TX chemical plant had poisonous gas leak. GOP Representative upset residents advised to mask up

[Disaffected]

16. Interesting, I did not know

activated carbon respirators would work (worked in oil patch and don't ever recall seeing one).

Another sobering fact about H2S in higher concentrations is that it can cause almost instantaneous loss of consciousness. There is a term used in the good ol' days in the oil patch, "knocked off a tank" which referred to an unsuspecting worker who climbed to the top of an oil storage tank (containing "sour" crude oil) to manually measure the fluid level, opened the hatch, got a whiff of H2S and fell off the tank, sometimes to his death. Nasty stuff that....

A pretty high number of oil workers have lost their lives or suffered permanent brain damage because of H2S poisoning. Here in Alberta, there are gas wells with 30 or 40% H2S concentration so extreme caution is required in both drilling such wells and operating them. We once had such a gas well blow out a couple of hundred miles north of where I live and one could smell the H2S in the air when the wind was from that direction. I recall having exposed copper wire outside the house that actually turned black as a result.

One of the rules for such a blow out was to get the hell away ASAP and, ignite the well also ASAP to mitigate the H2S escape. Capping such a well was also a perilous job. Thankfully instances of that sort of thing are much less frequent now-a-days.