Fart Limit

Thanks to Vsauce for bringing this particular issue to our attention. The TL;DR of that video is:

• Most of the gases in your farts are odorless.
• The one that usually makes things stinky is Hydrogen Sulfide.¹
• The content of H_2_S in a fart is around 50ppm.²
• One fart can travel around 10 ft/s.

Enter OSHA:

• H_2_S at a concentration of 50ppm (roughly what you’d get if you inhaled a fart directly into your lungs) you’d suffer Slight conjunctivitis (“gas eye”) and respiratory tract irritation after 1 hour. May cause digestive upset and loss of appetite.³.
• Any practical dosage would be around 3ppm. At that rate it would be Odor becomes more offensive at 3-5 ppm. Above 30 ppm, odor described as sweet or sickeningly sweet.. The key point here is that around 10 times the usual dosage, a fart won’t stink. Instead it will smell “sweet.”
• At 100ppm – which is around 30 times the usual dose – you won’t smell anything at all because you’ll lose your sense of smell (olfactory fatigue or paralysis).
• At 1000ppm – 300 times the usual dose – it’s nearly instant death.

So I guess it is in fact possible.

As an aside, I found it quite disappointing that the Listen button on the “What’s a Fart” page on KidsHealth.org doesn’t make a fart sound. I mean, what else was that button supposed to do?

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