My wife and I are also going to the Occidental in Coz. I contacted Padi and Dan they have no reports. Dive Palancar denies that this ever happened. They did however say several divers had minor DCS recently.
I am not sure whom to believe. Planning to dive with Dive Palancar in April.
Co2 in dive tanks is extremely rare
DAN won't publish anything for about two years when that Annual Accident Report comes out, they won't comment now because of patient confidentiality, and Padi won't say anything until their investigation is done. As you can see from the emails I have received from DP, they are unable to test the tanks at this time as there are no known facilities for such other than the two listed in the US, but we're looking into that further.
CO2 is quite common in tanks actually, indeed compressor CO filters are designed to convert CO to CO2, but it's not very dangerous in common amounts. As long as enough O2 is in the tank, CO2 is not really much of a threat. I think you meant CO tho...
CO is indeed fairly rare in scuba tanks, but of the samples that
are submitted for testing,
"dive air included numerous samples from offshore tropical compressors as well as the US dive shop compressors. The CO failure rate for diver compressed air was still about 3 percent, but for fire service air it is 0.1 percent," as contributed by an expert in the A&I Near Miss thread, but you can confirm that with the listed facilities if you're interested. Now, while failures that indicated somewhat over 10ppm CO in scuba tanks are not necessarily harmful so even most of those are probly going unnoticed in the field or written off as seasickness but that can be a slippery slope. Now that you know that there is a 3% chance that you tank air is over limit to an unknown degree, how does that feel?
This is true across the CALA sector, but then most Ops didn't bother testing as only Padi required it, they did not enforce it, and to resolve the latter problem - they stopped requiring it so the unknown factors of how many and how much will likely increase. In the States, OSHA and EPA require semi-annual testing but with little enforcement, and with Florida being the only state requiring at that level.
How safe is DP air today? They are currently using tanks filled at the major facility that most Ops which don't operate compressors get their tanks if that helps. I guess that many find comfort in that and that's all one can expect of DP and I would trust their tanks now as much as I did the tanks I dived on Roatan last week - testing every one of them with a recently calibrated, low ranger CO analyzer as I do but that's me. I am reckless by nature, but compensate in my own ways, i.e. wearing seat belts since the 60s well before they were required, hiding indoors during lightening storms, wearing a pony bottle on every dive below 50 ft, etc.
If my next dive trip was not planned until August and I did not have a personal analyzer, I'd look forward to seeing what Analox hopes to introduce this summer. If I had diving planned even in the States before August and did not have an analyzer, I'd get the $130 Pocket CO for now as it does work when its weak points are provided for. I accept that most won't do either, but oh well. I'll keep testing my tanks with the unit I have now, and look at the Anaolox model when it is released as well.
The big problem is that most Ops in the CALA area do not use CO monitors, and none are known to use one on Coz. They cost about $1,000 USD to install and more for quarterly calibrations so most compressors are operated simply with hope.
April is a nice time to visit Coz. Have a great trip.
ilot:
I'll take that as good humored sarcasm.
eace:
Not even sarcasm, Don. Now you have managed to engage them in a constructive dialogue. One of these times I hope I bump into you on the island so I can buy you a beer.
I was joking too.
I can tend to be obsessive at times, but I like to see it as focused.
This is a pet peeve of mine as as I said in last night's email to DP: this seems to be a common and long standing omission in the Caribbean and Latin American sector as well as many other dive destinations around the world. DAN admits that they do not know how many scuba drownings are actually caused by CO toxicity in tanks as the testing and information has often not been forthcoming.
