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Fuel in a Fire
Wildfire smoke has given Oregon the world’s most hazardous air. So why are workers outside pumping gas?
Parts of Oregon this week achieved the distinction of having the worst air quality in the world. Due to the wildfires, the air quality index rating for Portland exceeded 500, which is literally off the charts. (Anything over 150 is considered “unhealthy” and anything over 300 is “hazardous.”) The Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration has urged employers to shut down outdoor work activity when possible. Despite this, there’s still one group of workers needlessly spending their days outdoors: the station attendants who pump drivers’ gasoline because of Oregon’s ban on self-service fueling.
Oregon and New Jersey are the only two states in the country in which self-service gasoline is illegal. There are some exceptions to the Oregon law. In 2015, the state legalized self-service in rural areas where it would be cost-prohibitive to have someone constantly manning the pumps. Drivers of diesel vehicles can dispense their own fuel, as can farmers and some other commercial and government drivers. And since 2002, motorcyclists have been allowed to pump their own gas, too.
(Amusingly, while researching this today I learned that I have been breaking the motorcycle law for years. The text of the law technically requires an attendant to physically hand the gas pump to the driver and to take it back after fueling. In practice, no attendant has ever insisted on obeying this rule, entrusting me to carry out the dangerous task of removing and returning the pump handle by myself.)
Oregon also temporarily relaxed the ban on self-service this spring in response to the COVID epidemic. Based on what we know now about COVID transmission, this seems unlikely to have made much difference to the spread of the virus, but the couple of months in which Oregonians were allowed to pump their own gas did demonstrate that residents are up to the task (albeit with a learning curve for drivers who have never refueled outside state borders).
Yet now, when spending hours in the outside air is unambiguously hazardous to health, there does not appear to be any official relief for fuel attendants. Enforcement of the ban on self-service falls to the…
