# Cell Phones and Gas Pumps

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cell-phones-and-gas-pumps/245220>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 15, 2004, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cell-phones-and-gas-pumps/245220 "2004-05-15T03:13:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![brianjedi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@brianjedi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianjedi)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cell-phones-and-gas-pumps/245220/1 "2004-05-15T03:13:03Z")

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OK, I saw this covered on **Mythbusters** and thought it was settled. Now I find this on FARK:

[Phone Ignites Gas Station Fire](http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/14/tech/main617547.shtml)

Now, I’m not a pyrotechnician, electrical engineer or gas pump technician, but what’s the story here? Did the phone really start the fire, as the New Paltz Fire Chief claims? Or, did the college student fail to discharge before starting to pump gas and then spark some other way?

Can you honestly ignite a gas fire with a cell phone?

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**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cell-phones-and-gas-pumps/245220/2 "2004-05-15T04:34:03Z")

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There’s not enough information in the article to say. I’ve seen one other case where a gas pump fire was blamed on a cell phone, but in this case there were pics from a surveillance camera. It was fairly clear from the pics that the guy had the phone in his right hand up to his ear, and touched the car near the gas cap area with his left hand, which caused a spark.

While it is possible that the cell phone did indeed cause the pump fire, this generally requires a malfunction of some type in the cell phone. It’s much more likely that a simple static discharge was to blame, but the person happened to be holding a cell phone at the time, so the phone gets blamed.

Static discharges cause about 150 pump fires per year, IIRC, which is a pretty small number considering how many millions of people use the pumps every day. I’ve never seen a documented case of a cell phone starting a pump fire.

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**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cell-phones-and-gas-pumps/245220/3 "2004-05-15T04:38:51Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Stop Static is a safety campaign intended to increase public awareness of the potential danger posed by the discharge of static electricity during refueling. **This report does not pertain to cellular telephones.**

Source: [Petroleum Equipment Institute](http://www.pei.org/static/)