re: Incident at BASF in Geismar

From what I hear…… one was removed from life support…. One is at home and ok. I don’t know 100% but would say I’m 95% reliable.

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one was removed from life support…. One is at home and ok

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This is correct

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From what I understand, the unconscious body does not continue to breathe if CO2 levels in lungs aren’t high. And if there’s no oxygen inhaled, there’s no CO2 released from the blood to be exhaled by the lungs.

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In normal breathing, partial pressure of O2 in the blood in your lungs is lower than the partial pressure of O2 in the atmosphere. Partial pressure of CO2 in your blood is higher than the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere. This difference in partial pressures is all that drives the diffusion of gases into and out of the blood in the lungs. The gases move from higher partial pressures to lower partial pressures.

If you take a big breath in a pure nitrogen environment, the partial pressure of all other gases in your lungs plummets. It doesn't go to zero because it's physically impossible for you to replace all the air in your lungs with nitrogen just through normal breathing, but those O2 and CO2 partial pressures just nosedive in a matter of seconds. Not 30 to 60 seconds, but on the order of 5 to 10. It's fricking RAPID.

Every gas in your bloodstream (other than N2, pretty much) then begins to diffuse out into the nitrogen rich gas in your lungs. Your blood oxygen saturation plummets, as well as the CO2 saturation, as these gases leave the blood trying to reach an equilibrium point with the relatively pure nitrogen in the lungs. The whole gas exchange mechanism breaks down. As the O2 levels in the blood continue to drop, consciousness is quickly lost. Again, we're not talking a minute here. We're talking ten to fifteen or twenty seconds of useful consciousness after the first breath of nitrogen. In nitrogen asphyxiation, the window for self-rescue is miniscule and requires that you recognize what's happening and get out before you go down. Though it takes several minutes to succumb, fatal outcomes are often guaranteed in two or three breaths, if there is nobody on the outside to provide aid.

The part of your brain that triggers inhalation acts on sensing increased CO2 levels in your blood. If you get a really good lungful of N2 and the O2 levels in your blood drop to the point where you have a hypoxic loss of consciousness, your brain will continue to breathe as long as it is alive and the CO2 levels in your blood are high enough to trigger the next inhalation. It's important to remember here that the CO2 is produced internally due to cellular respiration, so even though it's leaving the blood at a rapid rate, it's produced by the body at a blistering pace, so the body keeps breathing just due to its own production of CO2. If you pass out and collapse into an environment that isn't so pure in nitrogen and is closer to atmospheric composition that will maintain CO2 levels in the blood, the brain can continue to breathe and if there's enough oxygen there, your blood O2 saturation will recover, you'll regain consciousness, and may be able to self-rescue.

If you pass out and collapse into a relatively pure nitrogen environment, your brain remains hypoxic and in the process of dying; you've got a very few number of minutes until you're braindead. After as little as 2 or 3 minutes, though, irreparable damage will be occurring. Before the end comes (but not very long before), the CO2 level in your blood will likely drop below the "I need to breathe to get rid of this" threshold the brainstem uses to trigger inhalation. This is the point at which your body has pretty well exhausted its O2 reserves and the cells are no longer producing CO2 faster than the nitrogen atmosphere you're in can diffuse it out of your blood.

Since the air we evolved in is pretty much the same everywhere and is so plentiful in oxygen that we are able to carry a decent excess reserve in our blood (provided that you don't go into an environment completely devoid of oxygen), our brains never developed O2 sensing to trigger breathing. Environments with slightly lower oxygen don't cause crisis with blood gases very quickly, and it just typically isn't the most pressing concern when it comes to gas exchange in the lungs. CO2 buildup in the blood as a result of regular old cellular metabolism, however, is friggin' lethal and gets lethal WAY quicker than low blood oxygen in slightly oxygen deficient environments does. So that's why our brains evolved a mechanism to detect this poison in the blood and trigger more and more rapid breathing to get rid of it before it can kill us. At some point after prolonged exposure to a nitrogen rich environment, cellular respiration can slow to a point where blood CO2 begins to drop and What's left of the brainstem thinks all is well and you'll just stop breathing on your own before your brain completely dies. At this point, even if moved into an oxygen rich environment, you'll need help breathing until your blood gases recover to a point where the brainstem can properly regulate breathing again. What damage was already done to the higher brain by the hypoxia, though, may already be devastating. If you ever get to the point where you quit breathing because there's not enough CO2 in your blood, your cortex is probably already toast and a failure of resuscitation would be a kindness.

Nitrogen is my first concern in plants because it's in EVERY plant. We can't sniff for it like we can other dangerous gases because it is part of the atmosphere, and oxygen concentration meters just aren't SOP. As someone earlier said, people are complacent around it because it's 78% of every breath you take. And that, coupled with the blazing speed with which it will put someone down is why it's so goddamned dangerous.

Nitrogen is a motherfricker.

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Nobody needs a 30min read about the dangers of N. It’s the 2 step death. We all know it.

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Sorry but learning info about something that could save your life is always worthwhile

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30min read

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I found it interesting and informative and well-composed. It took maybe 2-1/2 minutes to read. I understand though that poor reading skills can be frustrating causing one to react angrily. Just chill.

He died