It’s enough to make anyone selling air conditioning feel paranoid. If it wasn’t bad enough to be perceived by some parts of the media as being responsible for all the environmental ills of the world, air conditioning continues to be the subject of ignorance and some very ill-informed reporting.

Classic was last week’s story from India following the explosion at a McDonalds restaurant in Calcutta, in which one person was killed and three/four others (depending on which report you read) were seriously injured, which was initially blamed on the air conditioning system.

The explosion is said to have flung the restaurant’s shutters across the road and smashed the windscreens of cars parked nearby, killing a 21-year-old salesman. According to reports, the local police immediately dismissed sabotage as a possibility but an explosion caused by a leaking air conditioner was immediately blamed.

“India McDonald’s Air-Con Blast Kills 1” screamed one headline, another quoting a supposed expert from the state forensic laboratory as saying “The pressure inside the ducts had risen, compressing the refrigerant Freon gas inside. The pressure burst the pipes and the gas spurted out, collecting mainly near the ceiling because it is lighter than air,” an expert from the state forensic laboratory said. Frankly, if that man is an expert he needs to be sacked, if he was misquoted he needs to sue.

The Times of India revealed that the restaurant had three 41-tonne air-conditioners and that ‘police suspect the refrigerant gas Freon 22 leaked all night following a mechanical fault’. Someone then referred to as ‘an explosives expert’ is quoted as saying "When employees lit the burner, it ignited the inflammable gas, triggering a fireball that generated heat in excess of 300ºC.”

So, completely dispensing with accepted physics (and reality, generally), we have ductwork that is airtight way beyond the standards of DW142 and capable of compressing R22, which somehow then burst some pipes and allowed the R22, a non-flammable, heavier than air gas, to collect near the ceiling and then be ignited. It beggars belief!

Needless to say, this week police are said to be investigating the possibility that the blast at McDonald’s was caused by an LPG leak.