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It's been a battle in my head to whether or not to write this.
Fortunately, my conscience has won...
I am greatly disappointed with the IANTD organization as an organization.
I feel that they have created a danger to many people. Here are the
particulars:
-- Begin factual account --
At .tek this past January, I took a Nitrox Blender's course from IANTD to
"teach" me to blend Nitrox. Since the dive shop I taught through was
considering putting in a Nitrox blending station, it seemed like a good
idea for someone to be familiar with the procedures, etc. The math I
could derive myself, it was procedures and hidden "gotchas" that I wanted
to find out by myself.
The class was taught by Dick Rutkowski.
Without going into my opinions about the usefulness of the class itself,
the area that concerns me is that there was _no_ final test as to whether
or not we could handle the math and/or procedures. We never had to mix a
bottle of Nitrox, nor did we have any testing as to our (the student's)
facility with the math.
I talked to Franz Vandermollen and Tom Mount about it during DEMA
following .tek and they were concerned that there hadn't been a test.
Tom assured me that before certificates were issued people would be sent
a test to take and return. Further more, the students would have to pass
the test before they received their certification.
The day after returning from DEMA, I went off to China to do some
teaching for my "real" employer. When I returned, there was my
certificate proclaiming to one and all that I was a Nitrox blender.
When I called IANTD on it (and talked to Tom), I was told that what
occured was that the certificates, were sent out before they could catch
them, but that tests would be sent out to the students post haste (pun
intended by me). It is now mid June and I have yet to see any such test.
-- End Factual Account --
While continuous blending systems and the de-nitrogenating systems such
as the ones presented during the Nitrox Blender's course reduce Nitrox
blending down to twiddling a knob or two and reading a gauge such that
any monkey could be trained to do it, most people (especially when just
starting out, I believe) will be using partial pressure mixing. That
requires performing mathematical calculations. There has been no
evaluation whether these people can do simple addition, much less
multiplication and division.
I'm hoping that some sort of peer pressure can get IANTD to straighten up
in this regard. It may be (and I hope that it is!) that this was a
singular occurrence. However, they have failed to resove this issue and
causes me concern.
-- Kevin-Neil Klop --
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