Gas fires can be horrific incidents, but there’s something amusing about the lengths to which some individuals will go when working with fuel. Take one Daytona Beach, Fla., man who rigged up a plastic gas can to be his car’s fuel tank – all he did was set up the gas can under the hood, right next to the hot engine. It is stranger than fiction. There is a similar sentiment when it comes to the hokey old story that cell phones cause fuel pump fires. Has this ever happened, or is it merely an urban legenddesigned to frighten hapless motorists?
Cell phones and gas pumps – blazing inaccuracy
Snopes.com has a great deal to say about cellular phones and fuel pump fires, in the interests of cutting through the misinformation. When your cellular phone instruction manual may have something in there about electromagnetic pulses, the hard truth as outlined by Snopes.com is that science and media reports don’t back up the explosive cell phone-gas pump notion. Certain, it may sound feasible – electromagnetic waves producing a static charge that ignites the gasoline vapor – but you will find simply no cases to back it up. While there may be some validity to not using cell phones around hospital or airliner equipment, there’s no smoke and hence no fire when it comes to the cellular phone fuel pump fire scenario. Media instances of such occurrences in China and Indonesia, according to Snopes.com’s research, actually sprung from widely circulated Internet rumors dating back to 1999. A number of years later, “Mythbusters” made those spook tales of gasoline pump horror give up the ghost on their program.
The ‘official’ Shell Oil warning
Back in June 2002, an electronic warning from a group claiming to be the Shell Oil Company circulated. Three cases of cell phones causing gas pump fires were accounted in some detail. The warning centered around the “fact” that all a cell phone had to do in order to send a motorist to their fiery death was ring; the EMP would provide the necessary spark. When cell and automobile batteries both have the conserve voltage rating, automobile batteries provide significantly more current. A scary story about mobile phones generating “more than 100 volts” in brief spurts, which would be potentially dangerous, was a falsehood likely planted by the phone companies when cellular technology was new.
Shell Oil denied sending such a fake message.
When being careful is more than the situation calls for
Even if a gasoline station tank does go up – it has happened – cellular phones be connected. So talk on your phone at the pump if you should, but pay enough attention to what you’re doing this that you do not douse yourself in gasoline.
Daytona Beach News-Journal
news-journalonline.com/breakingnews/2010/08/manu-using-gas-can-as-fuel-tank-suffers-burns.html
Snopes
snopes.com/autos/hazards/gasvapor.asp
