Air Quality Certificate

[amobeus]

Hi

I've been breathing the air from just about every dive shop and pump station in Ontario for the last 15 years, and I've never had any air quality problems. Why is that people always look to find faults in there heros instead of the good side of the life. You people need to get your self a Anthony Robins kit or therapy.

Happy diving for me

Amobeus

 

[pufferfish]

amobeus once bubbled...
Hi

I've been breathing the air from just about every dive shop and pump station in Ontario for the last 15 years, and I've never had any air quality problems. Why is that people always look to find faults in there heros instead of the good side of the life. You people need to get your self a Anthony Robins kit or therapy.

Happy diving for me

Amobeus

Amobeus, I've been sending people for colonoscopies for twelve years and assumed (after reading Mr. Robins) the long black snakes were properly sterilized. For the second time in two years a hospital (this time Oshawa) is recalling a hundred patients as someone forgot to sterilize the gear properly. Sh*t happens in this life and in this case one only knows about it as likely an honest nurse said something to the people that matter, otherwise the incompetence would have gone undetected and one might never know how they contracted a disease. How many times has this happened and we don't know about it as nothing is said. Look at the neurologist in Scarborough who wasn't cleaning his EEG needles between patients and infected sixty or so with hepatitis B about five years ago. He didn 't say anything to anybody. It was detected by another alert doc who noticed the spike in cases from a small geographic area.

With scuba air it is much the same whereby unless one is outright killed or there is a whole class that gets sick bad air is usually a sporadic event which often goes undetected. Lipoid pneumonia doesn't make headlines and that is only if you make the connection. Dr. Bill on this board just last week aborted a dive as his air tasted like oil. You may be lucky or you may be only using shops that do test properly but if there is no testing or inadequate testing Mr. Murphy will visit you one day. When that happens your Anthony Robins tape series will be of little use

 

[seahunter]

Jeez puff - how do you get away with it?
If I posted a reply as personally insulting as yours I be shot!!
Maybe it's because I own a dive store.
Of course , the difference could also be that people really care about what I say.

I. You're right! Trace did not check for one tiny component listed in the CSA specs until earlier this year. Of course, no other country does either. Have you or anyone else considered that the CSA specs are intentionally designed only so that CSA can say they are the most rigid rather than because the specs are necessary?
Regardless, stores getting air tests made by recognized, accedited labs exceeding Z-180 may be excluded from your list but the air is certainly equal and may be better. I simply point out that Trace for one is a much more experienced lab and they test to Z-180. You have gone to great pains to demonstrate to amobeus how things screw up and for someone to blindly trust an institution is foolish yet you insist in this thread (17 pages now - setting a record) that blind trust in the CSA and more specifically a Canadian test facility is the answer to the problem (have you actually established there is a problem yet?). If every dive store used the same agency, there would be no control factor. You ought to be pleased that I am providing a comparison test to the same standards but from another facility. It gives us all a comparison - a test factor if you like. If I may, my faith in the CSA is not without reservation for good, historical reasons. Don't they also set standards for water testing, etc? I don't say they don't do a good job - I simply suggest we should watch them too.
You suggest a compromise in the CSA standards with respect to frequency. Where else might we look for compromises?
2. Quality can be measured. A new test facility has perfect quality from it's first day in business. Quantity provides proof of consistent quality over time. Both are required.
3. Right again! (Randy is a helpful fellow.). PADI Dive Centers are required to have quarterly tests. PADI 5 Stars are required to file the results. Given your healthy scepticism (other than when it comes to the CSA), I'm surprised you don't see the difference. My point still stands.
4. Thanks for the referral. I hope your friend had a good time and enjoys their new sport. The policy which I instituted based on the discussions on this thread is a matter of record and is available for all my staff to read on the Staff Forum of the The Diving Board. The policy was also discussed and agreed to by all the leaders at the monthly Leader's Meeting at that time. The posts on the Policy and Procedure Forum are dated so you can see when it was posted. Please refrain from insinuating I'm dishonest. There are simply too many divers who know otherwise. I'm happy to give you access to that private forum if you won't accept my word but will insist on an apolgy here after you read it. Let me know your choice. Your member number for The Diving Board is all I require to give you access.
I'd appreciate a private message with the name of your friend so I can find who their instructor was and take the necessary action to ensure they correct the error by contacting each student in the class. They won't forget that policy in the future.
Are you aware of any other scuba school who has taken this pro-active step other than ourselves?

 

[pufferfish]

Seahunter I see I am not the only one on this forum recently who has taken issue with your posts. It has nothing to do with being a dive store owner and everything to do with the content and presentation of your posts. As you and anybody who has been following this thread knows for the longest time you claimed you were meeting CSA Z180.1-00 standards when in fact you were not. Initially we praised you as the only shop in the GTA at the time who was doing so, and if you look back in this thread you took these compliments and further boasted about the claim. You can then imagine our disappointment when a letter to the President of Trace Analytics, Ruby Ochoa, revealed this was clearly not the case and that we had been had. At that point in time Ms. Ochoa stated Trace Analytics had never tested to this standard but was planning on doing so in the near future. What you did was disingenuous at best, but it served to undermine the credibility and wealth of experience you do have from being in this industry so long. We do welcome your thoughts here but only when they are accurate and contribute to the debate and not to S2K's self-promotion.

Now back to your other points. There really isn't too much to argue about whether Trace Analytics is better than Maxxam. I am not in a position to say one is better than the other. Trace is accredited in the US by A2LA, the US equivalent of our Standards Council of Cananda (SCC). If you are using them now to test to CSA Z180 with their *new* (since July/03) service that is great. Some though in the MOL might split hairs with you if push came to shove over a bad air incident and state the CSA standard does specify a Canadian accredited lab be used. I am not skeptical about the CSA standard anymore than I am about the CGA Grade E standard as these standards are just a list of numbers chosen by a panel of 'experts' in the compressed breathing air analysis business. If one wants to be skeptical (I think one should be) it would be about the actual accreditation process which is either done by the SCC in Canada or by A2LA in the States. A person with training in compressed gas analysis and analytical chemistry would have to sit down and compare the policies and procedures between the two agencies and basically look at what equipment and procedures are being done to measure each contaminant in question by the individual labs. Questions such as how often are the labs reviewed, how often are blinded samples sent to test the accuracy and precision of each member lab, and what is done to rectify a lab where unreliable results are found. After this review the only way to truly compare the reliability of the two accreditations would be to take blinded samples with known concentrations of the contaminants across various concentration levels and send them to both labs. This is what is done by the SCC and A2LA in each country but in order to truly compare the two agencies across the border this is what would have to be done. Obviously this is not going to happen anytime soon so until shown otherwise we will just have to accept equivalency. I don't have a problem with that.

As far as that student who attended a course at S2K (said the instruction was excellent) after your directive was issued, it clearly illustrates a point in all of this discussion. You can set all the 'regulations' you want even in your own business, but unless there is someone there to monitor compliance very few will follow it especially if they don't understand the importance of the directive in the first place. No need to show me the directive as I believe you on that one, but just thought I would point out what happens to a good idea meant to enhance the safety of divers when no one monitors compliance. Sounds very familiar doesn't it. I am not interested in having an instructor singled out as who knows maybe none of them are teaching to ask for a recent air certificate. Maybe the guy just forgot that particular day. Yes you are the only shop I know that has this directive but maybe you need to remind the instructors at least quarterly about following that S2K Z180.1-03 standard, else plus ca change,...

 

[pufferfish]

Another scuba charter outfit has produced a recent certificate.
Congratulations to both Dive Toronto and St. Lawrence Charters for ensuring divers in Ontario have access to the best quality of breathing air!

The following Ontario shops have a recent Canadian air certificate showing they meet or exceed the requirements of CSA Z180.1 (2000) standard for compressed breathing air.

1. Dive Center, Ottawa www.divecenter.ca
2. Ron's Scuba, Cornwall
3. Dolphinos, Ottawa www.dolphinos.com
4. G&S Watersports, Tobermory www.gswatersports.com
5. Diver's Den, Tobermory www.diversden.ca
6. Burton's Dive Service, Ottawa www.burtonsdive.com
7. Abucs Scuba, Brockville www.divebrockville.com
8. Aquarius Scuba, Toronto www.aquariusscuba.com
9. Climb and Dive Toronto www.climbtoronto.com
10. St. Lawrence Diving Charters, Iroquois (no web site)

Tests by the OUC are not recognized as accredited. Certifications must be less than six months old and preferably less than three months old.

Still waiting to hear about any Kingston shops. If I have missed anyone please post the shop's name.

When you do buy fills from these shops knowing they have made a genuine effort to provide divers with safe air please tell the owner this is why you are patronizing their store. Postive reinforcement works wonders.

More on the way!

 

[Dive Source]

FYI

Dive Source Scuba currently uses The PADI and NAUI reccomended Lab Trace Analytics LAB and also has them do CSA equivilent testing as well as Oxygen compatibile air testing OCA - (Critical as we blend a pile of nitrox).

Our air tests have always passed and they are in a nice frame right beside our compressor for everyone to see.

To Pufferfish - I appreciate your private emails and the time you took to review our current test results which we sent to you. Your positive comments regarding our test results from Trace Analytics were appreciated and we also see the value of your reccomendations to use Canadian labs as well.

With this said we will begin supplementing the high quality testing we recieve from Trace with additional testing from Maxxam labs this spring which will provide us with results from two independent and respected sources.

Although we are not yet on the "official pufferfish list" shown here (since we are not yet testing from a Canadian lab), we felt we needed to post what we do as being absent from a list can give the impression testing isn't being done and that is not the case with Dive Source Scuba whose air quality is excellent.

Respectfully - Brian@divesource

 

[pufferfish]

We'd love to put you on the list in the spring once you receive an air certificate from a Canadian accredited lab. Also glad to see someone else recognizes the importance of using oxygen compatible air. Many shops in Ontario blending gases look at you blankly when you mention OCA.

As DiveSource is only ten minutes north of the 401 on the way to Brockville and Kingston it will be very handy for people looking for high quality fills to nip in and get those tanks filled on the way to those popular dive areas.

There are only about a dozen shops testing quarterly to any accredited standard in the province so to have quarterly to CSA Z180.1-00 will be sooo nice

Dive Air Aware