The adsorption properties of toxic gases on the surface of low dimensional nanomaterials are hot topic and key issue for developing semiconductor sensors to detect toxic gas molecules. Recently, a novel orthorhombic BN monolayer has attracted extensive attentions from researchers. Using first principles calculations, we have investigated the adsorption properties of typical toxic gas molecules on the surface of two-dimensional (2D) orthorhombic BN monolayer adsorption, including CO, H<sub>2</sub>S, NH<sub>3</sub>, NO, NO<sub>2</sub>, and SO<sub>2</sub> molecules. The calculated adsorption energies show that the adsorptions of the above six molecules on the BN monolayer are energy favorable exothermic processes. It is found that NO<sub>2</sub> and NH<sub>3</sub> molecules are chemisorption, while other systems are physical adsorption, and NO adsorbed system exhibits spin-polarized electronic band structure. The calculated density of states reveals that the adsorptions of NO and SO<sub>2</sub> molecules have significant influences on the electronic structures near the Fermi level. Moreover, the adsorption of the NO<sub>2</sub> molecule on the substrate exhibits remarkable variation on the work function, suggesting that the o-BN monolayer possesses excellent selectivity and sensitivity to detect NO<sub>2</sub> molecule. In addition, we use first-principles combined with non-equilibrium Green's function to simulate electrical transport performance of the monolayered o-BN semiconductor based nanodevice with adsorption of typical toxic gas molecules. The <i>I-Vb</i> curve shows that the current through the nanodevice is 6500 nA for the NO<sub>2</sub> molecule adsorbed system under 1 V bias voltage. The calculated results reveal that the adsorption of NO<sub>2</sub> molecule on the o-BN monolayer can significantly enhances its electrical transport performance, and the o-BN monolayer possesses excellent sensitivity and selectivity for detecting the NO<sub>2</sub> gas molecule. The work function and the charge transfer can be effectively manipulated by tensile strains, indicating its potential application in anisotropic electronics. Our results indicate that the o-BN monolayer has excellent adsorption performance to toxic gases, paving the way for its practical application in capturing toxic gas molecules as a gas sensor in future.