You would think that this would not need to be said.

But the Trinidad & To­ba­go Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed yes­ter­day is­sued a re­lease re­mind­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic that “smok­ing is strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed at Ser­vice Sta­tions as it pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant risk as a lit cig­a­rette or loose cig­a­rette ash can ig­nite gaso­line vapours in the air.”

NP ref­er­enced a video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia show­ing a mem­ber of the pub­lic smok­ing a cig­a­rette in close prox­im­i­ty to a fu­el dis­penser even though a “No Smok­ing” sign was clear­ly vis­i­ble, as the rea­son for hav­ing to is­sue the re­lease.

They al­so warned about us­ing cell phones at ser­vice sta­tions.

“Out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, de­spite on­go­ing de­bates re­gard­ing ev­i­dence link­ing fires / risks to mo­bile phone ig­ni­tions, NP strong­ly dis­cour­ages the use of cell phones in the area of the ve­hi­cle filler point when fill­ing a ve­hi­cle and / or in the im­me­di­ate vicin­i­ty of a fu­el dis­penser. Mo­bile phones are not de­signed or cer­ti­fied for use in po­ten­tial­ly ex­plo­sive at­mos­pheres, which ex­ist tem­porar­i­ly around the pump and noz­zle dur­ing re­fu­elling,” the re­lease stat­ed.

“More­over, al­though NP works along­side Ser­vice Sta­tion Deal­ers to mit­i­gate these types of in­stances as much as pos­si­ble, we are al­so seek­ing the co­op­er­a­tion of the pub­lic in com­ply­ing with all safe­ty mes­sages post­ed through­out the Ser­vice Sta­tion net­work and in ex­er­cis­ing their so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­vent de­struc­tion and harm to them­selves or prop­er­ty,” it stat­ed.

NP said the safe­ty of its cus­tomers is a pri­or­i­ty that it takes “very se­ri­ous­ly” as they ap­pealed to mem­bers of the pub­lic to ex­er­cise cau­tion when re­fu­elling and to keep cig­a­rettes, lighters, naked lights and all oth­er po­ten­tial ig­ni­tion sources off the Ser­vice Sta­tion fore­court and away from the im­me­di­ate vicin­i­ty of fu­el dis­pensers.

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