Crunchy Frog: "Note to self: Politely decline invitation to matt’s sleep-over."
Noone’s slept over at my place since I suggested the spider experiment
kinoons: "I can also check what are the normal levels of O2 and CO2 in a corpse."
That would be great! Thanks!
stuyguy: "Just this summer one or two maintanance workers in a NYC (Queens?) hospital died this way. They were in a small room/shed fixing some equipment near some leaky Nitrogen tanks."
That’s pleasing to know considering that I’m sitting in a lab full of nitrogen tanks right this minute, and one of them is cheerfully bubbling through a solution as I type…
Dr_Paprika: "Nitrogen in the air does not really diffuse into the blood, nor does it move much in the lungs."
I’m sure SCUBA divers would be fascinated to hear that!
You’re right of course, in that with normal air breathing the nitrogen dissolved in your blood will be equilibriated with the 0.8 bar partial pressure in air. Since your body doesn’t consume or produce nitrogen there is no net movement of nitrogen into or out of the bloodstream through your lungs.
What I’m proposing however is to elevate the nitrogen partial pressure to 1 bar, which will cause nitrogen to diffuse into your bloodstream through your lungs. If you could breath it for long enough without dying, you could in theory elevate your blood nitrogen by about 20% although I think you’d die long before you got that far.
"In nitrogen poisoning, I suspect the acidosis would occur more quickly and would present with symptoms of hypoxia."
Ah, but I plan to mix in CO[sub]2[/sub] with the nitrogen at the same partial pressure as it’s found in exhaled air! So, no acidosis - deal with that, you forensic types!
"Unlike many of the posters, I do think the hypoxia would be quite evident."
Now you’re spoiling my story! As a matter of interest, when a person dies of, say, heart failure, do they present symptoms of hypoxia?
"It is easy to measure nitrogen concentrations in the blood, but hard to think of something like that after working for 12 hours."
How is that done? Do you take a sample and run it through a mass spectrometer or something? I’m familiar with electrochemical sensors for oxygen, but electrochemistry doesn’t get you very far with nitogen.
bmorey: Interesting! I don’t think that show made it to this side of the Atlantic, which is a pity.