If you were painted gold, as in the movie "Goldfinger," would you die?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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Cecil,

I make no claim to being a medical expert, but I remember from an aviation physiology class I took that the pores in our skin release nitrogen that naturally builds up in our bodies. This is why a diver gets decompression sickness (the bends) when he surfaces too quickly, the high pressure makes it impossible for the nitrogen to escape, and the rapid removal of the pressure causes the nitrogen to bubble through the pores (and also can cause bubbles in the joints). My question is could the nitrogen build up in the body cause asphyxiation?

-Bruno, Corpus Christi

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Sorry forgot the link http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_221b.html

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That’s not why the bends occur at all. They are caused by nitrogen dissolved in the blood coming out of solution and forming bubbles in the blood as the pressure decreases.

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Note that the actress who was painted gold in the film is still alive & well.

OTOH, on Mythbusters, the dude who was painted gold did have some odd things happen to his blood pressure & pulse, so it could be bad for your health.

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One of the things that bothers me about the first Mythbusters attempt is that they painted the guy gold by mixing metal powder in with liquid latex. I’ll bet that they didn’t use liquid latex as the vehicle for the metal covering in Goldfinger. They probably used some sort of greasepaint.

Liquid Latex would be a lot more efficient at sealing up pores and things. I suspect it was the latex, rather than the metal, that was giving that guy problems.

Recently Mythbusters has been revisiting its older shows, and they covered the other guy with gold. (They still used latex to hold it). IIRC, he didn’t have any problems.

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The version I heard was that they knew enough on the movie set to leave a bare spot on her back or something, but that dancers or strippers at small clubs that were copying it weren’t leaving a bare spot, and they were the ones who were dying.

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The bare spot on the back is part of the myth as stated in the novel.

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There is a very important document in movie making called the budget. Movie makers (who want to continue in that profession) pay lots of attention to it. And that dictates that only things that show on camera are important. So they are not going to spend money on completely coating an actress in expensive gold makeup, when she is only seen on camera from a couple of angles. Only the parts that showed were made up.

And not because the producers believed this silly urban legend.
Because they believed in the bottom line.