EP249 The Hidden Hazards: CO, H₂S and the Tech Behind Modern Gas Detection With Dave Massner from Sensorcon (December 2025)

Episode quotes:
"Hydrogen sulfide doesn't announce itself. It can drift in, hit your mucus membranes, and start causing real harm before you know it's there."

"You can't treat sensor response like magic—it's physics, chemistry, and smart filtering working together to tell you what's actually happening in the space."

In this episode, Bill & Eric sit down with Dave Massner from Sensorcon, a long-time technical contributor in the world of portable gas detection, to dig into the realities behind CO, H₂S, and O₂ sensing in both HVAC and industrial environments. Bill recaps the origins of their relationship with Sensorcon, which sets the stage for Dave to explain why gas detection still matters and brings in real-world examples—from oil fields to everyday equipment rooms—to show how invisible hazards shape how techs should approach safety.

The conversation explores lesser-understood threats like hydrogen sulfide (H₂S)—a gas that can travel with the wind in oil and gas regions and incapacitate workers before they realize it's there. We discuss the physiology, the chemistry, and the grim speed at which exposure can become deadly. From there, we shift to oxygen depletion, clarifying what "too low" actually means in field work and why measuring O₂ is just as important as detecting toxic gases. The episode also gets into the nuts and bolts of sensor behavior: signal-to-noise ratios, filtering, raw output, response time, and the clever algorithms that help instruments stabilize faster without sacrificing accuracy.

Toward the end, we highlight Sensorcon's ongoing efforts in training, education, and transparency, pointing listeners to the company's technical blog posts, videos, and calibration resources. We also make the case for low-level CO alarms and why TruTech Tools has championed them for over a decade. As we wrap up, we leave listeners with a simple takeaway: understand your sensors, understand your risks, and choose equipment that treats safety as something more than a checkbox.

Dave's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-massner-30291189/

Sensorcon at TTT: https://trutechtools.com/sensorcon-solutions.html

Sensorcon blog posts:https://sensorcon-sensing-products-by-molex.myshopify.com/blogs/news/

Sensorcon  videos: https://sensorcon-sensing-products-by-molex.myshopify.com/pages/inspector-videos

Low-level CO alarms at TruTech Tools: https://trutechtools.com/installedco

 

This episode was recorded in December 2025.