WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued letters to portable fuel container (PFC or gas can) manufacturers encouraging them to add vents to gas cans to ensure safe and effective refueling. This announcement comes in response to years of complaints about slow, frustrating fuel flow from modern gas cans. With this reminder to manufacturers to incorporate self-closing vented designs, EPA wants to help make it easier and faster for Americans to refuel.
“Part of Powering the Great American Comeback means ensuring manufacturers have the clarity and encouragement to deliver products Americans want,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “The confusion surrounding gas cans has been a frustration for years. We are proud to address this issue head on. Moving forward, Americans should have gas cans that are compliant, but most importantly, that are effective and consumer friendly.”
Today’s letter is part of EPA’s broader effort to address the issue of regulatory confusion and accurately communicate to make sure manufacturers and the public understand EPA’s requirements. This will clear the way for manufacturers and consumers to be able to produce and use gas cans that are safe, compliant, and consumer friendly.
Background
In 2007, EPA finalized a rule requiring PFC manufacturers to reduce evaporative emissions by sealing in gasoline vapors. These rules took effect in 2009 and specifically allow vents as long as they close automatically when not in use. Due to widespread confusion, many manufacturers stopped installing vents altogether.
In 2008, Congress passed the Children’s Gasoline Burn Prevention Act, requiring that gas cans be child-resistant, similar to a prescription bottle cap. These child resistance rules led to many of the spring-loaded, hard-to-use nozzles. This is enforced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
In 2020, Congress enacted the Portable Fuel Container Safety Act, also enforced by CPSC, which mandated flame mitigation devices in cans to prevent flashback ignition. This further complicated nozzle and spout designs.
EPA’s evaporative emissions standards were designed to protect public health without compromising usability.
Current gas can designs are the child of incest between liability lawyers and radical greens who oppose gas powered equipment period.
Who needs a chain saw if one is living in a
500 sq ft urban apartment?
I still have two Blitz gas cans. They were forced out of business by repeated law suits because stupid teen’s kept pouring gasoline on live fires no matter how many labels were one the can.
https://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma/2012/07/09/why-the-largest-maker-of-portable-gas-cans-is-going-out-of-business/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/02/16/trump-officially-ends-biden-era-war-on-american-appliances/#comment-4038233
This is weird. I’m seeing both Dave and joe’s posts in a single box, and when I try to upvote Dave’s post, I get sent to one of Dave’s links.
Looks like the link to Dave’s previous post is showing a preview of the post and Joe’s reply. The post with 32 upvotes is the old one he linked to.
10,000 upvotes.
I haven’t been able to use the stupid idiotic gas cans at all since the EPA forced the redesign of the cans a number of years ago. I have to unscrew the safety pour spout and pour the gas out not using the safety spout. Cursing g’damit every time I have to do it &*^$%$%#$%%*)+&**(^&%^$
We had a stupidly hideous experience with one of those. For reasons I won’t go into, we had to put diesel fuel into a home oil tank because the homeowner was out of fuel. The oil company could not deliver. We had to buy a can, buy the fuel, put it in the tank and repeat twice. The spout was behind an overgrown bush next to the house (tank in basement) and it was 30 degrees outside with snow on the ground. We ended up using a small plastic pitcher from the house and a funnel to transfer fuel from the unwieldy can with its safety spout. After 45 minutes our daughter called to find out why it was taking so long. All we could say was never again. And yes, hubby was doing his fair share of cursing.
Any improvement will be fine with me, since evolution has not endowed me with three arms and hands.
Go to Rural King/Tractor Supply/WalMart and buy a fuel can vent&nozzle kit. Problem solved and an American plastics manufacturer supported.
These are what I use, the Type I – best ones I’ve encountered in years
https://eagle.justrite.com/safety-cans
I have used them on job sites for years, and especially for kerosene heater filling. Among the farmers I know and have worked with US military jerry cans are the go to, tough as nails and you can beat someone down with those “donkey dick” spouts they come with. 😉 Myself, I use 1 or 2.5 gallon plastic cans for mowers, chainsaws what have you, and I don’t mind getting the spout/vent kits, catch them on sale at end of summer and pick up several, pretty sure I have 4 of them still in package in basement right now.
Obvious solution: refill the lawnmower from repurposed gallon milk jugs.
God alone knows how many hundreds of gallons of gas and diesel I have carried in those!
This really was a boss move. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on X yesterday –
“Gas cans used to POUR gas. Now they just DRIBBLE like a child’s sippy cup. The Trump EPA’s message to gas can makers:
VENT THE DARN CAN and let it FLOW BABY FLOW!”
Do you know how much the emissions are that this is supposed to mitigate? I don’t. I assume it is tiny on the individual can scale and huge when multiplied by the millions of cans in use.
And when I was a baby, my dad kept the gas can in an area I could not get to. When I could get to it, I was tasked with filling up the mower and mowing the yard!
I still have my old gas can with the self-closing vent. (I.e. I close it myself.)
Personally, I’m more interested in science and climate than gas cans, Or using PETE bottles for storing interesting solvents or humidifier anti-bacterials. I assume they aren’t commonly used because of PETE’s low melting point,
I just buy the nato cans now to get around all this garbage. Easier to pour out of.
Ditto. I’ve got, I think, 9 NATO cans, $60 apiece in sets of four. One movable spout for the whole lot.
I do have small 1 and 2 gallon plastic cans with California spouts, and bitched about them until Willis told me they are useful for filling generators because you just jam the spout in and it shuts off when it’s full. So I fill them from the 5 gallon can and haven’t overflowed the generator yet. I love my little Honda 2200, but it’s a pain in the butt to change the oil, and refilling the gas makes me nervous if it’s still hot.
Floridian here, so I know generators. In 35 years I’ve never had a single one that isn’t a PITA to change oil or do routine maintenance. You are not alone 😉
I have lots of gas cans, Pre-EPA and post. The Post-EPA cans have all been modified. I broke the limiting features on the spouts and drilled vent holes in the handles. Still a pain to use, but a lot better than the way they were designed.
Go to Rural King/Tractor Supply/WalMart and buy a fuel can vent&nozzle kit. Problem solved and an American plastics manufacturer supported.
Spending money to fix something that was bought broken, is not a solution.
When that broken item is what you can get, it is. And supporting an American manufacturer is just gravy.
If Trump can make this happen I say we make Trump President for Life.
The government needs to work harder to stay out of our business.
About effing time. Karen designed my gas can, I’m pretty sure. I think that’s what it said on the 40-page operator’s manual (in 7 languages) which I threw away without reading it.
Dear Administrator Zeldin:
When you have time, please lift the ban on new manufacturing of R22 refrigerant. This spring I had to add 2 lbs to one of my units and it cost me over $700. Even better, revoke the authority of the EPA to regulate refrigerants completely.
You’re lucky. When my A/C had an issue the tech advised that the repair would require more cost to replace the R22 than putting in a new condenser/evaporator with HCFC refrigerant. Checked on-line and he was right!
I recently had a problem with the indoor heat exchanger freezing up. I was told that it was the result of being low on R22. I was then told that R22 was no longer available. When I made it clear that I wasn’t going to pay the estimated $6,000 to $16,000 to replace the 1.5 ton unit, they suddenly came up with a workaround that involved signing some waivers to top off the system with some magically available R22 at more than twice what I paid 10-years ago, plus $500 to try to find a leak, which took all of 20 minutes. They did find a slow leak in the component that was freezing, but said it was no longer available to replace.
They need to be made from natural clay just like the jute abseil ropes and cotton banners-
Greenpeace activists abseil down from Scotland’s Forth Road Bridge ‘to protest Jim Ratcliffe’
Chuckling a bit over the utter stupidity of this “government invention”…one must be glad they didn’t change the design of toilet paper, what a true shitshow that had been.
And to top it a bit in a largely digital world…can you see wiping your arse in a pinch with your smartphone? With or without downloading an app first…
At last. An appropriate use case for smart phones. Thanks.
Fun fact about toilet paper, it wasn’t guaranteed to be 100% free of tiny wood splinters until 1934. That was the year Northern Paper Mills perfected a process to make splinter free TP.
Public sector regulation of private sector activities is what is wrong with 21st century business.
How we control these over zealous health and safety focused busy bodies, I don’t know, but we have to find a way to put sanity back into state officials minds.
When the cost of regulation exceeds the cost of construction then you know we are in the wrong place. The UK is currently sinking into oblivion due to rules and regulations around environmental issues, safety concerns and generally individual complaint. Projects are stopped even if a great crested newt is spotted within a mile of the site!
We must find a way to allow the regulators to feel the pain they are inflicting on others. Only then will we be saved from their zealotry.
Being forced to buy emergency kit that does not do the job because regulation has made it useless is happening now.
I predict the emergency cardiac defibrillators now common place, will be regulated out of use, because they may give someone an electric shock….
Look up the history of infection control checklists in hospitals. The Dr. who came up with the idea was inspired by the checklists pilots go through before every takeoff, no matter how often they’ve flown a plane.
His idea was to have a checklist of procedures to ensure anything poking or cutting into a patient would not introduce bacteria. Hospitals that adopted his checklist saw post-operative infections drop dramatically, to zero in some cases.
But then insurance companies insisted that checklist had to go away. Why? Because someone who got a post-op infection anyway might sue with a claim the checklist must not have been followed properly.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
— Ronald Reagan
Ok, kids, I’ll ‘splain it to y’all. Go to Rural King/Tractor Supply/WalMart and buy a fuel can vent&nozzle kit. Problem solved and an American plastics manufacturer supported. You’re welcome.
Also, take a large screw driver or wooden dowel and knock that filter basket piece of crap into the can, splash back while filling ends immediately.
Gas cans are a rather peculiar subject. When I first discovered the flow problems on new 5 gallon cans, I immediately found a vent cap to install. After finding that it was a bit difficult to balance the 5 gallon can on the tractor to fill it, I went to the battery powered pump with hose.
An interesting thing is the supposed color coding of various cans for different fuels: Red for gas, yellow for diesel, blue for kerosene and so on. Federal law states only, “an approved container”. It mentions nothing about color, unless used for commercial purposes.
I stick to the color scheme because I use both gasoline and diesel and I don’t want to destroy my power tools or tractor by using the wrong one!
… which is why I spent a small fortune on surplus Bundeswehr large ‘spout’ real 5gal/20L Jerry cans. I’m in that no-man’s land between needing just a couple of gas/diesel cans and needing actual storage tanks. So over the years, when I find them, I’ve bought about 15 of them. Load up the truck and fill ’em up every couple of months. Pre WWII tech that has worked flawlessly for decades!
Amazon has kits to retrofit your can with a spout and vent. Search for “gas can spout replacement old style.”
If I find an “old” gas can at a garage sale, I buy it.
Keeping us safe by making it impossible to do anything.
I’ve seen a lot of people intentionally disable the mechanisms. The best ones I’ve seen are the metal cans with the spring-loaded cap – you pull the handle back to open it, and just hold that and the main handle together.
Trump probably has never used a new gas can or filled a lawn mower, pressure washer, roto-tiller, or generator…so this must have come up on a list of “common-man-complaints-that-can-be-turned-into-popularity”….I think we can attribute this to someone other than Mr. T…
I’ve never spilled so much gas as when these “safety” cans came out. Horrible things. I’ve bought normal spouts for all my new cans.
Yes, when the “new and improved” design makes the problem worse, it is prima facie evidence of a poor design.
Sigh.
Do-gooders can’t stop.
I was disgusted years ago when makers changed from simple angled kink in spout to flexible spout – NOT useful for automobiles as entry port is at an angle on side of vehicle.