You’ve probably never wondered if your iPod represented a fire hazard. But if you had, your suspicions would be validated by this story at Ars Technica, which looks at reports of iPods bursting into flames, etc.

Apparently it took seven months to get it, but a TV station in Seattle requested a bunch of documents from the Consumer Product Safety Commission dealing with iPod mishaps. After those months of delays, prompted by Apple attorneys, the station was given 800 pages of complaints dealing with iPods smoking, catching fire and shocking users.

The documents detail cases of varying severity. People getting shocked by iPod shuffles. An iPod catching fire on a ship “with over 2,000 persons onboard.” An iPod nano bursting into flames in someone’s pocket. Children and minors getting burned. The incidents are all over the map and include both new and old iPods over a period of several years. Though no serious injuries have been reported to the CPSC-at least according to the 800-page document dump-some users are still very concerned.

“That’s what I’ve been afraid of, is that that could have been a dead child because Apple didn’t care to fix it,” Tami Mooney, the mother of a 14-year-old who got burned by an iPod she got for Christmas in 2007, told KIRO 7. “I’m horrified to learn it’s still going on.” She said that she believes Apple needs to issue a massive recall.

It doesn’t sound, however, like the Feds are all that worried about that nation’s safety. Not when you consider the number of complaints versus the sheer number of iPods that have been sold. According to the TV station:

After conducting its own preliminary investigation, the federal agency determined that, with more than 175 million iPods sold, “the number of incidents is extremely small in relation to the number of products produced, making the risk of injury very low.”