
Driver 'blows up' car with 'excessive' use of air freshener - sohkamyung
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-50810196
======
adamcharnock
Me and my friends had a lot of fun as teenagers using aerosols for a similar
purpose. We'd scavenge old aerosols from our parent's houses and use them as
the propellant for spud guns and the like (we didn't blow up any cars, for the
record).

I think the trick was to find the ones with propane propellant rather than
butane. I also suspect that the (rapidly boiled) moisture droplets from the
aerosol would have added to the explosive force too.

Eventually we decided to go straight to the source and got ourselves a little
oxy/propane welding kit. That worked a treat. I'm kind of surprised B&Q sold
that to a bunch a teenagers actually.

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zeroflow
Am I the only one thinking that this was no "excessive air freshener use" but
more like someone huffing flammable gasses?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The fuel:air ratio for getting high is way richer than the fuel:air ratio for
combustion. Also if you're getting high off it you're probably not going to
want to waste it. I'm assuming butane was the propellant for the air freshener
since IIRC that's a common propellant for things that are supposed to smell
nice.

[https://www.mathesongas.com/pdfs/products/Lower-(LEL)-&-Uppe...](https://www.mathesongas.com/pdfs/products/Lower-\(LEL\)-&-Upper-\(UEL\)-Explosive-
Limits-.pdf)

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airbreather
Many things hit an explosive atmosphere at around 4%.

Also, there is the concept of deflagration vs detonation, the latter being
decidedly worse, but unlikely in this case due to the geometry.

There is a whole field of electrical engineering dedicated to defining
potential for and avoiding of igniting explosive atmospheres in industrial
plant.

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shakna
Achieving the right fuel/air mixture before the lighter ignites it requires so
many things to go right (or wrong) that this might be one of those things
tossed around by conspiracy theorists for a long time.

Probably significantly helped by the improvement of door seals over the years.

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mrkd
[https://go.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters-jr-on-
discover...](https://go.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters-jr-on-
discovery/full-episodes/dynamite-air-freshener)

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justin66
A very strange use of scare quotes by the BBC.

The guy blew up his car with an excessive use of air freshener. "Blow up"
isn't a precise technical term we need to worry about abusing. "Excessive"
might be subjective or subject to debate, but when the resulting damage is
enough _to blow out the windows and bend the sheet metal,_ let's just go with
excessive.

~~~
davefp
Those aren't scare quotes, they're just regular quotes. Here I assume they're
taken from the police statement on the incident.

Edit to add quote in context:

> West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said the cause of the "dramatic"
> incident was "excessive" air freshener use.

~~~
justin66
No, they're scare quotes. Quoting the police statement would involve...
quoting the police statement (or a portion of it, or multiple portions joined
by elipsis), not quoting two separate words from the police statement.

Regarding your edit: yes, they use scare quotes in the article text as well as
the headline. It's stupid.

~~~
happytoexplain
I disagree. The feeling that immediately hits me when I read this headline is
that they are pulling terminology from a 3rd party and using quotes to in fact
_lessen_ the scare-factor of the terminology. To me, this headline says,
"here's how this incident is officially described, not just some stuff we're
making up to be dramatic - please read the article to get the details, because
the terminology is not necessarily objective." This feels responsible to me,
rather than fear-mongering. I think your approach may be a little tainted by
the common cynical outlook many people share regarding the entirety of the
concept of news.

~~~
dTal
The term "scare quotes" is not synonymous with "scary quotes" \- it refers to
quotation marks added in order to distance the author from the source of the
words, exactly as you describe.

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netsharc
This happened a few years ago in Germany with deodorant:
[https://www.welt.de/regionales/nrw/article134335255/Auto-
exp...](https://www.welt.de/regionales/nrw/article134335255/Auto-explodiert-
weil-Frauen-Deo-verspruehten.html)

From the pics, they must've been quite violent explosions...

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pcx
On a related note, a lot of folks feel air fresheners actually make the air
fresh. Don't they usually just hide the smell?

~~~
0xBA5ED
Easy brain hack. Name your thing what you want people to think it does.

~~~
jojo2000
Totally, the reality is : smell is masked and air is full of chemical
components harmful to your health [0]. Our olfactory receptors are there to
protect us. It should be noted that persons with bad perception of odors are
closer to their end [1]. At least, use some natural products which may be
dangerous, but for those, our body has had generations of evolution to
tolerate those.

There is nothing like odour destruction. It's just tricking the nose into
believing that another scent is around. Odours add in bizarre ways. If
something smells bad, 1) open the window and 2) solve the root cause.

[0] [https://www.considerable.com/home/cleaning-organizing/are-
ai...](https://www.considerable.com/home/cleaning-organizing/are-air-
fresheners-bad-for-you/) [1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3561743/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3561743/)

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janpot
Why would you use an air freshener if you're gonna smoke in it anyway?

~~~
zamadatix
Smokers tend to not notice the smell of smoke since they are constantly around
it/smell of it themselves.

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Reason077
Seems to happen pretty regularly! The “More on this story” links below the
article list two other similar incidents, in November 2019 and September 2017.

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gwbas1c
I personally find this story a little hard to believe.

Anyone able to explain this in a bit more detail?

Naively, I wonder if the driver may have had other flammable substances
present?

~~~
notjtrig
A quick spray in a potato cannon has the explosive energy to propel a potato,
it’s not unreasonable to think a the entire can can blow up a car.

[https://youtu.be/fioP8cflUIA](https://youtu.be/fioP8cflUIA) Hairspray can in
bonfire

~~~
yibg
Yea but the volume of the inside of a car is quite a bit larger than the
chamber of a potato cannon. It’ll take much more to create enough pressure.

~~~
shakna
And the attendants to this incident list "excessive" use as a cause.

You're only look at about a 4% mixture to get there. It is entirely within the
realm of possibility.

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Reason077
Excessive air freshener use can’t be healthy even if it doesn’t “blow up”.
Inhaling all that propellant and volatile compounds.

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dundercoder
How much pressure are we talking here to blow a windscreen? Enough to rupture
an eardrum?

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flareback
I wonder what really happened that he came up with that story to tell the
cops? I'm not sure I'm going to believe this story until we have Adam Savage
show it's possible.

~~~
snazz
Adam Savage already blew stuff up with spray sunscreen (for the same
reason—propane as a propellant). The hard part is getting the stoichiometry
right so it explodes instead of just burning.

~~~
yetihehe
If you contantly have source of ignition and add fuel, there will be a time
when mix is just above sustaining near ignition source and more rich
elsewhere. It doesn't take that much pressure to blow out windows in a car, it
doesn't need to be properly mixed at right ratio in whole volume of car. It
doesn't even need to be explosion, but very fast burning will increase
pressure enough to blow out windows.

