I am an Environmental, Health & Safety manager who has worked (and currently works) with PSM/RMP covered chemicals, including some that can create toxic vapor clouds similar to the one in Conyers, GA. I would like to explain why this post, and many similar posts in the comments alleging that “they” (who are “they”?) are trying to get people injured by exposure to chlorine or chlorine-containing gases in the air, is incorrect. These posts come from ignorance, which can be corrected by understanding.
This is a long post, so please see the rest after the break. It’s a lot faster to make misinformation than to correct it.
In meteorology, an inversion (or temperature inversion) is a phenomenon in which a layer of warmer air overlies cooler air. Normally, air temperature gradually decreases as altitude increases, but this relationship is reversed in an inversion.
An inversion traps air pollution, such as smog, near the ground.An inversion can also suppress convection by acting as a “cap”. If this cap is broken for any of several reasons, convection of any humidity can then erupt into violent thunderstorms. Temperature inversion can cause freezing rain in cold climates. […]
An inversion is also produced whenever radiation from the surface of the earth exceeds the amount of radiation received from the sun, which commonly occurs at night, or during the winter when the sun is very low in the sky. This effect is virtually confined to land regions as the ocean retains heat far longer.
So, yeah, no, this isn’t some government plot to keep people in their homes at night but force them to come to work amongst the poisonous fumes during the day, it’s the EMA’s response to the fact that there are specific kinds of weather that will trap (and concentrate!) air hazards close to the ground and some of those kinds of weather just literally have to do with whether the sun is in the sky or not.
