HazMat Situational Awareness – Making sense of scent
It is not that we as hazmatters want to smell a chemical agent but that we as professionals better know what it smells like. Besides PPE problems such as suit breakthrough or poorly fitting mask another good reason to have an idea of the scents that are associated with the bad stuff is the valuable information we receive from our witnesses/victims.

Understanding witness statements can be a vital key to helping us safely solve a hazmat/WMD problem. The book says if a witness (perhaps even as a last dying breath) states that it smelled like bitter almonds we should draw a connection to Hydrogen Cyanide. What if a victim says it smelled like old boot? The book says Lewisite smells like geraniums. I had really no idea what geraniums smell like but Google images will at least give me a picture to look at.

For our own situational awareness (fancy for let’s all get home safely) we need to have an idea of the properties of the stuff that can hurt us. Having a sense of what the scents are can only help us. Below is a table of some bad substances and what they are known to smell like. Most of these may even knock you dead before the olfactory system tells the feet to run.

Cyclosarin – Peach scent
Soman – VapoRub scent
Tabun – Fruity scent
Lewisite – Geranium scent
Hydrogen Cyanide - Almond scent
Hydrogen Sulfide – Sulfur scent
Sulfur Mustard – Garlic scent
Phosgene – Mown Hay scent

Knowing the above is great except for one part. We can read scents and we can say and memorize words but it’s the smell that you need to know to save your life.
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