On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 01:31:49PM -0400, banders...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
> A friend and I are having a discussion.
>
> If one is locked in an airtight compartment, does one die of lack of oxygen
> or carbon dioxide poisoning?
>From what I recall from when I was hitting the books for my dive
certification (ended up not going for the high-end cert for a variety of
reasons, but I did study up for it), it would be pretty hard to get
poisoned by CO2 until the level gets really, really high. That, coupled
with the constant necessity for a relatively large volume of oxygen,
makes me lean heavily toward hypoxia as the primary danger.
In terms of numbers, the normal level of C02 in a room (had to look this
stuff up) is about 600ppm, while outdoors it's 300-400ppm (i.e., 0.04%
concentration.) The average concentration at which most people become
aware of a problem is over 2% (20000ppm), or about 50X the outdoor
level, and it takes a 5% concentration to become directly toxic. You'd
be oxygen-starved well before that point, I would think.
But that's just an educated guess on my part. :)
Ben
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