My family is having a rash of Duracell alkaline battery leakage lately - AAAs and AAs. Its happening with flashlight batteries used fairly often, headlamp batteries used fairly often, a radio (Ds) used very often, and even with batteries that are removed from remote controls and just sitting on a table (on a folded plastic bag to protect the table finish - luckily).

I've had to through out a nice Princeton Tec flahslight and a PT headlamp. I've rescued the radio and a few other devices - though they might fail over time due to the damage.

For devices that we don't want to remove batteries when not in use (flashlights) we are switching to 100% lithium batteries.

Its kind of crazy. Does anyone know if something has changed recently? Maybe global warming or something?? :-/

Thank you for the reminder. One of my 2xAA flashlights was still running a set of Duracell alkaline batteries and they have now been pulled.

Duracell is now marketing "Durablock" alkaline batteries. I don't know if that has any correlation with the recent poor performance of the older Duracell batteries.

Not sure if there have been any changes that would cause this type problems, but I have also experienced the same type issues. Two different Olight flashlights with the AA Duracell batteries have leaked. These were newly purchased batteries, 10+ years in date, and had been in the device less than one month. One of the lights had been used twice or three times and is carried daily and the other had batteries from the same pack installed and had been lying on my desk. Attempted to use it during a brief power outage only to find it not working and upon checking it found the leakage. I have been able to salvage one of the two lights and hopefully I can fix the second. Never experienced this before and have used Duracell for the past 15 years.

I've switched my EDC lights and bicycle lights to Eneloop AA and AAA for the same reason

Need to add that in addition to pulling the one-month-past-drop-dead-date Duracell batteries, I needed to clean up a bit of corrosion because the batteries did fail. The batteries will be replaced with NiMH rechargeable's. With recent failures I won't be using alkaline batteries in anything that can use NiMH or lithium primaries.

I've had issues with Duracell as well. I had a few pieces of electronics that were damaged by Duracells leaking within the last two years. All were well within their expiration date and stored within normal operating temperature. I've switched to Energizer & Eneloops.

Thank you for the heads up. Does anybody have experience with Costco generic alkaline batteries?

I won't be moving to lithium or rechargeable for things like remote controls and kid toys. Other people in my house will treat them like throw away batteries. Also, as I understand it, NiMH rechargeable batteries are best suited for high power output devices, like flashlights (a.o.t., remote controls).

consumer reports give kirkland a "best buy" rating. i do too. used them for years and found them as good as any other "top" brand.

heads-up re: lithium primary (aka: eveready ulimate or advanced) - you'll hear they don't leak. not true. while rare, they do. i had one ruin a flashlight so called the company. they confirmed that lithiums don't leak anywhere as often as alkalines, they do fail periodically. since then i don't store them inside any electronics.

i've yet to have an eneloop fail, but who knows. besides, they're most often put in high-useage tools so are checked more often.

I switched over to the Duracell "Pro" series about 3 years ago for AA, AAA, and 9 volt and have not had any problems.

As batteries, alkaline, NiCd, etc. deplete I am changing to Panasonic Eneloops. It takes the sting out of buying them and I can get the latest version.

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