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A foul-smelling cloud of gas escaped from a factory in northern France on Tuesday, making life unpleasant from the outskirts of Paris to Britain's shores and prompting scores of emergency calls.
France's Interior Ministry released a statement saying the mercaptan gas escaping from the Rouen chemical factory is harmless. Among other uses, mercaptan is added to otherwise odorless municipal gas to alert people of leaks. The factory has been shut down, and environmental authorities are carrying out tests.
While authorities reassured residents no to worry, winds carried the smell across hundreds of square miles.
Police in the coastal English town of Hastings reassured residents in a tweet with the hashtag "noneedtopanic" that mercaptan from Rouen was the likely cause of the odor.
The London Fire Brigade tweeted that it had received five times as many calls about potential gas leaks before 10:30 Tuesday morning than it had taken all of the day before. The response? Hashtag "mondieu."
The factory in the northern city of Rouen is owned by Lubrizol, a subsidiary of investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.
"Bearing in mind the lack of danger, residents of the areas concerned are asked not to call emergency services," the Interior Ministry said.
Charly Triballeau / AFP - Getty Images
A gas leak at this chemical plant in the Normandy city of Rouen could be smelled as far away as Paris and London. Officials say it is harmless.
The local government posted a message on its website, asking people not to call emergency services and instead set up a hotline to answer questions about the smell.
Pierre-Jean Payrouse, the director of internal operations for the factory, said he hoped the leak would be stopped by Tuesday evening.
But not in time for a French Cup soccer game scheduled for the evening; authorities postponed the Marseille-Rouen match.
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I call BS.
Everyone knows the real cause, Chris Christie farted.
Something smells rotten in FRANCE.........not Denmark/ And they couldn't wait to get an American involved, now could they?
It was Buffet playing "pull ma finger"!
I've smelled alot of smells before, but I never smelled a smell that smells like that smell -smells like.
I also haven't smelled a smell that smells like that smell smells, but smelling a smell that smells like that smell smells would smell smelly.
Brothers Foghorner and Mark-1925471. You two are poets but didn't know it. Your feet show it. They are Longfellers.
So what if someone has a real gas leak there? I guess they're SOL.
My thought exactly!
At least the basic intended use, to alert you if you have a gas leak, works!
Obama get re-elected in the US and it smells in Europe??
I guess everyone will raise a big stink over this...
Considering how infrequently the French bathe and use deodorant (and I lived there and know whereof I speak), I'm surprised anyone even noticed the stench.
wonder if the UK will dispatch fighter jets in response to this attack from their butts
Same as in Northeast Ohio near the city of Painesville in the USA. Lubrizol... a plant. Drive past it and wow on certain days... the chemicals are bad... not sure how the people live near it
Le Pew!
Bad smell in London and Paris? How the hell do they know? Maybe if French men would take a bath now and then instead of dosing with cologne, the smell would improve!
.5 to 100 parts per million is how much mercaptan creates the odor you smell in natural gas. A pure mercaptan leak takes a while to dissapate. I worked in a refinery 35 years ago and I am still sensitive to the different odors that they produce.
The French stink. Duh!
I would be more concerned about H2S, or hydrogen sulfide, if it was present in the gas. We had a leak from a facility in Northern Michigan where H2S, a byproduct of sour natural gas, was stored underground. The gas was blown northward and was smelled in Canada. People smelled the mercaptans that were also in the gas, but H2S quickly disables your receptors and, at relatively low concentrations, can kill you. If people were complaining about burning eyes or sore throats with this leak I would worry about H2S.
I live in New Jersey
I had no idea Madonna was back in the UK.