Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 205 posts

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#41

Post by ambicapter »

mrob wrote: post #34
FriedPickles wrote: post #12

I wonder if there's a cheaper filler gas we could use besides He. Perhaps methane, hydrogen, or acetylene, though they're quite flammable.

I wonder how pure oxygen (at low pressure to avoid toxicity) would work. There's still a substantial fire risk, as the Apollo 1 fire demonstrated, but unlike flammable filler gases it won't immediately kill you with a single spark. With a sufficiently fire-proof environment, and a full body fire-proof suit, maybe it could be done. EDIT: Although it seems the Apollo 1 fire happened with a pressurized oxygen atmosphere…

Apollo 1 was high pressure oxygen, since the capsule was still on earth, and they wanted to simulate the positive pressure difference between the inside of the capsule and space. In space it would have been low-pressure oxygen, just enough to satisfy human breathing requirements (so 0.19 atm).

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#44

Post by alentred »

aaronscott wrote: post #35
slau wrote: post #5

Just completed my deep (40m/120ft) diver certification. A significant amount of the course was focused on nitrogen narcosis, and how to handle/detect it. Apparently, some divers will start feeling the narcotic effect between 20-30m. Beyond 30m, a significant amount of divers can feel the effects. Beyond 40m is the realm of tech diving, with trimix (helium/nitrogen/oxygen) or even heliox (helium/oxygen). I know nothin…

Your comment about being continuously narked reminded me how in early human history people relied on low-alcohol beer as a safe water supply. So back then it was a double-whammy. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-conflicted-hi...

As far as I understand, historically, alcoholic beverages were primarily invented and used as a water disinfectant. Rum was used in British navy to disinfect fresh water in barrels. Wine was used to dilute it in water till the 20th century. Fun fact, in ancient Greece people who drank pure wine (not diluting it in water) were considered alcoholics and could be publicly denounced. Beer was used as a typical beverage accompanying a meal in many populations (a sandwich with a beer was the closest analogy to the "fast food"). It appears that it is only recently that we have started to consume alcohol for pleasure.

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#45

Post by MaxwellsDaemon »

ambicapter wrote: post #37
jjk166 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on exactly what one's doing, it's easily conceivable that the exposure can be concurrent with the activity. Maybe not football, where lugging around a compressed gas tank on the field is likely impractical if not dangerous, but a sport like Formula 1 or many E-sports would likely be quite conducive for an individual, and other sports like wrestling or swimming could probably be done entirely in a room with…

I've always wondered if fighter pilots ever had a system to pump different gases into their masks whenever they encounter a high-stakes situation.

Here comes the juice!

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#46

Post by crdrost »

pdc56 wrote: post #43

How many minutes until someone applies to YC with HaaS Co - Helium and facemask as a service subscription startup.

This was roughly speaking my first thought as well. I thought "Well we always laughed at the sci-fi depictions of people with big cans of air for sale, come pay for premium filtered air ... but this is how that all starts, isn't it. Rich people pay for an air that might make them think 10% faster, then as it starts to normalize to the middle-class, they care less and less about pollutants in the air and eventually we just regard that as a poor-peoples' problem."

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#48

Post by _Adam »

kaibee wrote: post #27
mholm wrote: post #4

A 10% increase in reaction time could be fairly significant in many sports. Could we start seeing football players, sprinters, or baseball players breathing from masks between plays?

Forget sports. I want my surgeon to be on a heliox mix when he's doing a complicated operation on me.

If your operation has reached the point where milliseconds matter..something likely has gone wrong.

I'd be curious to see data on how other cognitive metrics change in absence of atmospheric nitrogen. Abstract reasoning / mental math abilities / etc. It's possible some actually improve, just like I might rush and make more errors while doing something after drinking a few coffees.

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#49

Post by sithadmin »

alentred wrote: post #44
aaronscott wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment about being continuously narked reminded me how in early human history people relied on low-alcohol beer as a safe water supply. So back then it was a double-whammy. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-conflicted-hi...

As far as I understand, historically, alcoholic beverages were primarily invented and used as a water disinfectant. Rum was used in British navy to disinfect fresh water in barrels. Wine was used to dilute it in water till the 20th century. Fun fact, in ancient Greece people who drank pure wine (not diluting it in water) were considered alcoholics and could be publicly denounced. Beer was used as a typical beverage a…

I'm not sure I buy your claim that rum was ever used to 'disinfect' fresh water on British Navy ships. The 'grog' mix they used was not of sufficient ABV to disinfect the water, as it was handed out at a 4:1 ratio of water:rum. It was moreso about making the daily rum ration difficult to hoard, and much more efficient to transport than beer or wine.

Re: The anesthetic effect of air at atmospheric pressure

#50

Post by jerf »

slau wrote: post #5

Just completed my deep (40m/120ft) diver certification. A significant amount of the course was focused on nitrogen narcosis, and how to handle/detect it. Apparently, some divers will start feeling the narcotic effect between 20-30m. Beyond 30m, a significant amount of divers can feel the effects. Beyond 40m is the realm of tech diving, with trimix (helium/nitrogen/oxygen) or even heliox (helium/oxygen). I know nothin…

"We’re basically continuously narked, we’re just so used to it we don’t even know."

Just because one direction on the gradient means that we respond in a way that looks like a narcotic does not mean that the other direction will respond in the opposite manner.

I'm sure the nootropics folks would have discovered being super not high by now if it were as easy as breathing a mixture that doesn't have nitrogen in it.

Post reply on HN