366 
The  FlasJi-Point  in  Mineral  Oils. 
Am.  Jour.  PJbarm. 
July,  1893. 
It  is  obvious  to  common  sense  that  the  poor  should  be  supplied 
with  oil,  such  as  the  rich  supply  themselves  with,  safe  to  work  with 
at  ordinary  temperatures,  and  perfectly  safe  from  danger  of  explosion 
in  ordinary  lamps  properly  attended  to.  With  ordinary  petroleum 
there  are  many  real  lamp  explosions,  in  spite  of  all  that  is  said  to 
the  contrary.  Carry  the  lamp  about,  attempt  to  blow  it  out,  or  turn 
down  the  wick  too  far,  and  the  lamp  explodes.  These  could  never 
happen  with  an  oil  whose  flash  is  a  few  degrees  above  the  tempera- 
ture of  the  oil  in  the  lamp.  Lamp  fatalities  are  so  dreadful  that 
one  would  think  that  a  few  would  waken  up  the  people  so  as  to  get 
the  matter  put  right ;  but  the  deadly  tale  goes  on  day  by  day,  but 
it  is  among  the  very  poor,  and  nobody  seems  to  care.  The  Govern- 
ment, contrary  to  the  example  of  all  other  civilized  countries,  has 
given  what  is  practically  a  certificate  of  safety  for  oils  flashing  above 
730,  and,  instead  of  protecting  us,  has,  by  legislation,  shut  itself 
out  from  the  power  of  interfering.  So  these  dangerous  oils  can  be 
stored  in  any  quantity  anywhere.  Store  proprietors  and  railway 
companies  exercise  great  care ;  nevertheless,  our  lives  are  at  the 
mercy  of  the  idiosyncracy  of  individuals,  and  we  may  expect  a 
catastrophe  on  the  grand  scale  some  day. 
In  the  past,  nobody  took  any  interest  in  the  petroleum  laws 
except  the  representatives  of  the  oil  trade.  It  is  time  scientific  men 
for  the  sake  of  the  voiceless  poor,  should  pay  some  attention  to  the 
matter.  The  science  put  before  the  Parliamentary  Committee  was 
sometimes  of  a  strange  kind,  and  matters  of  fact  were  treated  as 
matters  of  opinion  instead  of  being  settled  by  experiment.  It  is 
evident  the  Government  does  not  know  that  the  flash-point  (Abel) 
is  in  all  cases  a  point  of  real  danger,  and  in  stores  and  tanks  of  great 
danger.  They  evidently  think  there  is  no  danger  until  the  tem- 
perature of  the  old  open  test.  They  would  never  have  lowered  the 
safety  point  from  100°  to  730  if  they  had  known  that  the  old  test 
was  deceptive  by  that  interval — and  they  ought  to  have  known. 
Oil  vapors,  when  hot,  as  in  the  old  open  test,  diffuse  away  pretty 
rapidly,  but  when  cold,  as  in  a  store,  they  are  very  heavy,  roll  along 
to  the  lowest  point,  and  if  there  are  no  air  currents,  diffuse  away 
very  slowly.  They  can  be  decanted  from  vessel  to  vessel  like  car- 
bonic acid  gas ;  but  this  the  Government  officials  are  ignorant  of, 
and  think  that  oil  vapors  diffuse  rapidly  into  the  atmosphere  like 
coal  gas. 
