Brits complain of foul smell after Met Office issues statement on toxic sulphur dioxide cloud travelling through UK

A sulphur dioxide plume is currently travelling through the UK following the volcano eruption in Iceland - and it's so bad that Brits have been complaining about it's 'god awful' smell.

A volcano in south-western Iceland erupted shortly after 9pm on Thursday (22 August) prior to a series of strong earthquakes.

With it being the sixth eruption since December, it seems a cloud of toxic gas is currently going through the atmosphere in the UK.

Now the concern with volcanic gas (sulphur dioxide) is that it can be hazardous to your health in high quantities, as high exposure can cause nose, eye, throat and lung irritation.

celand's Reykjanes Peninsula sees its sixth volcanic eruption since December. (Almannavarnadeild/Anadolu via Getty Images)

And Brits have already started to take a whiff of the colourless gas, which tends to have a similar odour to 'burnt matches', according to UCAR.

Taking to Reddit, one person complained: "Anyone smell that god awful smell of death around the city today?"

Meanwhile, some compared the travelling gas with the smell of 'rotten meat or a corpse', as others described it as being 'absolutely mank'.

"Sorry, I should admit when I’ve farted," another person joked - there's always one.

Thankfully, the Met Office has issued a statement to reassure us that the signs of sulphur in the atmosphere shouldn't be a problem for us.

A Met Office spokesperson told LADbible: "A sulphur dioxide plume which originated from the volcano in Iceland has been crossing the UK high up in the atmosphere and will clear to the southeast in the coming hours.

"Impacts have been low from this sulphur dioxide, as it is high in the atmosphere and is having little influence on ground-level air quality.

Brits have since been complaining of a foul smell (Getty Stock Images)

"Small concentrations at surface level mean that the air pollution levels remain low.

"Air pollution is currently Low, and expected to remain that way for the whole of the UK today.

"We’re continuing to monitor any sulphur dioxide release originating from Iceland, with current forecasts suggesting little influence on UK surface air pollution in the coming days."

The promising signs of the aftermath of the eruption is also good news for the people who live nearby in Iceland.

The 4,000 residents of Grindavik were previously evacuated from their homes back in December, Sky News reports.

Magnus Tuma Gudmundsson, a geophysicist who flew over the eruption centre, told Vísir: “If this continues like this, Grindavík is not in danger because of this.

“Of course, we don’t know what will happen in the near future, but it is likely that this has reached its peak and then it will start to subside like the other eruptions.”