The biggest safety problem in diving?

[nereas]

Hi Chris. Could you be more specific about what kind of dangers you mean exactly? As you can see most of the guys are giving you some good responses already. I assume that when you are talking about military diving you mean "combat diving" as opposed to "deep diving or saturation diving" done by Navy divers? One of the most dangerous things in military combat diving is central nervous system oxygen toxicity. This is due to the use of Closed Circuit Rebreathers using 100% oxygen. High exercise rates under water increase the diver's chance of having an oxygen convulsion (so it's done nice and easy). Of course combat divers can easily slip into the danger zone between 1.4 and 1.6 ATM whilst trying to avoid detection from the surface (that's why it's done at night) so again the oxygen convulsion danger is there also.

I agree with L/F above regarding CNS ox-tox. The problem is that the 1.6 ATA/45 mins "convention" is arbitrary. More research and trials are needed to determine what a better benchmark for this would be. Possibly then the myth of 1.4 ATAs as an appropriate safety margin would be dismissed. This is both a military as well as a govenrmental (NOAA) and civilian recreational-sport diving issue.

The most critical purely civilian issue is the time delay for flying after diving. The NOAA table regarding restricted ascent to altitude after diving, which is related to this, needs more research and trials.

 

[Gene_Hobbs]

Hi CJ, Good to see you still digging!

I always end up back at these papers for help in determining a good starting point:

Blumenberg. Human Factors in Diving. Office of Naval Research Report. California Univ Berkeley. RRR ID: 6474

O'Connor. A Navy Diving Supervisor's Guide to the Nontechnical Skills Required for Safe and Productive Diving Operations. US Naval Experimental Diving Unit. 2005. NEDU-TR-05-09. RRR ID: 3478

O'Connor. The nontechnical causes of diving accidents: can U.S. Navy divers learn from other industries? Undersea Hyperb Med. 2007 Jan-Feb;34(1):51-9. RRR ID: 5513

These papers pretty much sum up the work that has been done to date in evaluating human systems work for general diving operations. Think about it this way, diving and medicine are two fields that were both left behind as human factors has developed as a discipline. So work in both of these areas is about 30 years behind what you have seen in aviation. Simple fact is that we don't even have a coherent reporting system for accidents and fatalities that can be evaluated anything resembling a TSA analysis. What little is known makes it out in reports that offer little by way of detail or analysis. (Suggested reading on diving accidents and fatalities)

O'Connor (above), did a great start which echo's some of the sentiment in this thread. Human Error, he even goes on to look at "leadership and situation awareness" and how those are affected by attitudes of the divers. Sound familiar, communication errors, seems like the aviation and nuclear power industries have done some GREAT work in this field that could help us with these areas. But again, none of the work has really been applied. Part of that problem in my mind is that there has never been a real task analysis to look at errors (active or latent, etc.) in the diving context to define specific changes that could be made. Blumenberg (above) did a great job defining the need and even pointing toward some great starting points but what has really come of it? (Did you ever get in touch with Mike Curley?)

Simple fact is, we need good systems in place for proper data to have a real clue where to start to make the greatest impact. I would be happy to see a standardized method for evaluation and handling of gear, breathing gas (largest area of interest for me on this topic), and pathophysiology (which really just seems to need better education to clinicians and data collection repositories) as a start.

We also published this abstract last year as an attempt to kick start this type of communication between technical divers and the diving medical community on another board. The clear leader for more information and research going forward was "Decompression theory". What could you guys apply your skill set to there? Dawn Kernagis is just starting her PhD work that takes a nice look at neurocognitive changes, biomarkers, and some other cool measures in divers. I am SURE there are some things you guys could do to make this work easier given the tools we are using now. We could go on talking about other cool work going on around the world in many of the other topics but I'd be here all night... The UHMS meeting is coming up next month and the NAVSEA/ ONR Program review is the month after that. Both of these would be great opportunities to get real answers and contacts in the field.

(BTW - Funding in Undersea Research is the same now that it was in the early 80's, so it is hard out here. Many researchers have left hyperbaric for aviation research because the funding was "better")

 

[DeepSeaExplorer]

What's the biggest safety problem for divers? I'm most interested in answering this question for commercial and military divers, since the military will likely fund research that the rest of the community will benefit from.

Military: having someone drop an grenade on you.
Commerical: inadequate top-side support.

 

[miketsp]

Military: having someone drop an grenade on you.
..snip..

I'd have put LFA up there with a grenade:

Low frequency active sonar (LFA sonar) is a dangerous technology that has the potential to kill, deafen and/or disorient whales, dolphins and all marine life, as well as humans, in the water. It is the loudest sound ever put into the world's oceans. The U.S. Navy was planning to deploy it in 80% of the world's oceans at a level of 240 decibels in order to detect quiet submarines. Some other countries have similar technology. In 1996 LFA sonar during NATO exercises in the Mediterranean was correlated with a stranding of beaked whales.

OMI: The US Navy's Low Frequency Active Sonar: Cause for Concern

 

[stadler_cj]

Gene, you are an amazingly knowledgeable resource. I really appreciate your help. It will take a while for me to fully mine your post, but I'll work on it.

 

[Teamcasa]

What's the biggest safety problem for divers? I'm most interested in answering this question for commercial and military divers, since the military will likely fund research that the rest of the community will benefit from.

Spending some time here Accidents and Incidents may help to give you a jumping off point.


.

 

[stadler_cj]

Gene, one more thought. I suspect that, as in anything, if we develop critical mass, we may be able to get over the funding hump.

Rubicon-foundation.org is an amazing site, with lots of detailed information. It's been really helpful to me in my research.

 

[Gene_Hobbs]

Gene, one more thought. I suspect that, as in anything, if we develop critical mass, we may be able to get over the funding hump.

This is my hope as well!

We started Rubicon for a number of reasons not the least of which was that new researchers did not know what has been done, what is being done, or how to find that information. The UHMS report to the Navy showed the HUGE decline in both funding and personnel that is coming. We figured that if we started collecting the work that has been done in one place, more real work can be done and less time spend hunting for it. The overall goal being that this would lead to better communication.

I think communication is going to be the key to future growth of all our research. (lessons I really hoped our community would take away from watching the Human Genome Project) The Office of Naval Research found a way to get 10k to us for 2008, 2009, and 2010. This has been a huge help to us (and helped keep my wife off my back about how much time and money I have put into this, good thing we are a 501(c)(3), now if I can just get more vacation from my real job...). We hope to grow this even more this year so we can hire a part time staff person to help add more of these papers currently littering my floor.

Rubicon-foundation.org is an amazing site, with lots of detailed information. It's been really helpful to me in my research.

I can't tell you how much it makes us happy that we are able to provide "some" resources as you guys bring new tools to the table. It has been a while since new ideas have shaken things up a bit.

You have my email, PLEASE let me know if you need anything. I have a ton of other resources here that we can't or just have not had time to put up yet so I might have what you need. Thanks again!

 

[stadler_cj]

You have my email, PLEASE let me know if you need anything. I have a ton of other resources here that we can't or just have not had time to put up yet so I might have what you need. Thanks again!

Will do, Gene.

 

[RiverRat]

Another thing to look at is CO2 retention, especially in a diver that is working hard. Once we start retaining CO2 it can cause a lot of issues so we need to stop working at that point and burn it off (I'm speaking from experience as an OC diver only). If I'm not mistaken, CO2 plays into the "panic cycle". I would think, especially for a combat diver, CO2, and as previously mentioned O2 tox ,would be a primay concern while on rebreathers and working hard.