I'm not who you summoned, but saw this article that might help. I've been interested in this subject since reading about spontaneous shattering of glass doors and also glass sinks...I have a glass sink and am on the fence about adding glass doors. Hope this helps.

Here is a link that might be useful: Shattered glass door

Thank you, olychick! I appreciate your input. I am concerned about the general belief that tempered glass is safer, being called "safety glass". My notion was that they should break into harmless pieces, more like crumbling. The glass that I am talking about, just exploded, so to speak, into millions of sharp shards and fine powder, that covered the entire floor and flew into adjacent bedroom. So I am wondering if the glass was tempered the right way?

mrao77

I think, according to that article,(and the blood in the picture) that what you experienced is normal for shower glass. I read somewhere else (but can't find the link) that we think "safety" glass as being what is in our cars' windshields, the stuff that crumbles into little pebbles. But that the rest of the car windows are also "safety" glass but it is different glass than the windshield glass. It does break up into small shards (if you've ever had someone smash a side window to break in, you know what I mean). The windshield is different glass (laminated, I think) to protect the people in the front seat from as much harm as possible from a shattered windshield. I think the shower doors are more like the other windows in the car. You might want to call some different glass companies and ask about the glass they use and what to expect should it shatter/break. They would know for sure.

I guess it depends on your definition of "harmless".

Tempered glass is designed to break into lots of little pieces - not necessarily dull pieces, just little.

Non-tempered glass tends to break into large guillotine-like pointy knife shards that could really kill/injure someone nearby.

mrao, just saw the post today.

Yes, it'll shatter into a zillion tiny pieces, but as you discovered, they're still sharp. When the tensile forces in the face of the glass release, it can propel the glass shards quite a distance, so your case is not unusual at all.

Shattered tempered glass isn't safe as safe can be, but it's safer than large shards of non-tempered. The smaller pieces of tempered will generally bounce of the skin versus razor-slicing guillotine-action found with larger shards of non-tempered.

mongo said it correctly. Annealed (regular glass) will break into large guillotine like pieces that can cause major injury to people.
Tempered shatters into smaller pieces. They are sharp at least in my experience. Nothing you can walk on.
When the shower door exploded in my hands, the sharp small pieces flew all over and the force embedded them in my wooden shower walls! I had to extract them and resand/refinish the wood.
The shattered glass wont kill you and I think that is the purpose of tempering. The other major reason is that it is incredibly strong on the face as can be seen below

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Thanks mongo,pharoah and dlseek! I guess I was under the wrong impression after seeing pictures like the ones above..that tempered glass is 'safer' than regular glass. Yes, partially true, since we did not have life threatening cuts to the installers. However, the tiny sharp shards that flew all over the place, and into the bedroom that is carpeted, is making it a living night mare for my family with small kids running around barefoot. I have vacumed and mopped and brushed and swept and..everything..but still see tiny shards now and then. The fragments are in crevices between the floor and baseboards, between grout lines..everywhere :(

Anyway, I guess now I know better.

mrao77

The pictures, I have to say "Wow".

I've seen a couple of doors let go over the years, but they actually shattered into a zillion cubes, I'd say in the 1/4" per side size. No glass "dust" or powder.

Yours is almost like powder. I don't like that at all. I have no answers, as I'm not sure if it's a result of improper tempering or what...but I've never seen a glass tempered door powder like that.

One sort of interesting thing about tempered glass that was shown to me in a demo years ago is that if you tape the four edges of the glass pane and then it shatters, it stays intact as a single piece. It has the spider vein cracks throughout the interior of the glass sheet, but the "skin" of the glass holds it together in one piece. When the edges are not contained, the entire panel can let go into a gazillion shards.