Driver 'blows up' car with 'excessive' use of air freshener

[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.

[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...

[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.

[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.

[mrkd]

https://go.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters-jr-on-discover...

[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.

[kilo_bravo_3]

Those aren't scare quotes.

They're quote quotes.

The BBC follows a journalistic style guide that requires the use of quotes when directly quoting someone else when the attribution is not clear.

That makes it easier to determine, when reading an article, if the substance of an article is based on a journalist's own research and observations or those of another.

It is actually the right way to do things.

BBC News style guide: https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art201307021121335...

[netsharc]

This happened a few years ago in Germany with deodorant: https://www.welt.de/regionales/nrw/article134335255/Auto-exp...

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

[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.

[bovermyer]

Correct.

Unless they're based on whatever chemical combination makes Febreeze work, in which case it does actually eliminate odor. There's a fascinating story behind the invention of Febreeze.

[peterwwillis]

Hiding a smell is air freshening. If you're thinking of purifying, that's a separate thing.

[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.

[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.

[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 Hairspray can in bonfire

[Reason077]

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

[dundercoder]

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

[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.

[ThrowawayR2]

Vaporized fuel + air explosions is essentially what occurs in the cylinders of a gasoline engine of an automobile; there's nothing mysterious about this.

[blattimwind]

Never experimented with potato cannonry?