A man in the municipality of Zottegem in the province of East Flanders died while he tried to retrieve his mobile phone from a sewer on Saturday evening.
While walking home at night, Jeroen De Smet (48) dropped his phone and it landed in a sewer drain. After removing the grate, he leaned in to retrieve his phone and inhaled toxic gases released from the sewer. De Smet lost consciousness and slid into the sewer, subsequently drowning only 500 metres from his home.
"What happened to Jeroen is an unimaginably terrible chain of events," said his girlfriend, Ilse De Roeck (47), explaining how she was woken by the doorbell and instead of her boyfriend, was met by two police officers who told her what had happened.
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There is a multitude of gases in the sewer system. One that could quite possibly have caused De Smet to lose consciousness is hydrogen sulfide (H2S). Colourless, flammable, poisonous and corrosive, H2S gas is noticeable by its rotten egg smell.
At high concentrations, it only takes a few breaths of the gas to lose consciousness, induce seizures, experience respiratory paralysis or even death.
