Just recieved the following as a PowerPoint attachment to an internal company email. As I can't see a way of attaching it to this, I've attempted to imitate the layout below (hope it doesn't get too badly mangled on posting!) :-
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No. 099
Greatham Site 28th February 2002
Safety Learning Event
Off the job injury warning
What happened ?
SHELL have issued a warning about Mobile Phones, they have reported 3 incidents recently where Mobile Phones have ignited fumes whilst being answered / ringing during fuelling operations.
In the first case, the phone was placed on the boot lid during fuelling, it rang and the ensuing fire destroyed the car and the pump.
In the second, an individual suffered burns to the face when fumes ignited as he answered a call during fuelling.
In the third case, an individual suffered burns to the thigh and groin as fumes ignited when the phone, which was in his pocket, rang during fuelling.
Why did it happen ?
It is a misconception that Mobile Phones can?t ignite fuel / fumes.
It is believed that the more modern phones (those that light up when either switched on or when they ring) have enough energy released to provide the spark for ignition!
Learning Points
1. Mobile phones should not be used in filling stations.
2. Mobile phones should be turned off before exiting the vehicle when
stopping in a filling station.
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Can't guarantee the veracity of this, I always thought the warnings were to prevent interference with electonic systems. If anyone wants the original (95kb), make your email address visible in a response and I'll forward it. It may be on Shell website, but you need to register to view the likely area.
Jack
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I suspect it is a wind-up. Here's the thing...
It destroys a face because the phone is near a face
it destroys trousers because its in a pocket
it destroys a car because its on the boot
- It isn`t the phone that's explosive, its the vapour.
Enough energy for ignition ? What's that mean ?
Also, a phone lighting up ? Oh please, a PCB and LEDs - those well known spark generators. How do you think fuel pumps are lit ?
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It looks like a hoax to me. It's a pity the hoaxers have learned not to put "Pass this to as many people as you can" on these, as it made them easy to spot.
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That's what I thought. It's a shame that things like this can easily turn into the "truth", urban myths etc.
I found it slightly amusing as it came from our internal communications dept., just like them to spam the entire company with a hoax!
Jack
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Many petrol stations, particularly newly built ones, use radio frequency to transmit relevant info to and from the pump to the till/controlling computer so that's out for a start.
Think about it - How many people get bad static from their cars? I certainly do from mine in at least one pair of shoes. If petrol was so dangerous a mobile phone could not be used then you'd have entire petrol stations plus various customers and employees disappearing in fireballs everytime you got out the car and touched it again in the wrong shoes!
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Dan,
It might be your trousers.
I used to get it with a certain pair of strides and got to be a shivering wreck as I waited to exit the car and then get the expected belt up the arm. I learned to shut the door by pushing the glass. I am told if we hold the steel door jamb on the way out, this releases the volts without the shock.
Chucked the trousers...........no more shocks.
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Another method is to press the car bodywork firmly rather than lightly touch it. It works for metal filing cabinets on nylon carpets.
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Sorry guys, the principles described are not a hoax. The mobile phone risk in fuel stations has nothing to do with the potential (and probably theoretical) risk of the radio waves to your brains or gonads! Radio waves won't trigger a fire, but a spark can.
A fuel station can have a build up of petrol vapour, and that build up can be explosive. Any industrial process which can potentially generate a similar vapour build up uses so-called explosion-proof electrical equipment in those areas. These pieces of equipment are designed to ensure that the maximum energy release during fault conditions is insufficient to ignite any vapour. Visit a refinery and you will be obliged to leave your mobile at the gate, and you will be thrown off site for using one. I have had to get a permit to use my camera on a refinery site, because it contains a battery, and I had to avoid certain areas.
Mobile phones contain a substantial battery, and this contains more than sufficient energy to potentially trigger ignition. They are by no means classified as explosion proof, and that's why they should not be used at petrol stations. In a fault situation, they are capable of triggering a fire. Yes, filling stations use electrical equipment, and radio transmission, but it is designed for the job and therefore safe.
Regards
John
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I made the same comment on a similar thread several weeks ago. If there is a risk, no matter how small, why take it? Are we so addicted to mobile phones that we can't switch them off in a filling station?
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This is no hoax. Fuel-air mixtures are very explosive (TWA800, for example). Anything that can create a spark is potentially capable of causing an explosion. The DETR recommend swiching mobile phones off in petrol stations, and a couple of years ago, all the major petrol retailers across the US put up warning signs at stations as a precaution (full story at news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2074257,00.html)
Andy
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If there is a build up of vapour that is dangerous, why do they not use fans to circulate the air?
Off the point a bit, I remember hearing that some petrol stations were going to install vapour traps to catch this vapour and then re-use the petrol. Presume that the cost was too great for the minimal (if any) returns
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Vapour recovery systems are used in the USA and it is a legal requirement that all new cars sold there must be compatible. Us Europeans are well behind the US in many areas of automotive legislation.
Fueling presents an enourmous risk. Just witness the recent Mini recall ref static build up near fuel nozzle.
My understanding is that one can be prosecuted for using a mobile in a petrol station. I've certainly seen staff refuse service to someone using one.
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JohnS,
Yep I agree, this is what I posted last time.
Author: David W (---.in-addr.btopenworld.com)
Date: 15-03-02 07:46
It is all about the explosion risk as Phil says. And it's not so much that it is *likely* to happen with a mobile phone, more that they will not be tested for use in a flammable or explosive environment to say it couldn't happen.
In a previous life I was responsible for first call attendance to potentially explosive situations. All our training was to minimise the risk of our actions causing further danger.
When entering a possible explosive environment we were unable to use our radios/phones/pagers and only certain items of our equipment were allowed in this situation.........the ones that were tested as "intrinsically safe"........even special torches.
Sometimes those involved in the situation without any training (ie. the public) would have already carried out actions that were deemed very risky. Thankfully I never experienced actual explosion from these actions but that didn't make them a good idea. However I did see that even small scale explosions can do a terrible amount of damage to people and property.
I'm happy to give the mobile a rest at the petrol station.
David
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David
Yes, pehaps I should have said intrinsicaly safe rather than explosion proof!
Like you I'm sure I've posted an answer to this before!
Regards
john
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CM
Vapour traps are an environmental issue concerned with limiting the release of hydrocarbon vapours to atmosphere and so improving ground level air quality than saving money.
Regards
john
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Slightly O/T but related (similar battery), both Compaq and Dell had worldwide recall programmes on certain laptops as there was a risk of the batteries shorting interally and going up in flames, which they do quite spectacularly.
www.compaq.com/newsroom/pr/2000/pr2000102701.html can't find the Dell one.
Their major (unpublished) worry was what happened if someone's went up mid-flight. Many thousands of laptops affected, probably a large percentage of these were never addressed. There is a story that only one ever went up, it was in a car boot in the States and the car was burnt out as a result.
So it's conceivable that design/manufacturing faults can cause problems too.
Better safe than sorry...
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The principals are correct, Using a mobile next to a petrol pump is a bad idea. But this email stinks of a hoax. I doubt anyone can verify these events really happened. It's just the sort of email that is designed to spread around the net as fast as possible.
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Quite agree. As with most hoaxes, there is some truth in it, but nearly every message that starts with "xxx have issued a warning" is bogus. If they had, you wouldn't just be reading it in an email.
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Surely the biggest risk of any spark is from every single car that drives in, especially petrol engined ones, yet we don't hear of many setting alight to petrol stations.
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There are some risks that are avoidable (phones) and some that less so (driving onto forecourt).
It's all about reducing potential hazards to safety.
Which is something companies have to be ever more wary of in our ever more litigious society, rightly or wrongly.
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Exactly Dave N!
I'm glad someone said it!
Apart from static there's the whole HT circuit.
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Whether or not there is a risk in using a cellular phone in Gas Station, I'll bet a pint that the posted e-mail is not genuine.
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Did a google search, 4th entry was this article
www.snopes2.com/autos/hazards/gasvapor.htm
which basically confirms the hoax but also the (remote) danger
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I'll agree with Mark on the near certainty of a hoax. Were it true the press would have made headline news of it, with the safety club screaming across our TV screens for a complete ban on anything more high tech than two baked bean cans connected by a piece of string.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you turn a mobile phone off doesn't it transmit back to it's base station to say "I'm not switched on any more"? So switching it off in a petrol station is guaranteed to make it do the thing you are trying to avoid it doing.
GJD
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surely the ignition oportunities offered by a mobile phone are nothing compared to the various electrical components on a car (starter, alternator, etc...)
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From what I remember of my tanker training courses when I was in the Merchant Navy, to cause combustion you must have 3 things FUEL, OXYGEN, IGNITION SOURCE. At a petrol station you have the first two in abundence, but the ignition source from a mobile phone? If the battery was to short out and cause a spark then yes I can see the problem but it may well do it while the phone is swithced off. WHAT can cause a SPARK with sufficient energy in a mobile phone to cause a petrol/air mix to start to combust? I dont know please someone enlighten me!
Bill
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Mobile phones are not very good at heating things up. Here's a report from the Evansville (NC) Daily Record, from March 2001:
An attempt to cook a baked potato using cell phones ran up a bill of over one million dollars Tuesday last. Using off-peak callplans, and with maximum free minute allowances, chef Chuck Morris announced he was "astounded" by his bill. "They sell you this phone and don't tell you how much it could cost," he said. At one stage over fifty phones where clustered around the potato. Kitchen staff complained of headaches and "This weird thumping sensation back of my head." The customer who ordered the meal came in almost two weeks later to eat it, but sent it back because it had too much chilli sauce. He was alerted to the fact that his dinner was ready by text message. "It's disappointing," said Bill Hicksman (29), a regular at Molly's Diner. "The skin wasn't crispy like it is from the oven. And they smothered it with all that chilli sauce when they know I prefer lemon pickle." Doctors say it is unlikely anyone at the diner will suffer any ill effects.
Chris
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Chris, they obviously were not using WAP phones which are much more powerful than the ordinary mobile. For two years now we have gathered the family round for Xmas dinner where the collective power of a dozen such units cooks the turkey to a tee, though there have been comments that the roast potatoes were not very crisp.
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Tee hee. Just put my ready meal on the Nokia - shouldn't be long now.
An RF device such as a mobile phone can cause a spark - but it's unlikely. Could Shell afford to NOT have a warning sign up if the risk exists - even if microscopically small?
What Shell DO want though is your car on their forecourt. The posters here who wiffle on about 'what about the alternator/HT etc' are missing the point - after all there are several thousand fires a minute in every petrol engine ever built. The car in all its fire-breathing glory is designed to be on a forecourt.
The mobile, with its minuscule risk of ignition (RF/battery short/whatever) IS NOT.
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Very true Bill, But that Ignition source can be caused by the static charge built up by the passage of a vehicle through the air.... With an auto or lorry the speed of static accumulation will be close to that of dissipation but watch some time when aircraft are filled with fuel...the first thing that happens is that a ground wire is either clipped to a point on the landing Gear on small aircraft or to a special ground point on larger aircraft...
This is not just for the static charge built up through flight but for that generated by the high speed of pumping of the fuel At high rates through the hoses... you will see this sam safety clip used on normal fuel bowsers that provide petrol to the service stations or the ones that fill home heating oil tanks...
Randolph Lee
Nantucket Island, U.S.A.
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I agree entirely about the (lack of) risk. For one thing, the vapour/air mixture has to be in the right stoichiometric ratio to ignite, and that doesn't normally exist outside of a carburettor or a filler pipe. Having said that, the RF output from a phone can theoretically cause a spark if intercepted by the right shaped piece of metal (acting as an aerial) and the phones that vibrate usually use a tiny motor that has a commutator. Filling the phone with the right mix of explosive vapour would be difficult, however, and these risks are vanishingly small. The fuel companies have to cover themselves, though - we live in a litigious world...
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JBJ
Fuel air mixtures will ignite over a wide range of concentrations, not just at the stochiometric ratio. That is why vapours are so dangerous.
Stociometry is the point where the oxygen content is just right for the amount of fuel. If it were the case that this was the only concentration at which combustion occured, then car engines would never run!
Regards
John
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Sorry - I was being too precise - I meant roughly the right ratio. Vapour does disperse pretty quickly outside, though, and I still think that the risks from phones are miniscule. There are plenty of potential ignition sources in and around a car that almost never cause an explosion...
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