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Article #973Re: Nitrogen Narcosis
From: Stephen Jacobs
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 05:06
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 05:06
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This has been going on long enough for it to be worth pointing out that
'nitrogen narcosis' is really soluble gas narcosis. Helium is kinda magic,
since it has extremely low solubility in blood. Oxygen isn't so fortunate,
and oxygen narcosis can happen. Breathing mixtures for extreme depths don't
induce oxygen narcosis as quickly as one might first expect because they
contain less than 20% oxygen (the thing that you need kept in the right
range to respire is partial pressure of oxygen, not fraction in breathing gas).
Helium is good for breathing under pressure for another reason: it's less
viscous than other plausible diluent gases. The effort of breathing thick
(dense) air can be considerable. Aside from the 'Donald Duck' problem, helium
has the disadvantage of being a good conductor of heat. In the cold depths,
you want to be as thermally insulated as possible.
Steve saj@chinet.chi.il.us
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Newsgroups: alt.folklore.science Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!uwm.edu!linac!uchinews!machine!chinet!saj From: saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs) Subject: Re: Nitrogen Narcosis Message-ID: <BxsM66.Eo@chinet.chi.il.us> Summary: Any soluble gas, actually Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX References: <1992Nov9.155548.6766@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> <23966@galaxy.ucr.edu> Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 05:06:05 GMT Lines: 14