If you follow our social media, over the last couple of weeks you may have seen a video posted to both TikTok and Facebook as a Public Safety Announcement from us on the dangers of using vertical hanging incense burners.
These vertical hanging incense burners are currently doing the rounds on TikTok shop, priced between the £3 and £6 price bracket they come with or without a glass to catch all the incense ash, and to be honest, as a shop who has incense going throughout the day, the mess it creates can be a pain in the arse at times. These stands look simple, are minimalistic and don’t break the bank. We decided to buy two so we could then try and source them from a wholesale supplier, but we wanted to test things out first and see if they were up to the hype. Having been a blogger for the best part of 10 years, I know a lot of reviews are bought online, and people feel that if they are gifted a product then they have to say it’s wonderful, hence why they are all over the FYP just now.
On arrival, they didn’t look like much. An untreated wooden base with a brass vertical stand, the one we ordered from in the photo showed a crocodile clip to grip the incense stick, but this just has a bent S shape to the metal that you just have to wedge the stick in, hardly secure and depending on the type of incense stick you use, some are thicker than others, so its not made for all. We had also recently had a new delivery of incense stick packs that are by a well known named brand. The instructions on the packs of incense state, to place in holder, light and blow out after a few seconds so it smokes to allow the incense smoke to diffuse into the room.
However, on lighting the one in the vertical stand, we did not have to wait for a few seconds to try and blow it out, because before we knew it, the whole incense stick had caught fire and gone alight. A ball of fire that arched over a foot tall, there was nothing that we really could do at this point, we were lucky that it was on a marble surface, but we had to let it burn out, which it did in around 15 seconds, but those 15 seconds could have been so extremely dangerous for anyone who was unprepared for what was about to happen. If you were in a standard home with soft furnishings, the likelihood of that causing a house fire is very high, so we issued a PSA and actually recreated the event in a safe environment so you can see for yourself just how dangerous charcoal based incense is under the wrong conditions.
To make sure that this was just an issue with the charcoal based incense and that make, we tried it with two other makes of incense which we have in stock and the same results did not happen, which you will see if you watch the attached video. The incense stand is damaged, burnt and charred from the fire ball that it went through, twice.
We would ask that people take safety when using incense and do not leave it unattended, use the correct form of incense holder, or if you do not have a holder, the best thing is a bowl of salt that you can stick the end of the incense stick in and the bowl will collect the ash. The ash and salt can be mixed together to make black salt too, so you have a winning combination there for future use too.
Take a look at the video here on our TikTok Page
What are your thoughts on this? Have you had any issues with vertical incense stands and will you be continuing to use them?
Love and light
Vix