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Warnings about the dangers of using cellular phones in the presence of gasoline fumes began circulating on the Internet in 1999: Examples: Though both versions of the original Internet warning alluded to an accident in Indonesia wherein a driver was burned and his car badly damaged as a result of such an explosion, no reports ever surfaced in the news media to confirm the incident. Moreover, nothing turned up about similar explosions in other countries. If sparks from cell phones were touching off conflagrations at gas pumps around the world, as suggested at the time, the phenomenon escaped the media's notice. Such rumors were furthered in May 1999 when a lengthy article appeared in the Bangkok Post supporting this warning. It mentioned a recent report in the China Post newspaper and from there proceeded to parrot the warning given in the longer example quoted above, complete with reference to the report by Shell Chemicals on the injuries suffered by the man in Indonesia and the Chinese Petroleum Corporation's instructions to filling stations to get drivers to switch off their phones while fueling. Okay, so the bit about a guy in Indonesia being turned into a human fireball didn't stand up. But what about persistent rumors concerning another supposed victim, this time an Australian man, supposedly done in by using his mobile phone as he refueled? Although in 1999 oil companies told the South China Morning Post they had heard reports of an Australian man being blown up recently when his phone rang as he was filling his car with gasoline, fire service heads in Australia insist the incident never happened. As for incidents elsewhere in the world, after several reports were circulated in the United States claiming mobile phones had been blamed for fires at gas stations, both the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) and the American Petroleum Institute issued statements denying the risk. The CTIA said, There is no evidence whatsoever that a wireless phone has ever caused ignition or explosion at a station anywhere in the world. Wireless phones don't cause gas stations to blow up. Warnings being posted in petrol stations simply perpetuate the myth. The American Petroleum Institute said, We can find no evidence of someone using a cellphone causing any kind of accident, no matter how small, at a gas station anywhere in the world. In June 2002 another authoritative-sounding warning on this subject began circulating on the Internet: Though we looked long and hard, we never found documentation confirming any of the three incidents described in the that warning. Moreover, Shell denied having issued a warning of this nature: There was a warning memo which originated at a Shell loading station in California, but it was issued only to caution employees about the potential dangers of static-related hazards at fueling stations; it said nothing about cell phones touching off fires. (The three incidents e-mail quoted above was teamed with a separate warning about the hazards posed by static electricity, a topic covered on our Static Quo page.) Okay, so it hasn't happened yet. Is there still a potential, as yet unrealized risk in using cell phones while refueling? According to some experts, there is a danger that using a mobile phone near gas pumps could touch off an explosion, but not only have we found no real-life instances of such an explosion occurring, we don't know anyone who has demonstrated experimentally that it's even possible (including the folks at The Discovery Channel's Mythbusters program). Even so, gas pumps in Australia bear stickers cautioning motorists to turn off their phones while refueling; Shell in Malaysia has affixed similar stickers to each of its gas pumps; numerous pumps in the U.S.A. are similarly adorned; Canada's major gas pump operators have banned customers from using mobile phones while at the gas pump; and in 1999 the city of Cicero, Illinois, passed the first law in the USA banning the use of cellular phones at gas stations. All of this activity was in the nature of CYA cautions rather than a response to a documented hazard. Cellular phone manufacturers Nokia and Ericsson have said the risk is very small that something will happen when one uses a cell phone at a gas station, but since there is a risk, it should be counted. Nokia also said that the company has been recommending for a long time that mobile phones should be turned off while the car is being refueled. What it is about a cellular phone that could possibly trigger an explosion is difficult to fathom, however. The claim that the batteries used in a cellular phone can ignite gasoline seems specious, since cellular phone batteries are the same voltage as automobile batteries (12V D.C.) but deliver far less current. Likewise, the claim that a cellular phone ringer uses more than 100 volts for excitation is a curious artifact of the regular telephone era: cellular phones don't have ringers; they produce audio tones that simulate the sound of a ringing telephone. News reports routinely attribute gas pump fires to cell phone use whenever a fire occurs at a service station where such a phone was in use at the time, and police and firefighters at the scene often simply assume the connection between the two to be valid. Later investigations, however, have always shown in such cases that the press reports were wrong, that something else (usually a discharge of static electricity) touched off the fires, and the presence of cell phones was coincidental rather than causal.
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