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 concentration, 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?
