Photo of woman cleaning bumper with gas pump goes viral

Driver uses gasoline to clean car A woman poured gas from the pump over her bumper at a Richmond gas station.

A picture of a woman purportedly using gasoline straight from the pump to clean her car's bumper is raising eyebrows online.

The image shows a woman standing behind a vehicle holding a gas pump in one hand and a wad of paper cloth in the other outside a Superstore in Richmond, B.C.

Natalie Shantz, the woman who snapped the picture, said the woman seemed to be using the gasoline to deal with some kind of stubborn substance on the bumper.

"Whatever it was it was sticky enough that she used the pump to even try and scrape it after pumping the fuel onto it," the witness told CTV News. "It was so unusual."

The image went viral almost immediately after Shantz posted it on Reddit Thursday, and has since been viewed more than 375,000 times.

Shantz said the strange sight caused quite a commotion at the gas bar, with people walking up to the woman and confronting her. At one point the woman seemed to accidentally squeeze the handle too hard and shot gasoline into the back of her car.

"She was pumping it out a little bit at a time and then eventually there was more," said Shantz. "She, I guess, had a bit of a spill that got into her trunk and a little bit on the ground."

Fortunately, the woman's actions didn't cause a fire, but they did spark plenty of conversation.

Commenters on Reddit pointed out that gas is a solvent – a "very good one actually" – and many claimed to have used gasoline to clean things before.

But whether it's effective or not, gas should never be used as a cleaner, at least according to the American Petroleum Institute.

The API's guidelines for safety at the pumps cautions to "never use gasoline to wash your hands or as a cleaning solvent."

Locally, WorkSafeBC said it recommends customers at gas stations in the province always follow posted instructions and to also "use common sense."

With files from CTV Vancouver's Breanna Karstens-Smith