Auto Q & A
Auto Q & A
By: Dr. Wheels
Description: Chatting at the pump
Topics:
Posted by editor Mon Apr 3, 2006 16:19:16 PDT
Viewed 672 times
0 responses 0 comments Dear Q & A: I have a question that’s not really driving/car related, but here it is: I’ve heard it’s dangerous to use a cell phone at a gas station. Something about static electricity. However, I see people on their phones all the time, and I have yet to see any signs posted at the pumps. Is it true?
— Lisa
Dear Lisa: This seems to consist largely of urban legend, the kind that warns that there are alligators infesting your town’s sewer system. It may have all started in 1999, when in quick succession there were reports from Bangkok (by some accounts, Indonesia) that a cell phone “caused” an explosion at a filling station there; that in Adelaide, Australia, a man using a cell phone near petrol pumps caused an explosion and fire; and in Trail, British Columbia, a man talking on a cell while pumping gas caused another fire.
Investigations of all these incidents failed to prove any causal connection between the telephones and the fires. Fire department officials in Adelaide said there wasn’t even a cell phone present in their incident.
So how and why did all these stories get started? They may have their roots in a warning issued in 1999 by the Motorola Corporation, one of the world’s big three phone manufacturers, to the effect that a loosely connected battery inside a cell phone could conceivably cause a spark, which could conceivably ignite gasoline fumes.
By the way, possible sparking from a poorly connected phone battery has nothing to do with the phone’s transmission of radio signals. But like the persistent rumors that cancer can be caused by these instruments’ radio signals, once planted in suggestible minds, such tales are hard to extinguish.
Unfortunately, when science says not to worry, it has a far less urgent ring than that quaver in Cousin Al’s voice as he recounts the latest horror story about gas station conflagrations.
Pooh-poohing aside, it’s true that Ericsson and Nokia, too, have actually issued cautions about using their phones while pumping gas. And a number of oil companies, reportedly including such majors as Shell, Exxon, Union 76, and Chevron, have circulated warnings to their retail outlets discouraging or banning the use of cell phones while refueling. This despite the fact that no reputable official account of cause/effect relationship between cell phone use and gas station explosions has yet surfaced, anywhere in the world.
Older mobile phones of the 1980s and ’90s were bulkier and carried larger batteries, which were more susceptible to significant sparking when improperly connected and there were laws enacted concerning them here and there throughout Europe, though these were very loosely enforced. However, the fact remains that static electricity can cause sparking, as we sometimes see when we cross a carpeted room to flip a light switch and see the flash and experience the shock.
To be on the ultra-safe side of this issue, it’s probably wise to observe the phone makers’ warnings. But more important, avoid sliding across the car seat, building up a static electrical charge in your body, and then immediately reaching over to touch the metal handle of the fuel hose. That’s a spark you don’t want to see.
| Send to a Friend | Report a Violation |
