Internet fuels myth of mobile dangers

By Stephen Cauchi
Science reporter

April 2, 2005

Using your mobile phone as you fill up your car with petrol will not cause an explosion. That's right: not cause an explosion. It's an urban myth, according to a British academic who has just completed a study of the topic.

But don't get careless. Mobiles may not cause fires but static electricity certainly does.

Adam Burgess, a sociology lecturer at the University of Kent, told a conference last week that internet rumour, misinformation and unnecessary warnings at petrol stations and in phone manuals created the myth.


It says the consensus among academics is that the odds of a mobile phone battery igniting petrol vapours is "so remote that any restriction on their usage (is) effectively groundless".

There have been fires caused during car refuelling but Dr Burgess says mobile phones have been wrongly blamed, as static electricity is the culprit. Sliding across a car seat can generate such electricity.

"Unless the charge is then grounded by touching the metal of the car's body, a spark can 'jump' to gasoline fumes when the person returns to the vicinity of the fuel tank," he says.

As most people touch their car or the petrol pump before they fill up, this usually isn't a problem, he says. But drivers who "latch" the pump - lock it into the tank opening while refuelling - then move away are at risk. They can get back into their car, recharge themselves with static electricity when they slide across the seat, and then head back to the pump.

"A spark can 'jump' to gasoline fumes when the person returns to the vicinity of the fuel tank," Dr Burgess said.

Warnings at service stations and in some mobile phone manuals, he says, are merely a legal precaution with no basis in fact.

In 2003, the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association said: "There is no evidence whatsoever that a mobile phone has ever caused an explosion at a petrol station..."


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