Seems like there have been "15 burn and fire-related incidents blamed by iPod owners on their iPods". Out of millions of iPods sold since their introduction, that seems like an insignificant amount.

Wikipedia (and some of Apple's own PR) indicates that 173,000,000 (one hundred and seventy three MILLION) iPods have been sold. If a journalist really believes that a reported 15 out of 173,000,000 is "an alarming number", then they need to go back to school.

If anything, Apple has done consumers a favor by shipping enough lithium batteries to help demonstrate the true failure / explosion rate of these devices, so that it can be demonstrated how safe they are.

Someone should send this journalist a copy of Innumeracy : Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences so that maybe they can get a clue.