Children die playing with scuba gear left in pool - Jensen Beach, Florida

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First, I want to remain mindful of the underlying tragedy. This is going to sound like I'm reducing it to a clinical explanation and that's not my intent. My heart breaks for this family.

It depends on how quickly the individual is removed from the environment. The one person I met who it happened to was a U.S. Navy diver who had stuck his head up inside a saturation bell that was full of helium due to an undiscovered gas leak. He took one breath and basically self-rescued by passing out and falling back through the bell hatch into fresh air. The only thing he got was a nasty bump on his head. The probability of survival goes down very quickly the longer the individual is exposed though - much more quickly than someone who has gone into respiratory arrest from (for example) a drug overdose and is simply deprived of oxygen. Pure helium (or any other pure gas that isn't oxygen, as @Wookie pointed out) will act like an oxygen vacuum because of the large diffusion gradient between the bloodstream and the lungs. This results in extremely rapid hypoxemia, which would lead quickly to irreversible tissue damage. So, minute for minute, it would be much more difficult to resuscitate someone who had breathed pure helium, and that's on dry land. In the water, an unconscious individual would drown quickly.

<edit> I was typing this as @mderrick was typing his well-considered post above - same idea, different wording.

Thanks for that answer DDM, much appreciated.

And yes, what is being discussed is the result of a terrible tragedy, and as I pointed out in the first post I made, my sincerest and deepest condolences go to the family and friends of the deceased (as I also know one of the parents personally); as opposed to finger pointing blame as was the case in some posts earlier in the thread. However, I think the issue of clarifying the 'problems' with breathing 'pure' / 100% helium is relevant given the circumstances. So thanks to those who added to DDM's input also.
 
M
I would like to point out that the previously described anecdotes of deliberately inducing hypoxia as ad hoc experiments or "party tricks" using helium or hypoxic trimix blends are very ill considered and reckless behaviors.

My hypoxic event wasn't deliberate nor a party trick which may explain why my experience differed greatly from the others.
 
My experience was quite different. The onset was as quick as you describe but it was apparently 5-ish minutes before I turned from blue to pink, another 15 or so minutes before I became aware of my surroundings and about 4 or 5 hours before my head cleared. Didn't have the strength to walk until the next morning.

Yours was u/w, right? So very different. I'm sure you know how lucky you are.
 
I recall reading of a similar fatality years ago where an experienced technical diver boosted leftover helium into a scuba cylinder which he labelled "100%." He suffered an unrelated orthopedic injury that kept him away from diving for many months, and when he returned to diving, he mistook his label to mean 100% oxygen. Perhaps someone else remembers more details or can post a link so that we can better understand that this is not an isolated incident.

I believe that the system of deliberately incompatible valve fittings used in the packaged gas industry has saved many lives. I believe that some sort of greater discipline in this regard would serve divers well, not only with helium but with (100%) oxygen.

Perhaps gas suppliers would stop charging punitive short-term cylinder rental rates if the risk so created were better understood. For a five year lease on a K or T cylinder I used to pay around $300, which is $5 a month. At that rate there would be no reason to fiddle around boosting into another bottle, but the monthly charges (without a five year contract) are much higher.
 
It is heartbreaking to hear about this tragedy, and I want to make sure this post isn’t construed as piling on.

However, it is important to acknowledge that procedures do exist to prevent this sort of accident. I learned about these deaths as I was reading Steve Lewis's Staying Alive: Risk Management Techniques for Advanced Scuba Diving. His advice is prescient:

A real potential for an hypoxic incident exists when gases for extremely deep dives are being prepared for use. I've found that the best practice is to make sure cylinders containing ANY gas with an oxygen content of less than 18 percent are clearly marked. DO NOT BREATHE. HYPOXIC GAS. Also, NEVER leave a regulator attached to an unattended bottle containing hypoxic mix. (Emphasis in the original)​

Unfortunately, the second part of his admonition can be followed only if the first part has been heeded.

My deepest condolences to the families involved.
 
It is heartbreaking to hear about this tragedy, and I want to make sure this post isn’t construed as piling on.

However, it is important to acknowledge that procedures do exist to prevent this sort of accident. I learned about these deaths as I was reading Steve Lewis's Staying Alive: Risk Management Techniques for Advanced Scuba Diving. His advice is prescient:

A real potential for an hypoxic incident exists when gases for extremely deep dives are being prepared for use. I've found that the best practice is to make sure cylinders containing ANY gas with an oxygen content of less than 18 percent are clearly marked. DO NOT BREATHE. HYPOXIC GAS. Also, NEVER leave a regulator attached to an unattended bottle containing hypoxic mix. (Emphasis in the original)​

Unfortunately, the second part of his admonition can be followed only if the first part has been heeded.

My deepest condolences to the families involved.
I'm not an expert in safety, but what little I know was taught to me by a Safety Engineer who had worked on nuclear subs, and he did know what he was talking about!

Labels are a good example of things that are well-intended but can easily go wrong. Warning signs are usually pictorial, not text-based, because people may not be able to read signs, or may not understand them. For example, how many people would understand what "hypoxic gas" means? Fewer than you would hope. In general, signs are a surprisingly weak barrier for preventing accidents.

We had one incident where a well-educated engineer at a remote camp was following an operating procedure for some equipment. He didn't understand one of the terms in the procedure and was embarrassed to ask, so he simply guessed and, unfortunately, killed the system. Luckily the only result was a wasted trip and some cost, not lives lost - but it was a good lesson. And the important thing when reviewing the incident was not to seek to blame anyone, but to recognise that the system had been inadequate and needed to be improved.
 
I'm not an expert in safety, but what little I know was taught to me by a Safety Engineer who had worked on nuclear subs, and he did know what he was talking about!

Labels are a good example of things that are well-intended but can easily go wrong. Warning signs are usually pictorial, not text-based, because people may not be able to read signs, or may not understand them. For example, how many people would understand what "hypoxic gas" means? Fewer than you would hope. In general, signs are a surprisingly weak barrier for preventing accidents.

We had one incident where a well-educated engineer at a remote camp was following an operating procedure for some equipment. He didn't understand one of the terms in the procedure and was embarrassed to ask, so he simply guessed and, unfortunately, killed the system. Luckily the only result was a wasted trip and some cost, not lives lost - but it was a good lesson. And the important thing when reviewing the incident was not to seek to blame anyone, but to recognise that the system had been inadequate and needed to be improved.


I'm not sure of your point.

As you saying that because labels often get ignored or misunderstood, the tank owner shouldn't have labeled the the tank?

What should he have done instead of labeling that would have kept him from putting a regulator on that tank and tossing it in the pool?

I think the labels Steve Lewis recommends are intended to be seen only by the tank owners and other divers who know what hypoxic gas means. In any event, DO NOT BREATHE is a pretty good indicator that whatever HYPOXIC means, it doesn't mean something you want to breathe.
 
I'm not sure of your point.

As you saying that because labels often get ignored or misunderstood, the tank owner shouldn't have labeled the the tank?

What should he have done instead of labeling that would have kept him from putting a regulator on that tank and tossing it in the pool?

From a safe practices standpoint, the answer is that you never boost undiluted helium into an open-circuit scuba cylinder to begin with. Leave it in the K or T it came in, vent it, blend it, give it away, give it back to your gas supplier, or purchase or rent a smaller cylinder (than a K or T) with a CGA580 valve on it.
 
Wouldn't the standard "take 3 breaths while watching the spg before diving" have prevented this?

I've never descended with air off when I did this. In case(s) when I didn't take 3 breaths, well, I plead the 5th....

Even one breath of He would give you the tell-tale voice.
 
These kids were described by the parent as "proficient divers." Proficient scuba divers? at 7 and 9 years old?

Not even discussing how this could even be possible, but it may show a bad mindset.

Im sorry, but I would not trust a 9 year old to be proficient at anything requiring specific guidelines, where breaking them could be hazardous.
 
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