Can virus or bacteria survive a PPO2 over 30?

[Akimbo]

An old mate and I were talking about diving during the the CV19 shutdown. This question came up: Can any virus or bacteria survive inside a Scuba tank? Let's ignore the heat of compression in the compressor cylinders for this discussion.

Also of interest, is there any reason that these 'bugs" wouldn't suffer explosive decompression when they get past the first stage?

 

[divinh]

My understanding is that the RNA strands are pretty fragile. I think when someone says it survives on a surface, it's just sitting there, not being disturbed... at least, that's the way the tests sound like they were conducted.

 

[Hank49]

Very interesting question.
Effects of High Hydrostatic Pressure on Coastal Bacterial Community Abundance and Diversity

 

[Akimbo]

Very interesting question.
Effects of High Hydrostatic Pressure on Coastal Bacterial Community Abundance and Diversity

After a cursory read, isn't this study on bacteria in sea water rather than exposed to high partial pressure of Oxygen?

 

[Hank49]

After cursory read, isn't this study on bacteria in sea water rather than exposed to high partial pressure

Yes. I would guess the best way to confirm your question, would be to scrape inside a scuba tank and plate it on TCBS plates and see if there are live bacteria.

 

[Storker]

One of the things I worry the least about is the amount of infectious vectors surviving in a scuba tank after passing through a press and its filters.

If I were OOG, I'd probably not worry overmuch about the risk of receiving a primary donate either. Like someone said sometime, if I were out of gas, I'd suck a donkey's behind if I thought it'd give me the gas I needed to survive.

 

[Akimbo]

Yes. I would guess the best way to confirm your question, would be to scrape inside a scuba tank and plate it on TCBS plates and see if there are live bacteria.

It would be hard to isolate the effects of the heat of compression, PPO2, and explosive decompression -- let alone super low humidity. I suppose you could slowly compress air into a sterilized stainless gas sample bomb and slowly decompress the sample, but that wouldn't isolate the effects the lack of something for the "germs" eat/consume since it couldn't be done quickly.

I wonder if anyone has studied air from HP cylinders supplying bio hazmat suits?

 

[RyanT]

Yes, RNA itself is quite fragile. With RNA viruses though, there is an additional protein coat that protects the RNA and this is what allows it to remain intact on surfaces for a period of time. The original question is an interesting one. First, pressure aside, it seems likely that the oxidative environment at a PO2 of 30 would be really rough on bacteria and viruses. As for decompression, it seems quite likely that bacterial cells would undergo explosive decompression. I wonder about viruses though. A typical bacterial cell is in the range of 2-5 microns long. A corona virus is in the range of 0.125 microns. I wonder if this size would render it too small for bubble development?

 

[Akimbo]

One of the things I worry the least about is the amount of infectious vectors surviving in a scuba tank after passing through a press and its filters.

True, unless you suffer from isolation-induced intellectual curiosity.

 

[uncfnp]

Challenging question and not sure there is an actual study. This is the closest I have found...

Effect of elevated oxygen concentration on bacteria, yeasts, and cells propagated for production of biological compounds

Microbes are know to live under some extreme conditions (extremophiles) but they have adapted over eons to those conditions. Introducing a bacteria or virus (excluding spores) from their usual environment into the extreme environment of a high pressure, high PO2 scuba tank, an environment for which they have no evolutionary adaptation? Nope, I theorize they will not survive.