A gas can has to meet two federal requirements, and the flame arrester one stops at 5 gallons

The fuel can you carry for a generator or a heater has to satisfy two different federal requirements, and they come from two different laws. One is about the cap. The other is about flame traveling back into the container. The second one only reaches containers of 5 gallons or less, and that ceiling is written into the statute, not into a regulator’s interpretation of it.

The cap rule is older. The Children’s Gasoline Burn Prevention Act, Public Law 110-278, was enacted July 17, 2008. It says that starting 6 months later, “each portable gasoline container manufactured on or after that date for sale in the United States shall conform to the child-resistance requirements for closures on portable gasoline containers specified in the standard ASTM F2517-05.” The Act defines a portable gasoline container as “any portable gasoline container intended for use by consumers.” No size limit appears in that text. Read September 24, 2026.

The flame rule is newer and narrower. The Portable Fuel Container Safety Act of 2020, codified at 15 U.S.C. 2056d, directed the Consumer Product Safety Commission to require “flame mitigation devices in portable fuel containers that impede the propagation of flame into the container.” Then it defines what it is talking about: a container intended for flammable liquid fuels with a flash point under 140 degrees Fahrenheit, listing gasoline, kerosene, diesel, ethanol, methanol, denatured alcohol and biofuels, and “that is a consumer product with a capacity of 5 gallons or less.”

What the 5 gallon ceiling means for you

If you carry a 6.6 or 7.9 gallon jerry can because it means one fewer stop on a long boondocking loop, that can sits outside the flame mitigation requirement as Congress wrote it.

Say what that is and is not. It is not a finding that big cans are dangerous. It is a gap in what the federal standard reaches, and it is worth knowing before you assume every can on the shelf is held to the same test. We did not find a federal list of compliant containers, so we are not going to pretend one exists.

The same statute lets the Commission accept an ASTM voluntary standard in place of writing its own rule, and says that once that determination is published, the voluntary standard’s requirements are treated as a consumer product safety rule. That is why recall notices cite the Act rather than a part of the Code of Federal Regulations.

What the recalls actually show

Of the 448 recalls CPSC posted in 2026 through September 24, five were portable fuel containers. Read September 24, 2026.

Three cited the missing flame mitigation device: Scepter fuel containers on February 4, about 700 units; Alliance Chemical 1-K kerosene heater fluid containers on April 30, about 30,155 units; and Sunnyside gallon 1-K kerosene containers on August 13, about 960 units. Two cited a closure that is not child-resistant: Deli Jerry fuel containers on August 13, about 1,750 units in 5.3, 6.6 and 7.9 gallon sizes, and Zimtown 5.0 gallon gas and fuel cans, also August 13, about 200 units.

The pattern in those numbers is not empty gas cans. It is pre-filled kerosene, sold by the gallon for heaters. If you run a diesel or kerosene heater in a van, that is your category, and it is where the volume was this year.

Before you light anything, check what the land manager currently allows. Our fire restrictions page explains how to read an order, and the generator comparison covers what you are hauling the fuel for.