There’s nothing funny about gasoline fires in and of themselves, but some people scale the heights of lunacy when it comes to what they’ll do with their fuel. For instance, a Daytona Beach, Fla., man did a DIY doozy on his car – he replaced the fuel tank with a plastic fuel can, then moved the can under the hood… right next to the heat-emitting engine. It’s stranger than fiction. There is a similar sentiment when it comes to the hokey old story that cellular phones cause gasoline pump fires. Has this ever happened, or is it merely an urban legenddesigned to frighten hapless motorists? Source of article – Do cell phones cause fires at the gas pump by Car Deal Expert.
Cell phones and also the gas pump: inferno of misinformation
Urban legends are the business of Snopes.com, and they’ve trained their laser-guided truthiness on mobile phones and fuel pump fires. Cell phone manufacturers may consist of obligatory warning notices in their product manuals, but the only sparks are those of curiosity as to how this rumor ever got began. Sure, 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 mobile phone fuel pump fire scenario. China and Indonesia have supposedly had their share of flare ups, but Snopes.com tracked those yarns down to an Internet meme from 1999. Numerous years later, “Mythbusters” made those spook tales of fuel pump horror give up the ghost on their program.
Shell Oil’s ‘official’ communiqué
A group claiming to be the Shell Oil Company circulated a warning in June 2002. They cited 3 examples that sounded specific enough to be real. The erroneous claim made within the e-mail message is that all a cell phone has to do is ring to emit an EM pulse powerful enough to ignite gasoline fumes within the air (for instance those produced at the gasoline pump). When cell and vehicle batteries both have the save voltage rating, automobile batteries provide considerably more current. There was once a circulating claim that cell phones use “more than 100 volts,” but that appears to are a rumor traced back to the traditional land-line telephone industry during the original phases of competition with the emerging cellular industry.
Shell Oil denied sending such a fake message.
The fear is unfounded
Gasoline tanks don’t blow because of mobile phone signals. Talk away, but make sure to get the gasoline in the tank, rather than on your shoes; distraction could be a bad thing.
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
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