As soon as the epidemic begins, everyone rushes to buy the most important, most essential items – such as toilet paper – to prepare for the impending doom. It was ridiculous and what really caused it was an artificial deficit caused not by the epidemic but by direct hoardings. Well, always striving for self-improvement, we humans must learn our lessons, right? Wrong – and it’s absolutely dangerous now. After colonial pipelines and widespread panic over potential fuel shortages, people in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida have been shaken to collect as much gasoline as possible after states declared a state of emergency.
Lacking adequate fuel canisters for touring and hysteria makes people think unreasonably, people are leaning towards any means necessary to carry their snatched petrol, using standard storage containers and plastic bags to hold everything. Pictures and videos of people filling plastic bags quickly spread on the Internet – and were later published as many years old by fact-checker snoops – yet, the problem seems so bad that the U.S. Consumer Protection Commission was forced to issue a warning on Twitter.
Adopting a moderate approach, they warn against using plastic bags as petrol containers, but urge people not to look at them in order to do so; instead, help them and warn them of danger. After this tweet they explained: “We know it sounds easy, but when people are desperate they definitely stop thinking.” “They take risks that can have fatal consequences. If you know someone who is thinking of bringing in non-fuel containers to get gas, please let them know it’s dangerous.”
While this may seem obvious to many, there are several reasons why plastic bags should not contain volatile and flammable liquids. First, most are not waterproof and not designed to hold liquids at all – in the old video you can clearly spill gasoline from the bag. In addition, gasoline emits highly flammable fumes into the surrounding environment, so why seal in approved containers.
In reality, the Portable Fuel Container Safety Act 2019 (approved in 2020) makes it illegal to transfer gasoline to containers without adequate fire-extinguishing properties due to the possibility of explosions in plastic gas cans.
