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Your carbon monoxide alarm goes off in the battery room. You sweep the area — there's no CO source anywhere. So you assume the sensor is broken, reset the alarm, and go back to work. The sensor wasn't broken. It was doing exactly what electrochemistry does: responding to hydrogen. This is cross-sensitivity — an electrochemical sensor reacting to a gas it wasn't built to detect. It's not a defect. It's not a calibration problem. It's inherent to how these sensors work, and if you don' …

Every 4-gas monitor has an oxygen channel, and it's the only channel with a built-in expiration date. Your LEL, CO, and H₂S sensors can last for years in normal service. Your O₂ sensor is dying on a schedule — and the clock starts the day it's manufactured, not the day you install it. That sounds dramatic until you understand what's actually happening inside the sensor. Then it makes perfect sense — and you can do something about it. How an Oxygen Sensor Works (and Why It's a Consuma …

Most gas detectors read %LEL the same way on the display. What's happening behind that number is anything but the same. Two sensor technologies do the heavy lifting in LEL detection — the catalytic bead and the infrared (IR) sensor — and they fail in completely different ways. Picking the wrong one for your application doesn't just cost you money. It can leave you blind exactly when you need your eyes. Here's how each one works, where each one shines, and the one gotcha that trips pe …

Every safety manager with a fleet of gas detectors eventually faces the same decision: box up the instruments and ship them to a calibration lab, or have the calibration technician come to you. Both keep you compliant. Both end with certified instruments. But they differ in convenience, downtime, and hassle — and picking the wrong one wastes time in both directions. Here's the straight version, from a company that does both every week. The Short Answer Fewer than ~10 instruments: ship the …