A drinking glass spontaneously exploded. AIBU to replace all our drinking glasses with acrylic?

[Chicklebee74]

I genuinely need some perspective here. I’m prone to worry and excessive risk aversion at the best of times, usually I’m able to rationalise against the worrying part of my brain but I’m currently on an antibiotic that has caused increased anxiety as a side effect, so I have no idea if I’m being reasonable or not.

A drinking glass randomly exploded earlier, I was in another room and heard a crash so went into the kitchen to find this. I had taken the glass out of the cupboard earlier, not the dishwasher so there wasn’t an extreme change of temperature. It had just been sat there on the counter for about an hour and then bang.

The shard on the floor was about 2 metres away from where it had exploded, there were other sharp shards shattered all over the floor.

so I’ve googled it and it’s rare but is a known phenomenon, I don’t understand the exact science but basically glass is under micro stresses frequently and they can build up until something like this happens.

So part of my brain is like this was just a freak occurrence, so unlikely to ever happen again, just keep the glasses you have

The other part is like this was just a freak occurrence but know I know it’s possible, and a freak occurrence could occur again. Maybe our dishwasher is hotter than others and makes it more likely. Maybe there’s lots of vibrations from heavy trucks etc making g it more likely. If we’d been in the room we could have been seriously injured or my child could have been blinded as it’s at her eye level. Do I really want to live with that risk when I could just replace them all with acrylic for like £20.

But then do I just never drink out of a glass at a restaurant or friend’s house etc ever again?

Talk some sense into my or validate my concerns please.

I sometimes go a bit strange when I take antibiotics but if you normally worry about stuff like this you need help for your anxiety. Your life can be much nicer.

How many glasses have you owned in your life, OP? Please include glasses which your child home contained, plus glasses you have encountered in restaurants, canteens, cafes etc….

This has happened once. What do you think the odds of it happening again are? The answer : One in however many million of glasses you have just thought of.

(You don’t have a cat, do you?) 🙀

This happened to me once in a cafe! It was surprising and they were very apologetic, but even though I was sitting right next to it holding a baby, no one was hurt.

Honestly, the likelihood of serious injury even if you had been in the room is vanishingly small. Your daughter is more likely to blind herself playing in the playground. Your perception of risk is way off.

Ok thank you everyone this is what I need. I would probably feel differently if I wasn’t all fucked up from the antibiotics and lack of sleep from the vicious ear infection they are fighting.

Thank you. Because I didn’t see it I don’t know if it was like a full on explosion with glass spraying everywhere, or maybe it just like jumped a little bit and then the pieces scuttled along the floor. So the difference between shards flying fast through the air vs slowly scattering along the floor.

When you saw it happen in the cafe was it more likely the 2nd scenario?

Aww, I hope you feel better soon, that sounds rubbish.

I didn't intent my post to be one of those patronising 'get help for your anxiety' posts. But you've obviously spent a lot of brain power thinking about this and I reckon that brain power could be used more positively.

This might be bullshit but I thought the antibiotic depression/anxiety might be linked to them fucking up your gut biome and I've convinced myself that eating all the gut friendly stuff might help.

Stop OP. You are now looking for reasons to be anxious.

Take the few responses you’ve received and walk away confident that you don’t have stock your house with sippy cups.

I am sure it is too, I have to force myself to eat at the moment as either or both the ABs or the infection is ruining my appetite and making me nauseous, I am definitely getting some fresh whole foods and kimchi etc in me when I finish my course. Just a few days to go.

Thanks for being kind. Thinking about it, the calorie deficit is probably not helping either!

Yes I am. Well actually I’m looking for reasons to not be anxious, but if I get them I’m sure my brain will find new angles to try to seek reassurance about, and on and on.

I am walking away. Thanks for getting straight to the point.

Okay, let’s try to look at this rationally, and by that I mean mathematically. The probability of an individual glass spontaneously being exploding will be extremely low. According to google AI it’s one in 10,000, so 0.0001. Now you need to consider the probability of the glass being out in the open at the time rather than in a cupboard or dishwasher. Let’s suppose you use this glass a lot so maybe it’s out one quarter of the time (6 hours a day), so 0.25 X 0.0001 =0.000025. Now we could consider that there needs to be a person within the blast range when it happens, which would not be all the time, but for the sake of argument let’s leave that alone because if it’s already out of the cupboard there’s a reasonable chance it’s being used. Next you’d need to start looking at things like how many pieces it splits into, how far they go, what speed they’re travelling at etc. Applied maths not my strong point, I favour pure (though you’d be forgiven for thinking I prefer statistics). In order to cause a serious injury it’s really only the eyes that are of concern. Skin would just be a cut, lots of skin would be covered by clothes anyway, ears or mouth would not be ideal, but they just aren’t as vulnerable as eyes. So you’re looking at a very small target, that would have to be facing the right way at the moment of explosion, and be hit pretty accurately. And even then, it’s not guaranteed to be serious damage. I’ve had a pretty nasty scratch on my eye that healed in a few weeks. So the risk of serious/permanent damage from this very unlikely event is I promise you absolutely minuscule. I don’t know if this is actually helpful, personally I find actually assessing the risk properly works for me, but maths makes sense to me so I like to see the numbers.

I wouldn't worry about a freak explosion, but glass is quite fragile. When DH and I set up home together, we naturally bought tumblers and wine glasses. And replaced them when they got broken. And replaced the replacements. Until we realised life is too short for this nonsense and now all our guests drink everything out of mugs! The thing is, me and DH are super-careful and hardly ever break things but glasses...Nope, can't be bothered with the bloody things.