Goddammit, use your fucking dictionaries! (Very nitpicky)

The BBQ Pit
1

This story is an account of a very human tragedy. In the course of doing routine farm work, a build-up of methane gas in a pit caused first the family’s farm worker to collapse, then the family, one-by-one to collapse as they tried to affect a rescue.

The incident is, as I said, a very human tragedy - the methane build-up in the pit would have been completely colorless. As some of our more scientifically minded Dopers have been pointing out in the flatuence thread, methane itself is also odorless. There are two hazards to methane build-ups - the potential for explosive gas mixtures, if there’s enough oxygen in the atmosphere; and methane can form ‘bubbles’ of the gas, displacing rather than mixing with the normal air that we all breathe. When that happens, it can be very, very hard to recognize that what one is breathing is not air, but a gas that is displacing air, and offering no benefit to the person trying to breathe it.

But for all the hazards of methane build-up, methane itself is not a toxic substance. If that were the case people would have died in some of the accounts in the flatuence thread. It can be deadly, in the circumstances mentioned above. But it is no more toxic than neon gas is.

For that matter, the lead sentence of the linked article refers to a ‘poisoning!’ They weren’t poisoned - they were asphyxiated, dammit. Smothered. Drowned, even. Overcome is fine, too. They were killed because methane won’t support respiration, and in this circumstance it built up a bubble excluding normal air. Unless one is running a DHMO-type scam people would never talk about water being toxic, even though it can kill someone who tries to breath it.

But it’s not a fucking toxin, and it didn’t poison anyone. Deadly, yes. Toxic, no.

With the public being assaulted by this kind of misinformation, it’s no surprise to me that so many people start listening to the various quacks offering to de-toxify their bodies, or straighten out their magnetic fields.

sigh It’s not only taking longer than we thought - we’re losing ground, dammit.

(Mind you, a quick look at various on-line dictionaries has been disheartening to me:

That does lead one to believe that even though methane isn’t a toxin, it can still be legitimately called toxic. This isn’t the first time that I’ve felt that M-W falls short of the mark, but I usually do have to admit that it does a decent job of reflecting actuall use definitions, rather than what purists such as myself would like the words to mean.

Dammit, it’s still wrong. For that matter - this cite agrees with me.

Hey, I did say it was nit-picky.)

2

I know it’s probably snipped from a quote, but it sure looked funny to see this:

Showalter was overcome by the toxic methane gas and collapsed. Within a matter of seconds he was deceased, he said.

“dang, I was overcome by that methane, and before you know it, I was dead!”

3

::searching mental database of journalistic writing techniques::

Ah. It’s true that “asphyxiated” is more technically correct than “poisoned.” But stand on the street corner sometime and ask the first ten people who walk past you what “asphyxiated” means. I’ll give you cash money if more than three or four people can tell you what it means.

Reporters don’t have the luxury of being able to be that technically correct. They have to be understood by Joe Sixpack, who has a sixth-grade vocabulary and who probably neither knows nor cares what “asphyxiate” means. He doesn’t care how the people in the story died, just that they did. So the reporter goes with the simplest explanation, and if it’s technically wrong, so be it. At least she got the basic facts right, which is that the methane killed them.

ETA: Oh, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch only said they were “overcome” by the gas, not that they were asphyxiated or poisoned.

The whole thing is tragic, but let’s not bog down that much.

Robin

4

MsRobyn, that’s why I suggested “smothered” as a both simpler and still technically correct word.

But, yeah, I do see how it happened. It’s just that I believe that this kind of sloppiness with language does have an effect greater than this one story - to use legal terms, it builds a precedent for the incorrect usage of the word. Often with unforseeable consequences down the road.

I don’t believe that law courts are the only place where strict definitions of words matter. If for no other reason than because if words that are used for legal definitions (And off the top of my head, I suspect that “toxic” is used in several defining clauses in, say, the Clean Air Acts.) have those definitions changed in common parlance, it leads to a double-tiered set of definitions: one for the courts, and one for the rest of us. Which then leaves us having to agree that one can legitimately say things like, “Well, it depends on what your definition of is is.”

5

IMHO, “overcome” is the best word. It’s accurate and non-judgmental. “Smothered,” while technically correct, connotes deliberate action.

Second, I’m not sure what you’re getting at with this “legal vs. common” usage. Journalism (or, really, any writing intended for a mass audience) is a balancing act between comprehension and accuracy, and most reporters and editors strive for a happy medium. Technical details, such as what you’re complaining about, are secondary. Why include them when your readers won’t understand them and you haven’t the space to explain them?

Robin

6

cough effect cough

7

:smack: Mea culpa.

8

No worries, just yankin’ ya. Gaudere strikes again! :smiley:

9

I agree with OtakuLoki, but then again, I’m horribly nit-picky at things like this. I think your writing, speaking, and thinking should all be as precise as you can make it.

I see your point, too, MsRobyn, but I think writers can dumb it down for the audience without actually being incorrect. Lord knows, those of us with large vocabularies do it plenty of times each week. :smiley:

10

Oh, believe me. Writing would be a pleasure if every reader were as intelligent as the average Doper. Until we win the war on ignorance, that ain’t gonna happen.

Robin

11

Be that as it may, it seems to me that it would be better to use a simpler term that means the same rather than a term that’s wrong altogether. Especially when it’s supposed to be informative.

12

Preach it, sista!

While we’re in ignorance fighting mode, a steel-toed size 12 up the caboose of every journalist who says the firefighters were wearing oxygen tanks, masks, or some variant.

Those tanks contain good old fashioned air. NOT pure O[sub]2[/sub]. 100% oxygen is in the ambulance, the welder’s shop, but NOT on the firefighter’s back.

sigh

13

Methane is also a lighter than air substance. Did they have the manure pit sealed off to prevent normal mixing? You’d think there’d be a 90 year old building code to prevent such idiocy.

14

I have learned from my husband, the safety officer, that pit work is considered confined space work, and everyone working in that pit probably should have been wearing personal protective gear that could have prevented anyone from getting hurt (aside from suffocating, they could have died from a collapse of the walls, too). A hazard assessment performed before work commenced could also have prevented this.

There is still a lot of danger from private job sites like homes and farms; the safety protocols from commercial jobs would go a long way there. How many times have you seen people working on their own or their neighbour’s roofs without proper fall protection? In Alberta, any worker working over 10 feet up is required to have proper fall protection on at all times because a fall from over 10 feet can kill you (the odds of surviving a fall of 11 feet are 50%).

I realize how silly it sounds to talk about doing things like hazard assessments before commencing work on the pig pit, but as this thread shows, there are lethal hazards present in many places we don’t traditionally think of in terms of a dangerous workplace.

ETA: I just realized that the pig pit was probably not a deep one, therefore there probably weren’t any walls to collapse.

15

:smiley: This was the first thing I noticed and what I thought the rant was going to be about.

16

Yes and no. It’s true that the average person isn’t all that sophisticated, but Joe Sixpack is capable of learning. As long as the media talk down to what they assume is the level of the audience, that audience will remain technologicly ignorant in an age when survival is dependent on technology.

17

Nitpick: You do know that, technically, precedents are set, not built.

::d&rs::

18

Technical query: the lniked reporting contains more than one reference to “dead within seconds.” If methane is displacing air, but I can hold my breath for 3-4 minutes, did methane really kill “within seconds?”

Sailboat

19

I don’t believe it did kill within seconds. Incapacitate, yes. Kill, no. From what I recall with my training vis-a-vis non-toxic atmospheres, the person inhaling the gas will generally not notice that s/he isn’t getting any oxygen (It can be mistaken for simply the symptoms of being panicked in an emergency situation.) and so, often the first symptom that’s impossible to ignore is when one grays/blacks out. At which point it’s impossible to rescue oneself, and death will follow from anoxia within four to five minutes. So the effect of the incapacitation is that death will follow inescapably.

If one could be removed from the anoxic environment, however, recovery is possible, and usually complete. (I’m basing this on my R-12 training, but I can’t see why it wouldn’t be equally valid for methane, or any other anoxic, non-toxic gas.)

If you read one of the articles further, I can’t remember which, there’s some question whether all the victims were smothered by the methane, or whether they actually ended up drowning in the slurry of sewage at the bottom of the pit. And that no autopsies will be performed, because the exact mechanism of death isn’t very important.
ETA: While this further inaccuracy in the story does annoy me, too, it’s not precisely the fault of the reporter - the ‘dead within seconds’ assertion is coming from the Sheriff, IIRC.

20

But you’re bascially saying that methane isn’t deadly, either, right? Otherwise quacks could sell products to ward off “deadly methane”. I understand what you’re saying, but it killed them so therefore it (at the levels it was at) is deadly and toxic.