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| Scratch and sniff gas card notice |
(Scroll down for video) Those awesome scratch and smell cards you get in the mail turned out to be really dangerous after some cards caused a natural gas leak scare, according to a statement released by officials in Montana.
The scratch and sniff cards sent out by energy companies to customers to teach them to recognize the artificial odor added to natural gas turned out to work quite well.
Energy West manager Nick Bohr said that recently, workers threw away several boxes of scratch and sniff cards in Great Falls, after they expired. When the garbage truck picked them up and compressed the load in the garbage truck compactor, Bohr said that is when the scratch cards were all activated which released a strong gas odor.
The resulting odor caused numerous false alarms and evacuations of buildings as the garbage truck traveled through the center of Great Falls on Wednesday morning, leaving the gas smell behind.
“I always love to scratch and smell the perfume samples which companies distribute through the mail and in magazines. I never knew that gas companies distribute such cards as well, and I am surprised that these gas cards never caused gas leak scares in the past,” Emily Peterson, 30, of Phoenix, Arizona told YourJewishNews.com after learning about the gas leak scare.
Bohr said the company apologized for the scare it has caused.