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Fire Spray Challenge: Dangerous New Social Media Challenge [Video]

By Paula Mooney
Published on: 15:55 PST, Apr 17, 2016

According to WSET, the fire spray challenge is the latest and perhaps one of the most dangerous challenges involving aerosol cans and fire that has hit social media. Whereas previous fire challenges found teens setting themselves afire and then trying to jump into the shower or a pool to extinguish the fire, the fire spray challenge shows teens spraying a flammable liquid from a can and holding a lighter in front of it to try and create a cool-looking flame.

Sure, such a scene worked well when Rob Lowe’s character did the fire spray challenge in the movie called St. Elmo’s Fire, when he was trying to talk to Demi Moore’s 22-year-old character about the title of “St. Elmo’s fire” being an illusion that sailors sometimes reported seeing while they were out at sea. The character described that the blue flashes of light weren’t really real and neither was the crisis at hand.

However, the fire spray challenge is a real crisis at hand, with those accepting the challenge placing themselves in a dangerous position. The fire spray challenge could also be seen in a pivotal role in the movie True Romance, when the lead female character used a can of hairspray and a lighter in order to incinerate the face of the man attacking her. And such is the reason that the fire spray challenge is dangerous.

Anytime flames are involved with combustible cans under pressure, a fire hazard is born. Although the flames sometimes stay where the person wants them to remain — straight ahead in front of the person — other times the person can’t control where the flames may travel. That is why the cans of plenty of flammable objects, like cans of Pam cooking spray or Lysol spray or almost any other similar type of spray come with warnings not to expose them to heat or open flames, because the contents are under pressure.

Not only could the can being held explode, but the flying parts of the exploded can could become like shrapnel and cause untold damage.

As reported by The Inquisitr, even those who deal with fire for a living sometimes experience the wrath of such a dangerous element. A fire-breather caught himself on fire recently during an event at a high school that went terribly wrong — with the fire-breather suffering burns on his body.

On Instagram, the hashtag #firespraychallenge currently has 4,389 posts. While plenty of the fire spray challenge posts show those conducting the challenge laughing and giggling, one shudders to think how horribly graphic the videos could have become if the fire went out of control.

Some videos show fire coming dangerously close to the faces of other people in the videos.

The scary part about the fire spray challenge videos is just how close some of the creators come to burning themselves — well beyond the minor burns some of them display in the videos. Some teens performing the fire spray challenge hold the cans in a way that they are spraying the flammable liquids (like perfume, oil or alcohol) directly onto the hand that’s holding the fire.

Others seem to escape serious injury from the fire spray challenge when their flammable liquids mysteriously (and thankfully) refuse to ignite.

Some of the children performing the fire spray challenge seem to have no idea of how dangerous playing with fire and flammable liquids under pressure can be.

As reported by Mashable, some of those who undertook the fire spray challenge accidentally burned themselves.

The fire spray challenge is being called a dumb and dangerous trend that parents should warn their kids against performing.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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