ToxFAQs™: Hydrogen Sulfide

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Disease Control. July 2006. ToxFAQs™ for Hydrogen Sulfide (Ácido Sulfhídrico) In addition to methane, natural gas typically contains other hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, butane, and pentanes. Raw natural gas may also contain water vapor, hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbon dioxide, helium, nitrogen, and other compounds.

How does hydrogen sulfide affect children?

Children are likely to be exposed to hydrogen sulfide in the same manner as adults, except for adults at work. However, because hydrogen sulfide is heavier than air and because children are shorter than adults, children sometimes are exposed to more hydrogen sulfide than adults. Health problems in children who have been exposed to hydrogen sulfide have not been studied much. Exposed children probably will experience effects similar to those experienced by exposed adults. Whether children are more sensitive to hydrogen sulfide than adults or whether hydrogen sulfide causes birth defects in people is not known.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Disease Control. July 2006. ToxFAQs™ for Hydrogen Sulfide (Ácido Sulfhídrico)

ATSDR serves the public by using the best science, taking responsive public health actions, and providing trusted health information to prevent harmful exposures and diseases related to toxic substances. ATSDR is directed by congressional mandate to perform specific functions concerning the effect on public health of hazardous substances in the environment. These functions include public health assessments of waste sites, health consultations concerning specific hazardous substances, health surveillance and registries, response to emergency releases of hazardous substances, applied research in support of public health assessments, information development and dissemination, and education and training concerning hazardous substances.

See also: Dusty Horwitt. (2009). Drinking Water Threatened by Toxic Natural Gas and Oil Drilling Chemicals. Environmental Working Group.

Companies that drill for natural gas and oil are skirting federal law and injecting toxic petroleum distillates into thousands of wells, threatening drinking water supplies from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. Federal and state regulators, meanwhile, largely look the other way.

These distillates include kerosene, mineral spirits and a number of other petroleum products that often contain high levels of benzene, a known human carcinogen that is toxic in water at minuscule levels. Drillers inject these substances into rock under extremely high pressure in a process called hydraulic fracturing that energy companies use to extract natural gas and oil from underground formations. The process, known as “fracking,” fractures the rock to allow additional gas and oil to flow to the surface. Fracking is currently used in 90 percent of the nation’s oil and natural gas wells and has been instrumental in accessing huge new natural gas deposits trapped in shale formations (Carrillo 2005).

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ATSDR’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders. 20 Jan 2025.

See also: Clark K. Johnson. TSDR’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders. 31 Jan 2025. PBS NewsHour.

Public health data disappeared from websites, entire webpages went blank and employees erased pronouns from email signatures Friday as federal agencies scrambled to comply with a directive tied to President Donald Trump’s order rolling back protections for transgender people.

The Office of Personnel Management directed agency heads to strip “gender ideology” from websites, contracts and emails in a memo sent Wednesday, with changes ordered to be instituted by 5 p.m. Friday. It also directed agencies to disband employee resource groups, terminate grants and contracts related to the issue, and replace the term “gender” with “sex” on government forms.

Some parts of government websites appeared with the message: “The page you’re looking for was not found.” Some pages disappeared and came back intermittently.

Asked by reporters Friday about reports that government websites were being shut down to eliminate mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion, Trump and said he didn’t know anything about it but that he’d endorse such a move.

“I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me,” Trump said, adding that he campaigned promising to stamp out such initiatives.

WATCH: Trump administration ends government diversity programs and takes aim at DEI nationwide

Much public health information was taken down from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website: contraception guidance; a fact sheet about HIV and transgender people; lessons on building supportive school environments for transgender and nonbinary kids; details about National Transgender HIV Testing Day; a set of government surveys showing transgender students suffering higher rates of depression, drug use, bullying and other problems.

Eliminating health resources creates dangerous gaps in scientific information, disease experts said. The Infectious Diseases Society of America, a medical association, issued a statement decrying the removal of information about HIV and people who are transgender. Access is “critical to efforts to end the HIV epidemic,” the organization’s leaders said.

A Bureau of Prisons web page originally titled “Inmate Gender” was relabeled “Inmate Sex” on Friday. A breakdown of transgender inmates in federal prisons was no longer included.

The State Department on Friday removed the option to select “X” as a gender on passport applications for nonbinary applicants. It also replaced the word “gender” from the descriptor with the word “sex.”

All State Department employees were ordered to remove gender-specific pronouns from their email signatures. The directive, from the acting head of the Bureau of Management, said this was required to comply with Trump’s executive orders and that the department was also removing all references to “gender ideology” from websites and internal documents.

“All employees are required to remove any gender identifying pronouns from email signature blocks by 5:00 PM today,” said the order from Tibor Nagy. “Your cooperation is essential as we navigate these changes together.”

An official from the U.S. Agency for International Development said staffers were directed to flag the use of the word “gender” in each of thousands of award contracts. Warnings against gender discrimination are standard language in every such contract. The official spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, under a Trump administration gag order prohibiting USAID staffers from speaking with people outside their agency.

The official said staffers fear that programs and jobs related to inclusion efforts, gender issues and issues specific to women are being singled out and possibly targeted under two Trump executive orders.

Some Census Bureau and National Park Service pages also were inaccessible or giving error messages.

Trump’s executive order, signed on his first day back in office, calls for the federal government to define sex as only male or female and for that to be reflected on official documents such as passports and policies such as federal prison assignments.

Mike Stobbe in New York and Amanda Seitz, Matthew Lee, Will Weissert and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.
Clark K. Johnson. TSDR’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders. 31 Jan 2025. PBS NewsHour.