Safety Knights

I used to work at a landfill gas refinery, where the landfill gas contained 1000ppm H2S (no I'm not joking). No, the plant was not compliant for several years, though eventually we did get on an annual training schedule with a qualified instructor (consultant in the area).

This is a great post. H2S is scary stuff, even if you're not working around it I think it's still good for your workers to have at least a baseline awareness. Potentially something you could roll into a confined space training

Obviously, petrochemical processes and oil/gas drilling release the most H2S but, we still lose workers every year to exposure. How many know that as little as 3ppm causes olfactory fatigue? Exposure to 3 ppm and then you can’t smell it anymore and that’s way below the STEL. I know an operator who heard his gas detection device alarm but he wanted see how high it would go. Another operator donned SCBA and saved his dumb a**. He was out cold with a 4 gas detector that was saturated. Another time (pre 1980) a ship of sour crude came to our dock to unload. It was an Iranian crew. They borrowed an SCBA to check the ships hold. Our FD went in to find the crew member. He was DOA with claw marks in the face piece and his alarm bell was no longer ringing. H2S is no joking matter.

We use Clear for the classroom portion. I also buy the H2S aerosol cans to bump test the meters after their monthly calibration.

When a meter runs out of days we box and date it and it goes into storage for 5 years.