during production, shipping, or installation, and can be exacerbated by aggressive cleaning or physical impacts at home.
To prevent such incidents, homeowners are advised to avoid damaging behaviors and to be mindful of the potential fragility of their oven doors.