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by htek 52 days ago
Impressive. I had to perform a site survey at a refinery for an engineering firm I worked for in the US. It was situated outside of a poor/working class, predominantly minority town. The smell hit us in the car as we got off the interstate. The windows were rolled up and the A/C was blasting (it was the middle of summer). The air was hazy miles from the plant and stank of petroleum. It looked like a dystopian video game with a sepia-toned filter over what felt like a deserted town. The noises on site went from bad to horrific (with signage indicating permanent hearing damage if you spent any time in the area for more than a minute to traverse the space while wearing earplugs and headphones). And the suddenly sweet smell of benzene from the (apparently broken for a number of undisclosed years) recovery system when the wind shifted.