Mobile phone, Fuel and petrol stations and explosions. Yes or no?

Text below photo
April 29 Good Weekend 2006 The Sydney Morning Herald

 0 Every month or so, I get an email warning me of
the hazards of using my mobile phone at a petrol
station. Usually it mentions the Shell Oil Company
as its source, and quotes the same three incidents
of petrol fires while refuelling. The first one has a
mobile phone sitting on a car boot - the phone
rings and generates a fireball. The second has a person speaking on a
phone, leading to nasty facial burns. The third has a ringing phone in
a pocket, causing burns to the groin
This email has be@n traced to a hoax that
landed in the in-box of a
Shell employee in Jamaica. He rebroadcast it with
the Shell Company signature on the email and this
non-approved signature gave it more credibility.
So, has a mobile phone ever set off a petrol
station fire? No, according to the Australian
Transport Safety Bureau, which looked at 243
petrol station fires worldwide between 1993 and
2004. No, according to the Australian Mobile
Telecommunications Association. In 2003 it said,
"There is no evidence whatsoever that a mobile
phone has ever caused an explosion at a petrol
station." No, according to the American Petroleum
Institute. It notes, "We can find no evidence of
someone using a cell phone causing any kind of
accident at a gas station anywhere in the world."
And no, according to the Mythbusters TV show,
which tried mightily to make a mobile phone
explode a chamber full of petrol vapour, and failed.
It is theoretically possible to set off a petrol fire
with a phone. First, the lithium battery could
 explode while charging if it were faulty. But you
don't normally simultaneously charge and talk
on your mobile phone while refuelling your car.
Second, the phone's internal electronics could fail
and make a spark. But the spark would be too
weak, and it would take much longer than a
typical refuelling time for the petrol vapour
to build up inside the phone to the critical
concentration level.What about the
electric field put out by your phone? Yes,
the field has been measured at 2 to 5
volts per metre, and has been known to interfere with heart monitors
and infant incubators in hospitals and electronic
equipment in planes. But it has never been known
to set off a petrol station fire.
So what set off the studied petrol station fires?
Mostly, it was static electricity. If you are wearing
synthetic clothes in the dryness of winter, and are
sliding in and out of the car, across the synthetic
material of the car seat, you can build up a big
static charge. Then, if the earthing wire on the
petrol hose is broken, as you touch the metal
nozzle of the hose to the metal neck of the petrol
tank, you can discharge a visible spark.
Phone companies post warnings about using
mobile phones in petrol stations. This is because
they're not designed with "intrinsic safety" to
enable them to operate without risk in hazardous
flammable vapour situations. It is also due to fear of
legal liability, despite all the evidence showing that
mobile phones don't cause fires in petrol stations.

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