Wildfires and diving

[shawnhar]

There's a LOT of smoke in the air over Seattle at the moment! I'm curious whether this affects anyone's diving plans?

On the one hand, breathing filtered air from a tank is probably going to be significantly easier than what I've been getting in daily life this last ~week

But on the other hand, my sinuses and throat are mildly inflamed and my lungs irritated. I run out of breath long before normal if I try to work out. I'm not sure it'd be a good idea to dive from this already impaired starting point?

 

[g2]

I've been diving a couple times this past week with no problem. The smoke is irritating and causes an allergic reaction in me, but doesn't seem to affect the diving (other than the occasional underwater sneeze).

 

[caruso]

I try to avoid diving in areas near wildfires ever since I heard that story where after the fires were over they found the charred body of a scuba diver in high up in the branches of a tree.

Here's the details:

A man dressed in his scuba gear; wetsuit, mask, fins and tank was discovered in a clean up of a Californian forest fire. The strangely placed victim, yes in the branch of a tree, suffered severe burns from the forest fire. However, an autopsy revealed that he didn't die from the fire, but from bad internal injuries. They used the divers dental records to identify him and contacted his family in an attempt to find out how he could have ended up there.

The family, horrified, said that the victim had set off diving in the sea about 30 miles from the forest on the day the fire got out of control. Investigators started to piece the information that they had gathered together. It appeared that the scuba diver had been accidentally caught in amongst thousands of gallons of water by a heli-tanker which had been called in to help the fire-fighters put out the forest fire. So, caught up in one of the massive buckets of water, the diver had been dumped with the sea water in an attempt to extinguish the fire as quick as they could.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/corpus-crispy/

 

[caruso]

Spoilsport.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I can't even count the number of times that story has come up on Scubaboard.

 

[g2]

I run out of breath long before normal if I try to work out. I'm not sure it'd be a good idea to dive from this already impaired starting point?

I figure extended time in a high-pressure oxygen environment using filtered nitrox is the ideal treatment. Viewed like this, diving is recommended, nay, mandatory!

 

[txgoose]

I figure extended time in a high-pressure oxygen environment using filtered nitrox is the ideal treatment. Viewed like this, diving is recommended, nay, mandatory!

This seems very sound to me. Irritated lungs -> medicinal O2 -> happy lungs. Go get wet!

 

[fmerkel]

If approached cautiously, it should be somewhat of a relief. The cautionary side is to go slow, and pay attention to your respiratory situation during the dive, especially the first part of the dive. The air is 'clean', hopefully a LOT cleaner than what we've been sucking down for almost 2 weeks.
(Sure hope the shops are keeping up with their filters!)
But the air is also cold and dry. If the irritation from the smoke has set up a borderline trigger to some kind of asthma/respiratory 'malfunction' it's possible that extra bit of challenge could set it off. IMO it would be more likely to improve on things. But, I'd go slowly, stay relatively shallow, and see how it goes for the first 10-15 minutes.