Oil well blowout spewing foul odor into the air in Missouri City

MISSOURI CITY (FOX 26) - Colleen Colman smelled it before she heard about it. It started around 5 p.m. at her Lake Olympia home and then got worse and worse.

"The thought did cross my mind to go to a hotel with the kids. It was really, really bad. And you can smell it yet today," Colman said. She says it even gave her 3-year-old a stomachache.

They weren't the only people complaining about rotten egg and chemical smell.  Not by a long shot. It was the talk of the Sienna Plantation Facebook Page and people out and about. 

"Horrible. I smelled it last night and it just got worse. I thought it was under my house. So I got scared," said Melissa Bush while she pumped gas. 

“I got in my car this morning, I could still smell it. I don't know if it's in my air conditioning. It's nasty stuff," said Travis Rone. 

It's nasty stuff alright.  It was H2S -- hydrogen sulfide. According the OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, you can smell it in pretty low concentrations. In low concentrations it can cause eye, ear, throat and respiratory irritation. In high concentration, it can cause death. 

It's a byproduct of oil drilling and it came from the oilfield nearby at McHard Road and the Ft. Bend Tollway.  A Dallas-based company called IWR was on its third day of drilling a new well when there was a blowout while replacing a drill bit. That allowed the stuff to escape. Nobody was hurt, not this time, but it has folks like Colman wondering if the wells and nearby homes are too nearby each other.

“I'm a little concerned. I am concerned. You wonder about your drinking water. What's it doing to the ground. How much leaked? Where's it going?” wondered Colman.