Can Cell Phones Ignite Gasoline Vapors? 685
Iphtashu Fitz writes "Matthew Erhorn was filling his car with gasoline outside of New Paltz, NY when when he flipped open his cell phone to answer a call. The next thing he knew he was engulfed by a ball of fire. Luckily for Erhorn a quick thinking employee hit the emergency fire suppression system and he ended up with only minor burns. Firefighters investigating the accident concluded that the cell phone triggered the fire. Experts at The Petroluum Equipment Institute disagree however, attributing the fire to static electricity. Since 1992 the PEI has documented 158 cases of gas pump fires believed to have been started by static electricity. Apparently cell phone signals are too weak to ignite gasoline vapors, but the human body can generate enough static electiricy (60,000 volts) from simply sliding out of your car seat to do just that. Do you pay attention to all those signs at the gas pump telling you to to make sure your car, cell phone, PDA, pacemaker, etc. are all turned off before you start pumping?"
Re:Cellphone Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but they can put everybody else within earshot off their work, and into a slow state of boiling rage...
Listening to three other people's incessant mindless babbling over their mobiles for a few hours is a good way to get nothing done, and really angry about it...
I'm guessing their reasoning for banning your mobile is just common courtesy...
The most disturbing thing about this article... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Cell phones emit minimum amount of power (no microwave heating of the fumes).
2. AFAIK there's no documented cases of cell phones starting a gasoline fire.
3. Electric sparks obviously can start gasoline fumes on fire. How do you think a spark plug works?
4. We all know how easily static electricity can build up from simply walking across a rug on a dry day.
Kinda makes you wonder just how much training the fire chiefs have. I'm sure they know how to fight fires, but at least this guy seems to have limited knowledge and analytical skills about how fires start.
Grounding Strap? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not just have patrons rigged up to a type of grounding strap while pumping gas? This would also prevent them from re-entering their vehicle while filling the tank if the stap were short enough. From reading the reports this appears to be a bigger risk than phone usage. Besides, if somebody fails to pay for gas the strap keeps him/her from running away. :P
Re:The myth of green fuel (Score:3, Insightful)
Vegetable oil can be used industrially then processed into fuel - probably millions of gallons a year are used for cooking. In parts of Japan all vegetable oil is stored after use, collected by a weekly tanker and reprocessed into bio-diesel.. sometimes mixed with regular diesel to improve the taste but used nonetheless.
This probably leads to a net energy gain.. especially when you consider that it rids society of the problem of disposing of used cooking oil, which can be a problem in itself.
Yup (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm no EE, but I can assure you energy discharged when I slide out of my seat in the car and touch the side of the car is hundreds, perhaps thousands of times stronger than the level of electricity used at any given moment on a working cell phone (modified stun-phones notwithstanding).
Perhaps the fireman hates cell phones, and is hoping this ruse will kill cell phone use. I can see that angle.
If you hear hoofbeats (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll report that I've seen *many* "static sparks" when getting out of my car. I've measured, then discharged accumulated potentials. I've measured the breakdown voltage of dry air. I've deliberately generated "static charges" by sliding my butt across the car seat. On a dry day, the experiment is very repeatable. All these situations relate to "static sparks"--more strictly--arc discharges of electrical potential.
I've never observed, measured, empirically repeated, or even heard reliable reports of an electric arc coming from a cell phone.
This does not prove that such things are possible.
But I'm not going to start looking for zebras.
Re:leaving the car running? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you dont know better, WHY DONT YOU READ THE WARNING SIGNS?
Turn off cell phone? How 'bout.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's not using the cellphone (Score:5, Insightful)
You are suggesting it's RF resonance causing the explosion as opposed to a spark from the phone igniting the vapours or any static discharge? Please point us to a single piece of evidence.
It amazes me how in the UK, where warning notices are to be seen quite often in filling stations, that imbeciles continue their pathetic and unnecessary conversations while filling. If I see one near me, I move, and quickly...... It is a criminal offence under the petroleum spirit regulations, it is time that it was enforced properly.
I personally don't believe there is a risk, I'm with the static theory.
BTW most HF/VHF/UHF communications equipment is potentially lethal in these circumstances. I know that cellular base stations are sometimes sited on the premises, they are carefully positioned, and the inverse square law ensures that the signal level at the pumps is well below the safety limit.
We all know about the inverse square law, and it's enough to take a mobile phone power down to a level not to affect the brain a few millimeters away let alone a whacking great conductor (with no pointy bits) a few feet away. I refer you to my answer to paragraph one.
It is sad that the general public are so ignorant and ill-informed as to constantly put other people's lifes at risk by this stupid behaviour. In the UK the law requires you to switch off before entering the filling station, off means off, not standby, because if the mobile needs to access the network or respond to an incoming call, its first and unpredictable transmission will be at full power!
That's not what I've read on the GSM protocol. I've read it latches on to the lower power signal to conserve battery.
Don't get me started on where else they are lethal such as on aircraft, at least one businessman is, very properly, in jail in the UK as a result of his wilful ignorance on that score. If I were the judge, I would have made it a life sentence, because he put so many lives at risk, even when told not to. If stiff sentences were handed out for using mobiles in filling stations, the practice would diminish substantially. It would not stop entirely, there is always some idiot who knows better than the safety legislators.
What an irrelevant arguement. This law is about potentially disrupting computer systems on a craft, not about making them explode. And in fact the maximum risk is when the craft is on the ground and not in the air.
Phillip.
is the voltage on the antenna really enormous? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you removed the fans from your computer...I'm pretty sure you could bathe your computer in gasoline...or have it sit in a pan of gas - don't actually try this since you'd have to get all the fans, powersupply, and monitor far enough away for it to actually work.
Repeat after me: 3 volts do not arc. 3 volts do not arc. 3 volts do not arc.
Repeat after me: My fat butt getting out of the car sparks repeatedly and could probably ignite and inferno.
Repeat after me: My fat butt getting out of the car sparks repeatedly and could probably ignite and inferno.
Repeat after me: My fat butt getting out of the car sparks repeatedly and could probably ignite and inferno.
Who Cares? (Score:1, Insightful)
Turn off the phone.
Re:It's not using the cellphone (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, I'd be happy if they just enforced the rule that states you must remain at the filling point while pumping. Every day I see people walking away, getting in their cars to wait for the pump, etc.
I, personally, twice in the last 6 years, have witnessed gasoline spilling out of a vehicle when the nozzle failed to kick off. One was a few spots over from me, I ran over and shut off the nozzle. About 2 gallons of gas on the ground.
Another time, I was **driving by** and saw gas spilling from a pickup with nobody around. I whipped into the station, came in close to the truck, slammed into park, jumped out, ran to the truck, and shut off the valve. The whole time, there was a woman inside the truck, talking on her cell phone. You should have seen the look on her face when I came roaring up, jumped out and ran at her truck. Of course, the look on her face when she realized she'd just pumped about 15 gallons of gas on the ground, under her truck, was pretty good too.
She just kept yapping "how did this happen?" I just said something like "the valves aren't perfect, sometimes they don't work. That's why you're REQUIRED BY LAW to stay by the valve when the gas is pumping. See, it says so right there on the pump." I just walked away; she was obviously not the kind of person who actually uses her brain or anything. She was still yammering when I went into the station to report the spill and wash the gas off my hands.
I was in Illinois once, and a station attendant actually got on the PA and said "Pump 4, you must stay within sight of the pump." When they didn't, she cut the flow to that pump.
Gasoline only? That's a relief. (Score:3, Insightful)
And I was worried about the proposed hydrogen cars of the future.
Thank you for putting my mind at ease.
Re:It's not using the cellphone (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Urban Myth! (Score:3, Insightful)
One issue I could still imagine is that the plane's velocity would cause cell handovers at an unusually high rate, possibly faster than the network or phone can handle.