On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Lois Luckovich wrote: > > Today, I received this. > > > > The Petroleum Equipment Institute is working on a campaign to try and make > > people aware of fires as a result of "static" (that is, static > > electricity) at gas pumps. They have researched 150 cases of these fires. While it's true that there have been fires attributed to static electricity, this email is a hoax. See: http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/static.asp A dead giveaway is this line: > > The results were very surprising: > > 1) Out of 150 cases, almost all of them were women. Someone's taking a poke at women. PEI's study never mentioned gender. > > 5) Don't ever use cell phones or any other two way radio's / electronic > > devices when pumping gas . (The RF energy from a cell phone (a radio > > transmitter) can cause a sparking on bare metal, much like aluminum foil > > in a microwave oven . There's no evidence that this has ever happened. Cell phones only put out a few watts of RF power, not enough to cause arcing. Your microwave oven, on the other hand, puts out several *hundred* watts of RF. There's more info on the web site I mentioned above. _ _ __ _ _ _| | | | David M. Brodbeck (N8SRE) Ypsilanti, MI / _` | | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------- | (_| | |_| | | | @ cyberspace.org \__, |\__,_|_|_| "To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the |___/ pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be." |
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