Instructor on Enriched Air

I was wondering what the legalities/standards would be for an instructor on enriched air.

Specifically, lets say I am using a 40% oxygen mixture for my dives when taking out an open water class. Our max depth is around 45 feet. If there is an emergency, and I give my octopus to a student to use, would there be any liability towards me as this student is now breathing enriched air at depth? Although I know I am well within the 1.4 ata partial pressure of oxygen, I am wondering if I could be legally pursued due to supplying enriched air to a non-trained diver.

i dont understand why you would want to be on enriched air when you are teaching a class they would have really bad air consumption and for the depth your going you could easily spend
2hours down there
good question but i dont understand why you would do it

Have you talked to PADI/Canada about this? If they can't help, I'd talk to a lawyer - the rules vary from place to place and the well-intentioned advice you'll get here on the board is not necessarily of the highest quality.

Here in the States, instructors are considered to be commercial divers and the use of EAN is an occupational safety issue regulated by Uncle Sugar. You can use it, but you have to follow (stupid) strict mixed gas protocols, including having an on-site recompression chamber. Yup, on-site recompression chamber. Violations of OSHA regulations definitely constitute a liability nightmare. Your results may (and hopefully do) vary.

Steven

When I did my OW dives (in the UK), my instructor AND my buddy were both diving nitrox and doubles with bp/wings. When you go out into the 'real world', your buddy isn't always going to have the same config and/or breathing gas. You have to learn to deal with it.

IMHO, it's not an issue unless there's an ox tox problem.

radagalf once bubbled...
I was wondering what the legalities/standards would be for an instructor on enriched air.

Specifically, lets say I am using a 40% oxygen mixture for my dives when taking out an open water class. Our max depth is around 45 feet. If there is an emergency, and I give my octopus to a student to use, would there be any liability towards me as this student is now breathing enriched air at depth? Although I know I am well within the 1.4 ata partial pressure of oxygen, I am wondering if I could be legally pursued due to supplying enriched air to a non-trained diver.

Click to expand...

I'll preface this by saying that I'm not a lawyer but ....

In Canadian law to the best of my knowledge you'd need to show a direct causal effect between the diver breathing nitrox and any physical harm caused.

Specifically, for liability the prerequisites are (a) a duty of care (in this case as defined by following the standards of your agency), (b) a negligent act directly related to the duty of care (not following standards) and (c) actual physical harm with a direct causal effect to the negligent act.

In your scenario, I assume you mean you give a student Nitrox to help him and he suffers no ill effects. In that case it would never make it to court in Canada because he'd need to be harmed by it to make a case. In fact you could give him mustard gas and as long as it didn't hurt him you're in the clear.

You *could* be held liable if you didn't assist him and he got like a lung barotrauma. In that case you have a duty to offer your alternate to a diver in trouble (duty of care) you refused (negligent act) and he did a breath-hold ascent and burst a lung (result of being refused help).

If you're really concerned about it I would get a real lawyer to double check this. If you're a member, PADI might be able to help you.

R..

Its never an issue until the S#!^ hits the fan... as in cases where one of your students for some odd reason "doesn't feel well" after breathing from your tank! That's when you get into trouble.

Besides, OW dives.... 12- 18M? max session is 40 minutes... why would you want EAN?

play it safe dude...

P.S. unless you are one of these massive dive schools where they have 100s of students on a boat and you have 3 instructors, one at the surface, one at 6 M or so and a 3rd at 12 M... and they send the students like an assembly line, if a student a 6M does not want to carry on, he goes up and log a Discover SCuba Dive, if they like diving they go down and do OW1... then your EAN would be good as you will spend some time finishing up... :boom:

radagalf once bubbled...
I was wondering what the legalities/standards would be for an instructor on enriched air.

Specifically, lets say I am using a 40% oxygen mixture for my dives when taking out an open water class. Our max depth is around 45 feet. If there is an emergency, and I give my octopus to a student to use, would there be any liability towards me as this student is now breathing enriched air at depth? Although I know I am well within the 1.4 ata partial pressure of oxygen, I am wondering if I could be legally pursued due to supplying enriched air to a non-trained diver.

Click to expand...

If something happen to the student, every little detail looks lousy in the court of law. But you would have a bigger problem. OSHA. There are specific regulations regarding working professionals using a gas other than air.

1) ESAs... Because your students will each be doing an ESA (Emergency Swimming Ascent)... with you along for the ride. I want as little N2 in my system as possible when doing multiple ESAs.

2) Higher work load... While the students are supposed to "follow" me, -I- am ultimimately responsible for each student's saftey. The extra O2 gives me the boost I need to keep up with EVERYONE. Ever try herding a group of kittens? :tease:

3) Age differential... Most of my students are @ 14-16 yo, while I am 46! I can use any advantage I can get!

4) Multiple classes... I have done 6 cert dives in a day AND then a night dive to boot. While the students aren't allowed to try that schedule, many times an instructor is forced into it. All of this N2 just adds up and NitrOx really helps keep it down.

Now, is sharing your NItrOx with your students legally defensible? I would say yes. Any mix is better than no air. The questions would probably center on the nature of the emergency and how YOU allowed it to occur. Constant air checks with students is a MUST and any drill that requires the reg out of their mouth also requires my undivided attention and close proximity. I find that inadequate training in the pool is what leads to problems in the OW sessions. Just my $0.02 worth!

Yes...all of the bouncing up and down is no fun on OW check-outs....especially when you are having multiple students do the same skill (ESAs....OOAs, etc.)

If EANx was more readily available I would dive it way more often...it just makes sense. As for liability...I would think that if something happened on an OW check-out it would be due to a lack of attention from the Instructor or DM. I do not see diving EANx 32 how we could have a tox in no more than 60fsw, but hey wierder ***** has happened. If that were to happen, I guess I could see the instructor having issues, but wouldn't the instructor donating mean that something else happened first?