do i have the bends?
i've felt fine all day, then after lunch i was called to site to witness some air blows. we have to blow air through the pipes and visually inspect that they are clean before installing them. normally this is done with an air compressor, but the site doesn't have one that 1) can reach the pressure we need, 2) provide clean air (some oil residue), and 3) provide dry air (see previous note). so, instead we are using nitrogen straight from the bottle. we had to do more blows than normal to get it clean enough, and it is in a pseudo-enclosed space, so i'm guessing the nitrogen level was higher than normal air. i under stand the concept of decompression sickness, or the bends, but i'm not sure if ingesting more nitrogen than normal can also cause it. i'm feeling like dogshite right now, bad cramps, headache, etc. i googled "can you get the bends from breathing nitrogen" to no avail. i'm going to go try to curl up to make this pain go away.
posted by slyght at 7/26/2008 09:27:00 AM
2 Comments:
The bends has to do with rapid pressure changes vs. simply ingesting nitrogen. When you go from high pressure (deep in the water) to low pressure (surface), the nitrogen expands, causing all kinds of pain and damage.
So, from what I read, you're absolutely fine.
If you breathed pure nitrogen, you'd die from lack of oxygen. Just like helium, or nitrous.
That's it. No bends.
thanks. the way i was reading it, i figured it was simply the amount of nitrogen saturation in the blood in relation to your local pressure. typically, this involves pressure change rather than nitrogen % change, as in diving. the deeper you go, the more pressure, the more nitrogen your blood can hold so you exhale less nitrogen. when you come up, it doesn't come out as quickly. all pressure change.
my theory was, instead of N2% holding steady and pressure changing, what if the N2% increased (which i think it would by ingesting 100% N2), and the pressure stays the same. to me, that is kinda like having deep-water levels of nitrogen in your blood, at shallow level pressure.
but it's a theory. and apparently flawed. thanks for the lesson.
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