Recently I have heard some very horrible stories. These stories involve people, gasoline, and static electricity. I have heard that people were and are getting set on fire everyday because when they go to pump gas into their car static electricity from their body shocks the liquid gasoline or the gasoline fumes and then POOF! you're on fire. I had thought that this was all an urban myth but early this morning I saw a victim on the Today Show or some other morning show and they had videotape of the incident. Now I know that this is a terrifying fact. During the show I don't recall them ever saying how to avoid a situation like this so does anybody have any helpful hints?
According to Snopes there is some validity to this one. http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/static.asp
They had an incident caught on tape of some one catching on fire last night on the news. I also heard that talking on your cell phone while pumping gas can cause a fire as well. That is scary. To avoid it they say to ground yourself prior to picking up the pump by touching metal, and its best to keep your hand on what you used. When I have some time I will try to find a link for you for both the cell phone and grounding.
It's not just some validity...this is absolutely true. Like was said, ground yourself before pumping gas. Try to avoid getting in your car to do stuff, like listen to the radio, while pumping gas. What happens is people get in their car and come back to the pump without grounding themselves elsewhere first. Then, they grab the pump handle and a static charge ignites the fumes. You should always ground yourself before beginning to pump gas and any time you leave and come back BEFORE grabbing the pump handle. People tend to panic and try to stop the fire by grabbing the pump handle and pulling it out. A lady burned herself to death trying to deal with the situation but ended up spraying herself. It was caught on film. The best thing to do if you do ignite your gas tank is to run away. At that point, there is nothing you can do to correct the situation. Run away and yell at other people to do the same. Also, make sure the store manager knows what's up but it's pretty obvious when it happens. The whole gas station may be a loss but your gonna be lost if you think you can put it out. Better to lose the gas station than one life. What makes this situation worse is there was a movement to put warning labels on gas pumps and on handles to warn against static discharge igniting flames EXCEPT noone wants to do it for whatever strange excuse they came up with. There is no excuse for not posting warning labels about this phenomena.
I've actually seen quite a few warnings about static electricity and cell phones, but nothing about this. I've nearly gone up to people at gas stations that I see getting back in their cars to tell them about this.
The WORST scenario in this regards is filling portable gas cans in the back of your truck. I'm pretty sure this is what happened on the video that we saw all over the morning news yesterday. You should see warnings on most/all pumps that warn you not to do this. I think they also have warning labels on new gas cans too. You're supposed to take the cans out, and place them on the concrete before you fill.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night and the TV was on and it was showing that person filling their tank and catching on fire and I totally thought it was a bad dream. Then I just read this and it reminded me of it. Strange...
I hate filling gas cans. I do put them on the concrete but the fumes coming up while filling the gas can....yikes. Let's just say you better be grounded before you do that cause there are plenty of fumes to ignite coming out of that can during filling. I think gas station and pumping technology is way behind the times. They should make gas pumps which form a seal or prevent fumes from escaping during the filling process. I'm sure it can be done because this static discharge thing is always going to be a problem if you have to rely on people to avoid starting the fire by grounding themselves. There is always going to be that person that didn't know or didn't do it right. I think the situation could be rectified with newer gas pump technology. I guess a certain number of incidents and people must die before such an initiative would even begin to see the light of day.
Considering the cost of reequipping the 175,000 or so gas stations in the United States (and potentially reequipping everyone's car) vs. the infintesimally small chance of static discharge resulting in any kind of incident at a gas pump, it really isn't worth it. People (as a whole) make something like 11 billion to 12 billion fill-ups in any given year in the U.S. There have been something like 150 or so such fires at gas pumps to date. That's an extremely low probability of such a thing happening.
