This video has been circulating Facebook with a warning about cellphone use around fueling locations. According to Snopes:
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.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/gasvapor.asp#Rvo8qaEABIG7Mhlg.99
ABC News reported, “Experts believe that it was static electricity — not the cell phone — that caused [a similar explosion at a gas station]… Static fires at the pumps are rare events, but they do happen. The Petroleum Equipment Institute reports on its Web site it has counted 158 reports to date of gas pump fires attributed to static electricity.”
The Federal Communications Commission states, “Scientific testing, however, has not established a dangerous link between wireless phones and fuel vapors. Wireless phone manufacturers and fuel companies have issued these warnings as a precaution. If you have questions about your wireless phone, contact your wireless phone company.”
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Video Credit: SAExInst