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?? :-/