Financial Times: Stench reaches UK after French gas leak

A cloud of harmless gas smelling of sweat and rotten eggs leaked out of a chemicals factory in northwest France and wafted across the English Channel as far as London on Tuesday.

The leak occurred on Monday morning at a Lubrizol France plant near Rouen, 120km northwest of Paris, and winds blew the invisible gas cloud south over northern France on Monday night and then up over England on Tuesday.

The fire brigade in Kent, southeast of London, warned residents to keep doors and windows closed because of a gas cloud it believed had come from France, and police said it had reports of an acrid smell in southeast London.

Lubrizol France, which makes additives for industrial lubricants and paint, said the gas was mercaptan, also known as methanethiol, a colourless additive used in natural gas because its sulphurous smell enables gas leaks to be detected.  MORE