Iceland review - 2015, Blaðsíða 31

ICELAND REVIEW 29
hardly any ash or tephra have been ejected, the level of toxic
gases from Holuhraun can pose a real threat to both humans
and animals. “There’s one man in the Mývatn area who got
really sick. He was herding his sheep when all of a sudden
the gas, at extreme levels, came down from the mountains.
There was nowhere for him to go,” Sigurður Betúel’s col-
league Guðni Snær Jónsson says.
Gases from the eruption include water (H2O), carbon
dioxide (CO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S),
hydrogen (H2), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen chloride
(HCl), hydrogen fluoride (HF) and helium (He). according
to the Directorate of Health, SO2 is the most dangerous of
these to human health, the most common symptoms being
irritation to the eyes, throat and respiratory tract as well as
difficulties in breathing in high concentrations. as a result,
additional gas monitoring stations have been set up around
Iceland. at the site, where carrying gas masks and meters are
a requirement of entry, levels of 130,000 mµ/m3 have been
“The eruption has its own weather system, its own micro climate ... The warm air
rises, sucks in cold air from all sides so you can actually get tornadoes. That affects
cloud formation, precipitation and, most of all, wind.”
Ranger Sigurður Erlingsson.
erUPtioN
between 20,000 and 60,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (So2) are emitted from the eruption each day.