There are always signs that show the ban of cigarettes, matches and phones at gas stations. I can imagine fire being dangerous around gas, but you can’t possibly blow up a gas station with a mobile phone, can you?
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Id argue that people using phones pay less attention to their surroundings and that can become a hazard altho defective batterys also come to mind.
It’s from the incorrect belief using a mobile could cause a spark which would ignite petrol vapours. Some tv show or other did a pretty comprehensive rebuttal of it about 10 years ago if I remember correctly by filling a caravan with petrol vapour, a load of mobiles, and calling them all simultaneously to see if it exploded. It didn’t.
I first started noticing them pop up after there was a rash of cellphones spontaneously catching fire on planes. I imagine they’re mostly safe these days
I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is the Samsung Galaxy Note model that had issues with exploding, so that can definitely blow up a gas station.
But in general, the risk isn’t so much the phone causing an explosion, but the phone causing a distraction which causes a spill of gasoline, which is costly, wasteful, and does increase the likelihood of an explosion if a stray spark finds its way to that general area.
(It’s not widely known just when or why the idea that they could reliably blow up gas stations started or when the signs appeared, but it’s since been thoroughly tested and short of exposing wires to create a spark quite intentionally, nobody has been able to start a gas fire with a cellphone despite many attempts to do so)
It’s because people don’t pay attention when they are on their phones. That causes a hazard when handling an explosive liquid.
Radio transmission is achieved by charging and discharging an antenna, alternatively, with a low current high voltage. As a reaction, the ground of the antenna is also subject to high voltage ups and downs.
The radio transmission can induce currents on the phone body, the user, the car, or whatever other item.
Is it likely to cause a spark? No. An HF radio antenna full throttle will reliably spark if touched and will make the vehicle on which is mounted do sparks toward ground or other objects. But that’s a meter long, 100-1000watt antenna.
There are some videos of people setting fire the petrol station with a phone call, it’s a case in a billion but can happen.
Because it can happen, even if very unlikely, it’s common sense to warn people that it COULD, even if it’s very very rare.
So don’t do it but don’t be scared of it.
I mean it’s probably the same paranoia about it that makes the no smoking signs
Researchers on the whole cigarette issue said it’s not a problem don’t worry about it, we we’re testing this and we were actively trying to get the dang things to light a fire here and it just wasn’t happening
I mean think about it, if there’s one sign I know people don’t listen to it’s no smoking, if that risk was high we’d be seeing a gas station per week blowing up
Many people here are saying that cellphone can’t cause any problem at a gas station because some tv show have debunked it.
This is wrong. You can’t prove that something can’t happen by only testing a couple of times and see if it does or does not happen (It’s difficult to prove a negative outcome).
In electrical and electronics you also have approved equipment for use in an area with a high risk of explosion (often marked “EX”). Like at a gas plant or an oil rig.
This is equipment that has been proven to not be able to cause an explosion in dangerous areas. Like properly tested! And your cellphone is not one of those.
But you can get special phone that are approved.
Same reason there’s a no smoking sign. There’s an incredibly unlikely, but potential for a fire. And fires and fuel stations don’t mix well.
Remember when Samsung phones exploded due to faulty batteries? That happening at a fuel station would be a bad time.
More commonly there’s a concern that a short in your phone could cause a charge build up in your body (like a static shock) that could ignite fuel when you grab the pump handle. Again, unlikely, and there’s already safety features to address that.
Cigarettes aren’t technically hot enough to ignite gasoline either. So it’s also a semi irrelevant warning.
But lets err on the side of caution.
people really need to focus on what they’re doing instead of multi tasking all the time. refuelling a car while chatting on the phone can lead to a lot of spillage, even without the fire hazard.
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