Hand and facial burns related to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) refuelling and cigarette smoking—An underestimated risk?

Abstract

A number of liquid petroleum gas (LPG) burns have been reported in the last 3 years in line with the evolving widespread acceptance of LPG-powered cars in the public. LPG is a mixture of commercial butane and propane gas. Depending on the mixture of both, butane and propane, the boiling point of LPG lies in between 45 and 2 8C [1]. Refinements in the engineering process of LPG tanks using the Finite Element Method (FEM) lowered the wall sheet thickness from 3 to 2.8 mm without different bursting results [2]. To date some 25 cases are reported in the literature. In the largest case series with LPG-related burns among 18 patients (9 adults and 9 children), various injury mechanisms are described [1]. The weakening of the tank wall, crashes resulting in an impact to the tank and leakage from the tank was reported. Thus, technical errors or malfunctions were detected. All burned patients were inside the car when the explosion occurred with eleven cases of inhalation injury with seven of them requiring mechanical ventilation. Another case highlights a hand burn during refuelling a car with LPG [3]. He was struck by splashing LPG while he was disconnecting the LPG hose nozzle. The fact that LPG has such a low boiling point (between 45 and 2 8C) and its rapid vaporisation, frostbite injuries have been reported as the aforementioned case and another series on two patients [4]. Both cases were related to Article history: Accepted 22 July 2010