Risk of CO (versus incorrect O2 tank levels)

[Doppler]

Things are statistically irrelevant until you become the minor statistical footnote.

Your point isn't that there's no chance of a high CO level in a tank, it's that the odds are very low. Ok, fair enough...

You can do whatever you like. All I'm stating is there aren't enough facts to support any real concern for CO. There are PLENTY of facts to support just about any other way a diver has died. In light of this I'm going to take a jaded stance when someone tries to tell me that the industry/shop/region/whoever is covering those particular deaths up.

Let me turn this whole argument on its head and ask you both (all) to look at it from a different angle.


Among the counter-top display of skills we offer technical divers during training, we include air-sharing... donate the longhose, exit the cave/wreck/depths in a sort of controlled highly regimented formation, et al all in a bid to manage Out of Air Emergencies. This is a skill that is taught as a fundamental and failure to get it down pat results in student failure... However, I would suggest that in technical diving among properly trained dive teams, a real OOA emergency is rare... statistically zero. In 20 years of technical diving I have seen or experienced one such emergency... and that was an open-water diver who followed us into an overhead and then panicked.

A straw poll of a bunch of senior ITs who had happened to standing around shooting the breeze in the headoffice of a technical training agency one time, turned up a similar dearth of actual real-world events. (Among us, we had more than 13,000 dives on doubles in caves and the total OOA situations that required one buddy to breathe off another's kit as per the scenario taught and practiced regularly was zero.

Yet we still teach it and we still practice it.

CO poisoning may be rare, but its seriousness... the result of it showing its face... and the ease with which the risk can be managed... Well, let me put it like this:

"Are you willing to stop doing S-Drills completely... to never bother practicing an air-sharing exit?

Similarly, and germane to this thread (although a moderator is welcome to break this off into a new one), I have approximately 600 hours shared between two rebreathers that I dive regularly. I always carry an off-board bailout bottle... often two of them. I have had to use off-board bailout once. So statistically speaking, carry bailout is not really necessary is it?

Catch me diving a CCR in anything but confined water, and I'll buy you your own unit!

 

[Abdullah]

You can do whatever you like. All I'm stating is there aren't enough facts to support any real concern for CO. There are PLENTY of facts to support just about any other way a diver has died. In light of this I'm going to take a jaded stance when someone tries to tell me that the industry/shop/region/whoever is covering those particular deaths up.

Cover ups? I think you're probably right to be jaded on that. Lack of reporting is more accurate. Most jurisdictions outside the US and Europe just don't autopsy and track accidental cause of death to level of detail that you need to prove that there is a problem. The trouble is that those jurisdictions also don't regulate dive operations the way the US does either.

We know that high temperatures and poor compressor maintenance increase the risk of compressor flash and other downstream anomalies. And both poor maintenance and high temps occur with regularity in "third world" tropical dive areas. Add to that the inability to routinely obtain critical consumable supplies such as molecular sieve and compressor oil at the distal ends of the supply chain. If they've got 20 divers tomorrow and no molecular sieve, they're still going to fill the tanks for tomorrow's dives.

Who is checking these dive ops to verify they are complying with manufacturer and industry standards? You are! Or, maybe you're not because you don't think there is an appreciable risk. You might be alright in Florida, but out here in the hinterlands I'm going to analyze.

 

[AggieDiver]

Because I can read the annual statistics from the agencies that collect such information. HE didn't address anything other than feelings and one or two reported results. HE also "feels" that global results aren't reported which they are. I can quote source material from all reliable and they all say the same thing. Insufficient data. We don't have that problem with any other diving related deaths from the same agencies.

FIFY

I can't decide if you are just being deliberately obtuse about this or if you are trolling on this topic. My whole point in my very first response to you was that we don't have sufficient data to know whether CO is a problem or not. You have responded to nearly every post since then asking for people to provide more data, yet in the post quoted above, you yourself then agree with what I said in the very beginning...that there is insufficient data. There are many reasons for that lack of data. Some that you will believe, some that you won't. You keep claiming you review all these worldwide databases of scuba accidents, and find no evidence of CO as a problem. Yet how many of those dead divers were actually tested for it? I am sure you don't know. How many of them report drowning as the cause of death and provide no other details on why the drowning happened? Probably a large number. Why that testing never happens or why no further investigation happens is immaterial to the discussion, and clearly you became completely preoccupied with that aspect rather than address the central issue of my post, which was that if testing isn't performed or reported on dead divers, we don't have any way to know how many had CO issues involved in their deaths. The bottom line is that just because there is insufficient data doesn't mean there is no risk. It may be a risk that you are willing to accept because of your own circumstances...but just because you consider it an insignificant risk, doesn't mean it is not a risk.

 

[syntaxerrorsix]

Let me turn this whole argument on its head and ask you both (all) to look at it from a different angle.


Among the counter-top display of skills we offer technical divers during training, we include air-sharing... donate the longhose, exit the cave/wreck/depths in a sort of controlled highly regimented formation, et al all in a bid to manage Out of Air Emergencies. This is a skill that is taught as a fundamental and failure to get it down pat results in student failure... However, I would suggest that in technical diving among properly trained dive teams, a real OOA emergency is rare... statistically zero. In 20 years of technical diving I have seen or experienced one such emergency... and that was an open-water diver who followed us into an overhead and then panicked.

A straw poll of a bunch of senior ITs who had happened to standing around shooting the breeze in the headoffice of a technical training agency one time, turned up a similar dearth of actual real-world events. (Among us, we had more than 13,000 dives on doubles in caves and the total OOA situations that required one buddy to breathe off another's kit as per the scenario taught and practiced regularly was zero.

Yet we still teach it and we still practice it.

CO poisoning may be rare, but its seriousness... the result of it showing its face... and the ease with which the risk can be managed... Well, let me put it like this:

"Are you willing to stop doing S-Drills completely... to never bother practicing an air-sharing exit?

Similarly, and germane to this thread (although a moderator is welcome to break this off into a new one), I have approximately 600 hours shared between two rebreathers that I dive regularly. I always carry an off-board bailout bottle... often two of them. I have had to use off-board bailout once. So statistically speaking, carry bailout is not really necessary is it?

Catch me diving a CCR in anything but confined water, and I'll buy you your own unit!

I hear where you are coming from but I don't believe S-Drills or foregoing a bailout bottle for CCR are quite the same as being overly concerned with CO.

It's pretty standard fare to come off the loop if you feel there is anything wrong with the mix you are breathing and S-Drills simply confirm that the equipment is working and hoses aren't trapped.

I base my decisions off of basic risk management and reduction techniques. Just about every matrix available will ask for two primary questions to be answered. How often does it happen and what are the results. Given those two questions alone CO falls completely off my list of unacceptable risks. I understand if this doesn't apply to everyone, we all mitigate risks to an acceptable level but it will never be zero nor is it the same for everybody.

Some people carry electronic shark repellers and I can find far more results of diver v shark than I can find diver v CO. Does that mean we are all fools for not wearing chainmail? I'm thinking no.

 

[Doppler]

I hear where you are coming from but I don't believe S-Drills or foregoing a bailout bottle for CCR are quite the same as being overly concerned with CO.

It's pretty standard fare to come off the loop if you feel there is anything wrong with the mix you are breathing and S-Drills simply confirm that the equipment is working and hoses aren't trapped.

I base my decisions off of basic risk management and reduction techniques. Just about every matrix available will ask for two primary questions to be answered. How often does it happen and what are the results. Given those two questions alone CO falls completely off my list of unacceptable risks. I understand if this doesn't apply to everyone, we all mitigate risks to an acceptable level but it will never be zero nor is it the same for everybody.

Some people carry electronic shark repellers and I can find far more results of diver v shark than I can find diver v CO. Does that mean we are all fools for not wearing chainmail? I'm thinking no.

You make a good point, and frankly, with CO, it's possible for most of us to argue either side of the debate... anyhow, I guess we've wandered far off topic... oh, hang on... this is ScubaBoard. We should be OK then!

Dive safe.

 

[Atom]

You can do whatever you like. All I'm stating is there aren't enough facts to support any real concern for CO. There are PLENTY of facts to support just about any other way a diver has died. In light of this I'm going to take a jaded stance when someone tries to tell me that the industry/shop/region/whoever is covering those particular deaths up.

CO in the tank doesn't mean you'll instantly die, especially on shorter/shallower dives... there has to be many incidents that do not get reported because the symptoms of CO poisoning are headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion, quite common with either sea sickness or just feeling off for the day or being hung over. Combined non-lethal incidents with the fact that most fill stations in tropical locations don't seem to be testing for CO, have no way/desire to analyze tanks post dives, it's not surprising we don't hear about it a lot.

It's a real problem (we know some people died from it), it's an avoidable one (CO testers exist and are easy to use) so I don't see why we wouldn't test for it. Especially if you'll be doing an overhead dive which will have you breath that gas for a long time and put you a long way from the exit if things start to go wrong.

 

[flots am]

You can do whatever you like. All I'm stating is there aren't enough facts to support any real concern for CO. There are PLENTY of facts to support just about any other way a diver has died. In light of this I'm going to take a jaded stance when someone tries to tell me that the industry/shop/region/whoever is covering those particular deaths up.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

I'm sure people die from CO more often than is reported, however once you get out of range of the lawyers (this a good portion of the world), "dead" is just "dead" and that's about all the information you're going to get.

There's no cover-up, there's just no real data collection.

flots.

 

[Tortuga68]

CO in the tank doesn't mean you'll instantly die

Neither does breathing the wrong mix

I do not think the lesson to be learned from the Carlos fatality is about CO in particular

I don't think CO has anything to do with it at all; classic SB thread hijack

 

[D_B]

I hear where you are coming from but I don't believe S-Drills or foregoing a bailout bottle for CCR are quite the same as being overly concerned with CO.

It's pretty standard fare to come off the loop if you feel there is anything wrong with the mix you are breathing and S-Drills simply confirm that the equipment is working and hoses aren't trapped.

I base my decisions off of basic risk management and reduction techniques. Just about every matrix available will ask for two primary questions to be answered. How often does it happen and what are the results. Given those two questions alone CO falls completely off my list of unacceptable risks. I understand if this doesn't apply to everyone, we all mitigate risks to an acceptable level but it will never be zero nor is it the same for everybody.

Some people carry electronic shark repellers and I can find far more results of diver v shark than I can find diver v CO. Does that mean we are all fools for not wearing chainmail? I'm thinking no.

(bold added by me)The answer to the first question is that we dont have the data to answer that so pointing to the fact that there is little risk for CO in your tank is not an accurate one .. an accurate one would be we dont know how high the risk is

 

[syntaxerrorsix]

(bold added by me)The answer to the first question is that we dont have the data to answer that so pointing to the fact that there is little risk for CO in your tank is not an accurate one .. an accurate one would be we dont know how high the risk is

Lack of data may also be used in the risk assessment matrix effectively.