When I was younger and stupider, I was in charge of myself burning a large brush pile. We ran out of diesel fuel, so I had a great thought to use gasoline as a starter. I don’t know how many gallons poured out of the 5 gallon can, but as I soon found out, 1 oz. Would have been too much. Not knowing what might happen I decided to weight down some paper, light it and throw it to the pile, and turned to run. As I ran and the explosion came, the shock wave literally lifted me off the ground for a second. As I landed, I kept running until I realized that I was still alive. Across the street the neighbor come out and asked what was going on and if I was alright. He said it shook his house. I simply told him I got it all under control 
. Learned a great reverance for gas fumes that day.
It is interesting how we are all likely around gasoline each and every day and nothing crazy happens. These stories sure make life more interesting though. As mentioned, the vapor is what causes the trouble and not the liquid.
I was at a party where there was a bonfire and drinking of course. The fire was burning fine but some wise guy decided it would be a good idea to pour gasoline directly on the fire from a 2 gallon gas can. It was basically full. He would run up with the spout and splash some on the fire and run. The fire would flare some but nothing too crazy. Then he went back to do this again and he let go of the can. The entire can, almost completely filled, went right into the middle of the fire and everyone started to run. The fire got much hotter and burned very brightly for maybe 30 seconds but the overall impact from an entire can of gas going on the fire wasn’t all that crazy.
I am sure using automotive solvents on hornets nests probably isn’t good for the environment either. Remember that many superfund sites are where industry washed parts in solvents, especially chlorinated solvents, and just let them run out on the ground. Brake cleaner is pretty hardcore nasty stuff so can’t imagine that is good to put in the ground.
Spray meant for the purpose of getting wasps may not be harmless but it works and is probably not nearly as nasty as brake cleaner and other automotive solvents.
Aviation paint stripper is also pretty nasty stuff. I don’t know if that or brake cleaner is worse.
Back in my much younger days a friend and I were going to a Steppenwolf concert in OK City. We were in his 67 Impala SS which he had just gotten back from the body shop after being sideswiped. The entire car was painted in a metallic blue/green and it was gorgeous.
It’s built up now but back then the 30 mile stretch from Okarche, OK to OK City was pretty bare. On that stretch I started smelling something. My friend dismissed it. I continued to smell it and he continued to dismiss my nose.
At one point I looked around and saw smoke coming from the back seat. NOW he listens. He pulled over and found the paint burnt off of bottom of the left rear quarter, lower left trunk lid, and burned taillights.
The cause? He had left a thin plastic container of kerosene in the trunk next to the taillights. When he turned the lighting on at dusk the heat from the bulbs started burning through the thin plastic and eventually started the kerosene burning.
Luckily the one place where he pulled over was the only gas station along there. He borrowed their fire extinguisher and then started making plans for the body shop on the following Monday.
I asked him WITH he was carrying flammables in the trunk. “Well, I didn’t think there would be a problem”.
Goes to show you can never outwit Murphy’s Law I guess…
I worked on the FlashJet paint removal system. We developed the power supply and lamps used in the system. It still outperforms chemical and laser system paint removal techniques from aircraft in both aluminum and composite skins.
I don’t know a lot about aviation paint or removal. With all the talk of trying to use less toxic materials for worker safety and the environment, I am all for new and cleaner methods, especially if they work better. I know some of the older low-VOC automotive paints were crap but they now seem better than ever.
There are still decades of work to cleanup old industrial sites, military bases, and such that were contaminated with solvents, especially chlorinated hydrocarbons which tend to be especially nasty.
There is trouble in our city with old dry cleaning sites, pcb in sand dredged from the harbor that has to be treated as a hazerdous waste, at the cabins muck bay, sawdust from a 20’s sawmill that cannot be disturbed due to high mercury content etc. etc. Remembering don’t eat berries from along side the road due to lead contamination from leaded gas, then a lot younger they used to spray dirt roads in MN with Dioxin for dust control, I guess since it has been paved over no worries.
Oh, the old dry cleaning sites are EVERYWHERE! I forgot about those!
Then there are the old gasoline stations with steel tanks that rotted out and spilled an untold amount of gasoline into the surrounding soil and groundwater… The state now has audits of gasoline purchased in bulk by the stations and the amount the sell each month. If there is a loss, the site is investigated for leaks.
Old gas stations used to find it cheaper to just let the gas leak rather than fix the problem. One of the state DNR guys was telling me about a gas station in southern MO. This was before regulation on such matters but the place was losing over 5000 gallons a month! The area is karst with springs, sinkholes, and caves. A small spring nearby reeked of rancid gasoline and everything around it was dead. The well at the gas station was contaminated and had the same stench of rotten gas. The state kept telling him it was leaking gas but he considered it to be “free brush and weed killer” and would spray it all over the place to keep the weeds down. There were no regulations to stop this at the time so it just kept happening.
Well, one day, he flipped on a light at the gas station and the place blew sky high. He was injured but survived. I think at that time he retired from the gas station business and that was a good thing!
Luckily stuff like this can no longer just go on.
I once tried to warn a guy not to do that, but did not do it in time. Boy that cup sure melted fast.
- Would the gasoline dissolve the plastic bag?
- Can the fuel syphon-pump tubes we used years ago still work in today’s vehicles?
In China, we bought Yantai fresh beer, (unpasteurized) the street vendor dispensed from keg into a very thin-walled plastic bag. Worked fine.
A lot of plastic bags are made of polyethelene, which won’t dissolve in gasoline. Of course, it’s pretty much impossible to completely seal a grocery bag, so it’ll just leak out the top. 
At least I haven’t brought pizza up, but if you ever used that epoxy wood filler for rotted wood, I don’t know what the stuff is that is used to stiffen the fibers up before hand but it’s pretty strong like acetone. So I used a red solo cup and it didn’t take more than a couple minutes before the whole bottom dissolved. Stuff’s not cheap either.
It was bad enough that a RV owner decided to use some sort of water tank to hold gasoline (right next to the engine) and set the RV on fire right at the gas pump. The RV, the pump, and part of the canopy above it were a total loss. Could have been so much worse than it was.
Tire still looks good.
Same with the front clip
A lot of beers are unpasteurized. It’s cold filtered.
My home brew is unfiltered. @bing I bought plastic squeeze bottles for the would preservative from the manufacturer just so I would not have your issue. Glad the bag held up, that would be a heck of a mess if it did not.
I went to college in Ohio, and volunteered at a conference in NYC so I could get in free. Someone asked me where I was from and I said Ohio. He then told me, “We pronounce that as ‘Iowa’ here.” Sometimes it is amusing to hear things like that from people who think they are the smartest or most traveled one in the room.
“I’m sure Ohio has speech therapists who could help you with that.”
Actually, the point wasn’t that I couldn’t pronounce it; it was they didn’t know Ohio was a state. I live in Maine now and had one person at a conference I was attending tell me he didn’t know Maine was a state. The educational system in the US is severely lacking in some ways.