OGDEN, N.Y. -- Ogden resident Ryan Scholand, 17, has been using e-cigarettes for more than a year now, so when one exploded in his face Tuesday night, he said he never saw it coming.

“It was literally like holding a pipe bomb in your hand and watching go off,” Scholand said. “It was terrifying. I saw the big flash of light as it happened and then I could just feel in my throat, a real hot, metallically, like almost if you go to a fire and you inhale the smoke.”

Scholand was taken to the hospital for shrapnel cuts and burns to his left hand, throat, and lip.

On Wednesday, Ogden Police Chief Christopher Mears showed and explained what remained of the $350 device.

“This is the battery for the e-cig, and apparently as it was sitting inside the very end of it became heated very quickly and it exploded,” Mears said. “You can see where here where the jagged edges are. The battery became separated from the e-cig and several pieces of metal came off of the e-cig."

Just as Mears and Scholand suspect, Greg Bauman, owner of The Vape Shop in Greece, believes a faulty battery may be to blame.

“It is a very primitive and outdated type of vaping,” Bauman said. “Newer devices made in the past year, 99 percent of the devices are regulated and they have controlled chips in them that won’t allow the batteries to overcharge, undercharge or explode in this instance. The primitive style of vaping that was being used, it has no protective chip in it so that way when something goes wrong, it just goes wrong.”

Bauman said it’s also important make sure the device you are buying isn’t made of inexpensive material, the charger is made exactly for e-cigarettes,  and most importantly he said, educate yourself on how the device works before using it.

“Anything that is used without the proper education can be dangerous,” Bauman said.

While Scholand said he did spend time researching devices, this experience shook him enough that he said he will be staying away from vaping for quite some time, if not forever.

A Gates man was also injured when his e-cigarette exploded in his hand in March of last year.

According to a U.S. Fire Administration report 25 separate incidents of explosion and fire involving an e-cigarette were reported by the U.S. media between 2009 and August 2014.