How Much CO is divable

[JohnN]

I appreciate all the great comments. Lots of informative posts!

But back to the original question...where do you draw the line and call off diving. 3ppm, 5ppm, 10ppm.

For me, 3 ppm.

How lucky do you feel?

 

[BoltSnap]

I appreciate all the great comments. Lots of informative posts!

But back to the original question...where do you draw the line and call off diving. 3ppm, 5ppm, 10ppm.

I live and teach scuba in Libya and I have to deal with this issue all the time. I am the ONLY person in Libya that has CO analyzer and with two exceptions, ALL of the people that have compressors and fill tanks are pumping over 10ppm CO into their students/customers/divers tanks!!! I would not use a Tank with more than 3ppm. If I am doing a deeper dive (deeper than 25 meters), I'd use less than 3ppm (meaning no CO at all). I am not sure if I am being over doing it in terms of CO %, but I won't risk it considering the extreme lack of knowledge and proper medical facilities here.

The people with worst CO% are people who are using gas compressors, don't change their filters often and have the compressor intake pipe close to the exhaust pipe without an extension pipe.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

I live and teach scuba in Libya and I have to deal with this issue all the time. I am the ONLY person in Libya that has CO analyzer and with two exceptions, ALL of the people that have compressors and fill tanks are pumping over 10ppm CO into their students/customers/divers tanks!!! I would not use a Tank with more than 3ppm. If I am doing a deeper dive (deeper than 25 meters), I'd use less than 3ppm (meaning no CO at all). I am not sure if I am being over doing it in terms of CO %, but I won't risk it considering the extreme lack of knowledge and proper medical facilities here.

The people with worst CO% are people who are using gas compressors, don't change their filters often and have the compressor intake pipe close to the exhaust pipe without an extension pipe.

burhan, these are. Lessons we learned decades ago; why is it so hard to get these diving operations to comply with normal dive safety standards?

SeaRat

 

[BoltSnap]

burhan, these are. Lessons we learned decades ago; why is it so hard to get these diving operations to comply with normal dive safety standards?

SeaRat

We don't have ANY professional dive operations here in Libya. In fact, there are less than 10 certified scuba instructors in the whole country and most of them aren't active in diving or teaching. Certainly, there are no dive centers with professional fill stations. All the people that have compressors here are individuals who happen to own compressors somehow (some are actually stolen

) and fill tanks for people out of their homes. The greater majority of them aren't even certified divers (the compressor operator or the divers) and don't know much about the risks involved.


Libya is in the Stone Age as far as diving is concerned. Thanks to Qaddafi and his 42-year brutal dictatorship rule, he made sure that people lacked proper education and health care (among other things they lacked) in Libya. We will continue to suffer for generations because of that sick criminal bastard. We have no standards or any type of education concerning proper diving practices here. In fact, there are many charlatans who claim to be dive instructors who aren't but still continue to offer diver training and teach others to dive. Few of these certified instructors actually sell certifications cards for around 500 LYD ($200) without requiring ANY training at all. You just pay them the money and you will eventually get a c-card from a big name international training agency. Some of these “professional” certified instructors even offered to the non-certified charlatan instructors to sell them c-cards for their students as to make their course “legit.” I know a great deal about these schemes since many of their students are taking diver training course with me now and tell me about details of the fraud.


We have so many dive injuries, primarily decompression sickness in Libya. Extremely high especially considering the population in Libya and the number of divers. So many myths and so many injuries to go with that. In Tripoli alone there are around 5 – 10 decompression hits per month (that we know about). Only God knows about the rest of the country and about the injured divers we don’t know about.


Since I am the only person in the entire of Libya that has a CO analyzer (not that it is a big deal to have one but people here don’t know about it and can’t afford to buy it), people come to me to test the air in their tanks. When I see that the CO% in their Tanks is high, I go to the compressor owner and chat with him and take a look at his setup. I often make recommendations on how to reduce the CO% in terms of changing filters, putting the compressor in an open area for ventilation, using a longer intake tube to place the intake far away and higher than the exhaust pipe and changing and using proper air compressor oil. I give them advice with what most people outside Libya would consider very basic and essential information.


One such person who is known to fill tanks for many people in Misrata took my advice to heart, made changes to his fill station per my recommendations and his CO% went down from around 17 - 22ppm to 1 - 2 ppm (UK maximum limit for CO% in air for diving is 3ppm and in the US it is 10ppm AFAIK). Another person, one of the biggest charlatans I know here, has his two “personal” gas powered compressors inside his almost full storage container and pumps air that not only has more than 22ppm CO but also his air smells and tastes like the rotten “arugula” (جرجير) vegetable. He uses these compressors to fill tanks for his “students” (he teaches scuba even though he isn’t a certified instructor. He isn’t even an advanced diver). I let him know in very clear terms what I think of him and his fraud and his total disregard to the well-being of people he is conning but he is like rubber, it didn’t faze him at all and continues to do what he has been doing all along, premeditated fraud at all levels.


We have a very long way to go for sure!!

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Buchanan, I just looked over your Facebook page, and your photography is impressive. While your country's conditions sound pretty primitive, the diving looks beautiful. I am glad NAUI has a presence there with you doing some instruction and education. Keep up the great work!

SeaRat

 

[BoltSnap]

Buchanan, I just looked over your Facebook page, and your photography is impressive. While your country's conditions sound pretty primitive, the diving looks beautiful. I am glad NAUI has a presence there with you doing some instruction and education. Keep up the great work!

SeaRat

Thank you!! That is very kind of you!!

Libya has so much to offer in terms of diving, we have wrecks that span thousands of years time, several cities from very old civilizations underwater in 5 - 10 meters and only few meters from shore, good marine life and awesome weather all year long (compared with Europe) and almost 2000 Km worth of coastline. When one wants to do onshore exploration, we have so many antiquities and ancient history ruins including prehistoric artifacts all over the country.

 

[WarrenZ]

I will complain and try to find a better tank at 3-5PPM and I will dump out your tank if it tests higher than 10ppm I know that you will be exposed to more than 10 ppm standing on the back of the dive boat breathing in diesel fumes however we should be able to limit at least exposure from our tanks.

 

[Jax]

Could someone check out my calculations? I know OSHA says "no more than 10 parts per million", but if you start with that 10 parts at sea level, it rapidly goes up.

I have measured tanks at 7, 9, 11. I won't dive a tank more than 3ppm, and only if I am doing recreational diving.

 

[Jax]

I read the discussions and I know 10 ppm is acceptable to USA regulators. I ordered the CooTwo and will have it before my trip to Playa del Carmen. But how much CO do you personally accept? Yes, zero is preferable! But where do you draw your personal line in the sand?

AT SEA LEVEL (0 feet below surface water / 0 meters). See the table I posted.

 

[Hatul]

Realistically the answer should be none as it tends to be indicative of compressor issues if it's more than that.

Agree. I test my tanks in California and they always register 0. It's a red flag that there is a compressor problem if you start getting non zero reading, even though up to 3 or 4ppm is probably safe for recreational diving.