I know this is kind of old but I gotta throw my 2 cents in.
I have been a brewer for the past 10 years. We use a lot of CO2. After you move beer out of a fermenter it clearly must be cleaned. Most breweries have fermenters with a manway that needs opened to evacuate the CO2. Larger fermenters will need a "sucker" to suck out the CO2 away from where people are working. Smaller vessels can just be opened to evac the CO2. (the CO2 needs to be completely evacuated before cleaning. The first stage of the cleaning process involves a caustic cleaner, usually KOH or NaOH which will be neutralized by the CO2)
So to make a long story even longer, when we open the tanks you can actually see a distortion in the air like a water fall of gas that falls out of the tank. CO2 burns your eyes, nose, lungs. It is extremely painful to breathe it in. I'm not giving an opinion on the subject of how to euthanize rodents. Just telling you all how painful it is to be under a wall of CO2. It is not something you can tolerate for even a tenth of a second. You will immediately shut your eyes and move out of the way. I have seen guys smash their faces into a tank leg trying to get away from it.
I doubt many other professions come into that close of contact in such a volume as a brewer.
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