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Jim Cobb wrote: >A few items I've picked up over the years. SNIP Good solid commonsense post, Jim. But we'll forgive you this once. I suspect in the next few years, nitrox will go one of two ways - completely dedicated gear, ala Scubapro, or a more commonsense approach, where tanks will be checked for contamination, more in the way they are visualled now, rather than cleaned whether they need it or not, and shops will use O2 safe lubes routinely. Shops will realize that their air is clean enough with decently maintained normal filtration that they can stop worrying that someone might come in with a little residual O2 in their tank, and people will have realized that a tankful or two of good but not perfect air is not going to contaminate a tank. O2 clean labels will be accepted casually, without worrying about who did it, what agency, when and did they really do it right, the way visual stickers are now (it's funny if you think about it, the dangers from filling a defective tank are much greater and better documented than the dangers of putting O2 in an unclean tank, yet visuals are done incredibly casually, and I've never seen a dive shop quibble over a visual sticker no matter where it came from). Ideally, it would be nice if someone would come up with a simple test for hydrocarbons, so a tank could simply be checked. Actually, there is already, and its called the human eye, but since people persist in the germ theory of hydrocarbons (the invisible killer!) they have a hard time accepting something that simple. If you think about it, the situation is pretty nutty now - telling us we have to pay to have brand new tanks cleaned to remove hazards that cannot be seen or detected? And that we cannot do it ourselves, even though it's just a matter of soap and water, because we have not been annointed by the agency? That sounds more like religion than science. Ditto the shops that will not accept anyone else's O2 sticker but insist on redoing it themselves, as if it's brain surgery or something. Nice racket - charging for something no one knows if they really need, nor can tell if its been done. Alas, if I had to bet on which of the two paths will win out, I'd have to bet on the former - if there's one rule of technology you can count on, its that the worse of two alternative usually prevails (this being written on a Mac, on the day after Apple expired). I hesitated before spending the money (all $120 of it) to set up my own nitrox capability, thinking that it was only a matter of time before it got so cheap and available it wouldn't be worth home brewing, but in retrospect I'm glad I went ahead now, as the availablity increases, so does the lunacy surrounding it. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send list subscription requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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