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Ben Wiseley wrote: > I read somewhere that you needed the narcotic properties of nitrogen > to off-set some effect of helium... (snip) But for recreational divers > would heliox be preferred (assuming money was no object)? In other > words... if money didn't matter at all would diving to 60 feet on > heliox be safer than air? My answer is yes, but I don't have the experience with helium that many here on techdiver have, so I hope you get some more answers Ben. The disadvantages of helium include increased conductive heat loss, and isobaric counterdiffusion, although I'm not sure if this would be much of a problem as long as heliox is your only breathing mix. You would need helium-based tables rather than nitrogen, and I have read conflicting data about whether helium decompression is longer or shorter than air. Helium is a light-weight molecule that is not lipid-soluble, with rapid diffusion properties. The U.S. Navy seems to think that decompression times are necessarily longer, but that seems arguable. If I were planning a bike race one day after diving, I would prefer breathing heliox to air. Curious to see what others say. MJB __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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