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At 12:06 PM 12/21/99 -0500, kirvine@sa*.ne* wrote: >> George >> I do not doubt that mixed gases are generally safer than air at depth. Just >> what depth is, in my humble opinion (and 23 years of diving) diver dependant. >> We dived deep air for a long time before mix was understood or available >> here. I happen to have very good tolerance to nitrogen narcosis and have >> done all dozen MONITOR dives on it--with excellent photographic and/or >> archaeological results. Others are seriously incapacitated at 100 fsw. Pete, It's well known that divers can build a tolerance to narcosis, but they are still impaired when under high PN2s. While this may not be life-threatening when everything is going well, it *is* life-threatening when things are going badly. Most of the people on this list who have been diving for any length of time have been deep on air. We've all been there, done that; and we got away with it because we didn't blow a hose at 250 feet and had to deal with it. The critical thing here is that on a nice day, with clear water, light current, and properly working gear, most of us can dive deep-air and come back every time. But we'd be playing Russian Roulette because if you make enough dives, eventually something will go wrong, and you won't be able to deal with it while narced off your rocker. You say above "We dived deep air for a long time before mix was understood or available". OK, granted. So now that mix *is* understood and *is* available, why stay with the old, antiquated, more dangerous methods? We all used to dive double-hose regulators, but there's a better design now, so we've switched. Why not do the same with the breathing gas? Why stay with air just because you did it successfully for a long time? We used to all dive PO2s at 1.8 with 2.0 for deco. Now we know better. The same goes for air. Additionally (and this last point is irrefutable) the erythrocyte rigidity caused by high PN2s *permanently* damages your microcirculatory system. This effect is *aggregate*!!! Diving deep air is slowly killing you as surely as if you were drinking poison. You cannot build a tolerance to this damage, and it cannot be repaired. All these negatives for air with the only positive being that air is cheap. I'd rather find other places than my life-support system to save money, and I can't understand why anyone would feel otherwise. I think you should reconsider. -Mike Rodriguez <mikey@ma*.co*> Pn(x) = (1/(2^n)n!)[d/dx]^n(x^2 - 1)^n -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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