Ray,
 
You asked for it, you got it.
 
As a hyped-up world-class cyanide guy, here's my 2 cents worth.
 
IF you are handling cyanide in large quantaties (let's not even get into ingestions which are usually suicidal or homicidal) and there might be a possibility of very large quantity dermal exposures (say to liquid hydrogen cyanide in a hot humid environment or being buried in calcium cyanide) or more  likely to airborne hydrogen cyanide, then the advice of our old colleague Wurzburg would be to have appropriately trained first respoders equipped with an oxygen-powered breathing device (with mask) and to have amyl nitrite inhalers available to place inside the lip of the face mask.  worked well in one small series of industrial exposures.  This assumes you can still find a supplier of the amyl nitrite inhalars which may be difficult in todays regulatory environment.
 
IF you are handling only very dilute solutions of calcium, potassium, or sodium cyanide (say 1-2% solutions such are used in such applications as hospital autoanalyzers), then such precautions are unnecessary as there are no published cases of significant poisoning from such sources (you will see hyperventilation etc. in the ED when an exposure happens because  "everyone knows" cyanide  is a "bad actor", but an hour or so of careful monitoring and observation will sort the wheat from the chaff --and it will likely all be chaff).  Don't forget that hyperventilation syndrome (although perhaps an early sign of cyanide poisoning) is  much more common than cyanide poisoning and having the patient breath into a brown paper bag (or an unhooked oxygen mask) will allow them to reestablish normal plasma CO2 concentrations and shut off the involuntary hyperventilation response.
 
So no, for say a high school or college chemistry lab, I don't think stocking amyl nitrite would be necessary.  Might be different for a cyanide or cyanogen (nitrile) production or heavy industrial use facility.
 
Alan
Alan H. Hall, M.D.
Medical Toxicologist
ahalltoxic**At_Symbol_Here**msn.com