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I am a certified IAND (I guess now it is IANTD = T being Technical) NITROX diver and love to dive with NITROX. I get my gas from a place called Bellingham Dive and Travel. They use/have a continuous mixing system which is almost unheard of for strictly pumping NITROX. Anyway, it is an incredible system and we are really spoiled up in the Northwest in our NITROX supply, but here is my concern and question. I have a friend who just came back from the DEMA convention over in Florida and I guess the word going around now is that IANTD and ANDI are going to try to further regulate the NITROX industry. Apparently, there is a real big push to make all NITROX scuba cylinders Oxygen cleaned, and appropriately colored, labeled and marked - no exceptions, ands ifs or buts. Personally, I don't have a problem with that but here is the delima that comes to mind. When I was taught about NITROX, we were filled with visions that NITROX would be the gas of choice in as little as 15 years. Diving air would be this Advanced class type thing that only crazy and insane people did. This sounds all fine and nifty, but realistically, to make this happen, wouldn't you think that you would want to regulate the diving industry and not the divers themsesleves? Right now, in the direction that IAND and ANDI are heading, they are regulating the divers - they are telling us what equiptment to have/use and how we will use it. Doesn't it make more sense to regulate the people who pump the gas. I understand that 99% of all NITROX pumpers use a partial pressure method, which is fairly cheap yet highly dangerous and that a continuous method of pumping the gas is rare and is very expensive to start. So, let me ask you people this, what are you feelings about the NITROX industry? Where would you like it to go? Do you want every diver to be using it (let's pretend that it will be standard practice to learn SCUBA with NITROX) sometime in the future or do you want it to be a "technical" aspect of diving - maybe a precursor to "mix" diving? As a final note, my personal feelings are this. Right now, as things stand, NITROX SHOULD be considered a form of Technical diving and "yes" it is a really good idea to have ALL tanks regulated for NITROX. But, I would really like to see NITROX eventually replace air as a standard for SCUBA. With a little mixing and matching, there would be no training burdens on an individual, there would not be a need for O2 cleaned equiptment. The only regulations needed would be that of the people who are pumping the gas - like dropping the partial pressure mixing and switch to continuous mixing. Of course, this is all hypothetical and would be very costly, but would it be worth it? Would this make diving safer, or more dangerous? Also, before you get all upset and bent out of shape by this post, lets just say for arguments sakes that any mixtures above the 40% mark are forbidden in the diving industry and are considered for Technical divers only.......and that's a different story. Thanks for reading, Michael Parker
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