I was involved in a car accident just over a month ago in which the airbag
was deployed. I rearended another vehicle. The next morning I woke up
with an itchy rash around my mouth and nose which carried on for a
week or so. I was prescribed hydrocortisone cream for it, which
worked.
I also have had quite a cough and a sore chest (lungs) since the accident.
If I understand correctly what happens when an airbag deploys, is
the Sodium Azide is neutralized? If so, then what can cause a rash,
sore chest and cough do you suppose? A physician told me that the rash
was caused by “the airbag exploding” and that’s it.
There was more than a powder that was dispersed in the car when the
airbag exploded.
It was a very fierce smelling smoke. I threw the door open because it
was so strong. Is that normal? Nobody has given me any answers yet. I
just feel very unwell and upset that I breathed in something that was
very likely toxic. I’m not looking for medical help, but am wondering if anybody has heard of something similar happening? I already read a message by Cecil regarding
airbag injury, but would like even more specific stuff if possible.
I have just purchased a new car (Subaru Impreza). While scanning my owners manual I read in the safty section that in addtion to the air bags the car is equipped with “seatbelt pretensioners”.
It went on to say that in the event of violent deceleration this mechanism would become active and take the slack out of the seatbelt, tightening it for greater restraint of the occupants. It also stated that there was smoke and a burning smell that is a normal outcome of them coming into play. If I were to guess this may be what contributed to the irritation of your lungs. That is if your car is equipped with this item.
On a cynical note it is another item that is “one use” like airbags and requires replacement of the entire system after an accident. I’m sure they are expensive too.
“Pretensioners
Simultaneously with airbag deployment, seatbelt pretensioners cinch seatbelts race-driver tight by employing the force of a pyrotechnic charge. Yes, pyrotechnic, just like Fourth of July fireworks. Some pretensioners move the anchor point of the seatbelts, others wind the reel on which the belts are stowed. One way to wind the reel is with a toothed rod geared to the reel: imagine a bottle rocket with a row of gear teeth on its side. The rocket—I mean pyrotechnic charge—moves the rod, which winds the gear. It’s the opposite of rack and pinion steering where the pinion gear moves the steering rack. The resulting super-tight belts better position the occupant for airbag deployment and helps keep them from striking interior components, such as the A-pillar and structure around the side window, both of which cause a surprising number of head injuries. That’s why the A-pillars are now seriously padded and many cars features side airbags, which are often installed in the A pillar.”
It goes on to explain why some auto makers are moving away from that set-up.
When my mother had the airbag deploy in her car this summer, she mentioned that there was a great deal of dust in the air afterwards.
Not all that surprising, given that the car was nearly 10 years old, and that nobody had been vacuuming out the airbag cavity in the steering wheel hub regularly.
I suspect that was true in your case, too – a lot of just plain old dust was blown into the air, and probably breathed into your lungs, too.
There shouldn’t be any exposure to azide, if the airbag’s charge burns completely. I’d be surprised if airbag charges didn’t sometimes fall short of that ideal.
Airbags are terrible. The only good thing about them is that they are better than the alternative, namely smashing your face and chest into a steering wheel with sufficient force to break bones.
That does make sense. My car 2006 Mazda3sport is STILL in the bodyshop since my accident on Feb. 20th. The last excuse was that they didn’t order a new driver’s seatbelt which went off and now has to be replaced. They just realized that. I tend to think that the chemical that hit me in the face was from the airbag though. But the pretensioner explains the horrid burning smell and smoke. I find it so strange that accident victims are the ones that have to do all the research. Nobody at Mazda, the bodyshop, physicians, or insurance agents offered any suggestions or info. oops, except one walk-in clinic physician who prescribed the hydrocortisone cream for the rash and told me that if it cleared the rash up, then the rash was definitely caused by chemicals from the accident. So what to do now, wait and see if my cough and sore chest go away, and/or find a good lawyer. I’m on Vancouver Island, in BC, Canada and that could be quite a job.
How does one make something like this go public as a warning to others?
One more question…If the powder is all over the interior of my vehicle since the accident, how do I remove it (Sodium Azide)? I understand that mixing it with water produces hydrazoic acid which is highly toxic. So nix to washing the interior. OMGosh, I’m starting to freak myself out.
I’ve been in accidents twice involving my airbag deploying. Both times, there was an acrid smell of gunpowder and smoke in the car which made us cough - I assumed it was the charge which makes the airbag inflate so quickly. No rash though, but a very sore chest from the force of my body hitting the seatbelt (kind of like being winded).
According to How Stuff Works, the powder is talcum powder (cornstarch), used to keep the airbag pliable in storage. So you should have no problems cleaning it out.
I’d still get that cough checked out by a doctor, though, just in case.
Remember that Air Bags were invented by the car companies as an alternative to seat belts, because they thought seat belts would spoil the ‘mystique’ of driving, and lead to reduced sales. They also thought people would not use seat belts, and would be annoyed at the car if the use was mandatory. So they pushed to be allowed to offer Air Bags, and against mandatory seat belts.
Now, seat belts are used by all but a small minority of drivers (mainly older people who started driving before seat belts, and males ages 15-25, who think their macho image makes them invulnerable to accidents). And the combination of seat belts and air bags allows many people to survive accidents that would otherwise have been fatal.
Monica I assume that you don’t know as you are a guest here. last month I retired from Volvo cars after 15 years as technical training instructor. I taught airbag systems (as well as everything else on the car) The above quote from the moosebaby’s cite is some of the biggest bullshit I have ever seen in print about seat belt pretensioners. The guys that wrote that truly has no fucking clue.
Pretensioner pull up to about 4" (100mm in the case of our cars) with about 20 lbs of force. The reason for this is simple, the worst thing you can have happen is to take a running start at a loose seat belt. This can cause serious internal injuries. So pretensioners are designed to take the slack out.
Now getting back to your question. First off I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that your 2006 Mazda does not use sodium azide in the driver’s/passengers airbags. sodium azide has been replaced by other materials for various reasons, but to the best of my knowledge none of these reasons have to the health effect of the deployment of the sodium azide. I suspect that cost and ease of manufacture would be two of the bigger reasons. Whatever the propellant you are not exposed to it, you are only exposed to the gasses that result from the combustion of the propellant. Yes I said combustion, the propellant burns, it does not explode. In the case of sodium azide that gas is nitrogen. Same as 79% of what you are breathing right now.
I know a Mazada training instructor, and if it will put your mind at ease, I would be happy to inquire if sodium azide is used in your car.
Now on to your OP. Airbags come out of the steering wheel real fast (say 200 MPH fast) they need something to act as a lubricant, and also to help them slide over any skin they come in contact with. The bags are packed with either cornstarch, or talcum power to act as a lubricant.
If inhaled, it may cause coughing, and shortness of breath. To quote the MDSS for an airbag, if this occurs remove the victim to fresh air.
Contact dermatitis can occur from the powder being forced into the skin by the the airbag. Quite often it is on the forearms, but I could also see the face as that is the part that goes wham into the bag.
As far as the sore chest goes, quite likely you can thank (curse) Nils Bolin the engineer that designed and patented the three piont seat belt back in 1958.
Here is what happened in your accident and why your chest is sore.
Impact occurs sometime in the first 10ms the threshold for deployment of the safety systems is reached. Your butt is still firmly in the driver’s seat.
<20ms firing orders are sent to various igniters. Your butt is still firmly in the seat.
30ms The seat belts are being tensioned, the airbag is starting to fill your butt is still in the seat.
50ms The seat belts are tensioned, the airbag is about full, and you are finally starting to move (lard ass what took you so long? )
70ms your face is planted in the airbag.
100ms you are back in the seat, and your airbag is deflated.
What is important to note is that you went from what ever speed the car was traveling to zero in about 20-25ms. Your chest hit that seat belt HARD You hit that seat belt so hard that you stretched the belt to the point that it broke some of the nylon fibers in the belt. If you get a chance go by the body shop and ask to see the old seat belt. If you unreel it, and look at it you will see that instead of being a flat belt it is now wavy. Furthermore the part of the belt that is wavy will feel kind of fuzzy. This fuzz is the broken nylon fibers in the belt.
Volvo ran a seat belt ad in Sweden the the late 1960s which was reprinted in Playboy here in the US. It showed your basic Swedish blond hottie wearing jeans and naked from the waist up. Her hands are cupped over her boobs. There is a large black diagonal bruise across her chest and between her boobs. The headline said that in two weeks the last evidence of Inga’s accident would be gone.
Even though you had an airbag, your chest took one hell of a hit. You are bruised. While I have never personally seen it, I guess it might be possible to crack a rib in an accident.
As I mentioned the dust is from how they pack the bag, but after the deployment there is a different smoke, read on.
About the smell and smoke that came after a few moments? When airbags deploy they get hot. Real hot. Damn hot. After a few moments the heat from combustion heats up the airbag container and is passed to the outside. The labels on the back of the airbag melt, the connector from the wiring harness melts into the metal of the bag, and some of the plastic near the airbag might either melt or start go give off fumes. Some of this stuff can stink. It can stink bad. This is probably what you smelled.
I can tell you from experience that the labels on a Volvo airbag give off a lot of smoke and smell like shit when they melt.
I hope that this helps to ally some of your fears about the health effects of being in an airbag deployment. If you have any further question, feel free to ask.
It is obvious that you asked the wrong people. You need to pony up $15 US and join us, some of the smartest people on the planet (plus one or two dipsticks)
WTF? Where did you get this? Now I know car companies are evil and all that, but they were evil for fighting against airbags, not for them. You got who was fighting on which side mixed up. No car company that I can think of lobbied the government for airbags. Every car company lobbied against them. IIRC Lee Iacocca even lobbied President Nixon personally to postpone the airbag mandate. Ralph Nader, Joan Claybrook, and Elizabeth Dole where the people fighting for airbag systems. Read the Wiki link under the unintended consequences section. It sums it up fairly well.
I would like to take this moment to point out something you are missing.
if you walk away from the crash and have to spend 1000$ replacing the airbag and seatbelts you have just saved a friggin FORTUNE in medical bills…that or funeral expenses one or the other.
seatbelts and airbags save you money by saving your ass from more serious injury. and they save your life so you can go on to pay the guy to put them back in your car.
complaining about your cars safety equipment is like working with one of those new table saws and bitching you have to replace the blade when you accidentaly tripped the saftey by running your hand into it and getting a couple stitches. cause you know getting your fingers sewn back on is all kinds of cheap.
Rick, I think any cracked ribs resulting from the seatbelt in a crash could only come from either a medical condition (i.e. osteoporosis) or wearing the seatbelt improperly or a malfunction of the belt. When an engineer in the Air Force (IIRC) was developing ejection seats he ran test after test (on himself) to see how much deceleration the human body could handle while wearing a seatbelt. He found out that so long as you were wearing a belt you could survive an amazing level of deceleration with few ill effects. The final levels of deceleration he subjected himself to were way higher than one could expect to have to endure in an auto accident and I don’t think he suffered any ill effects other than some severe bruising.
Airbags were what automakers considered to be the lesser of two mandated evils. Federal law stated that unless a certain majority of states passed laws requiring seatbelt use, automakers would have to install a secondary restraint system that was either an automatic seatbelt or an airbag. The public didn’t like the automatic seatbelts (they always reminded me of a scene in Christine where the car kills a guy by inching the seat forward until he’s crushed by the steering wheel) and neither did automakers (since they weren’t pretty to look at), so airbags were implimented. First generation airbags had some problems, but automakers worked rapidly to correct them, and now it’s to the point that your greatest danger from them is being suffocated from all the powder that flies out as every surface in the car flips open to allow an airbag to shoot out.
Tucker I think you have that time line incorrect. At the time of the passive restraint mandate (early 1980’s) by the federal government, there were no mandatory seat belt laws in the US. This was the reason that airbags were overly powerful in the early years. The test they were subjected to was with an unbelted adult male crash test dummy.
According to Wiki the US got seat belt legislation in 1994. This is seven years after the passive restraint was required.
Also note the airbag requirement is a federal vehicle safety requirement. Seat belt laws are state laws, not federal. The federal government “encouraged” the states to pass seat belt laws by threatening to withhold federal highway funds if no seat belt law was passed.
Thank you Rick and the others for the information on this. I do feel slightly less fearful after all those facts. I was doing only 15-20 kms per hour when I hit, so I wasn’t going very fast, but fast enough to sure feel it. A doctor also gave me Naproxin for an inflammation in the upper chest area. Physio’s helping out with that too. But it’s the sore lungs, coughing that’s still bugging me the most.
Our car insurance in BC is called ICBC and I just have to pay a $300. deductible and that’s it.
The damage was assessed at about $5500, plus I received a courtesy car. And the medical stuff is all taken care of too. Well, only 12 physio appointments, then push for an extension. We have some good stuff going on for us up here, even though some people don’t think so.
I used to belong to a couple of on-line dating dealies, one with a forum. I got so addicted to it, that I would start to have panic attacks if I couldn’t get to it as soon as I walked in the door. Yup…tells you something about me. So I’m hesitant to join here. I’m already enjoying this wayyy too much. I noticed in this forum, that there actually are some brilliant people with good knowledge.
As for me, I know about cooking, kids, addictions, and a bit about gardening.
Thanks again, I’ve been extremely anxious about all the “chemical” stuff and you’ve waylaid that fear for me (mostly).
Monica no problem, glad to help.
If you change your mind, we would be happy to have you join us.
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.
Rick
Actually, my husband had some cracked ribs from a an accident when he was t-boned by another car which ran a red light. (He wasn’t hit on the driver’s side, fortunately.)
He thought it was muscle soreness for a day or so, but finally went to a doctor who did the x-ray.
Yes, he had on the seatbelt and the airbag went off too. The car was hit hard enough to end up on a traffic island–the cop asked him if he drove it there to get out of traffic!
He doesnt’ have systemic bone problems (hasn’t broken any other bones for years and years) although he is thin.
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