We live about a mile from the railroad, and other than disposable dust-mask-style “respirators” this is something I haven’t done. For such a thing to be useful to me there’d have to be:

• Some kind of hazmat incident with the train
• That wasn’t quickly lethal to us
• But would be more slowly dangerous
• That we’d be able to escape the dangerous zone if we found out about it in time
• Where respirators significantly increased the safety of our escape

The “escape” factor is not a small one — will roads be passable? Will whatever happened prevent my car from operating? Would our clothes be contaminated such that we needed a hazmat response?

For my family this seems like a big expense for a very small likelihood of needing it.