I was convincingly told at length today that shopping malls, churches, etc regularly put abnormally high levels of oxygen into their facilities in order to make their ‘customers’ ‘buy’ more - and even explain their ability to pass out during the so-called religious experiences.
I haven’t done any research yet, but I don’t know of any evidence in favor of this theory (that our public behavior is modified by institutions’ usage of oxygen or any airborne environmental ingredient). The ability of oxygen to create an environment more prone to religious experiences (a tap on the head and a convulsive “awakening” ensues) - which are usually attributed to psychological phenomena rather than drug induced states (although they could possibly play off of one another).
I’d say absent evidence, it’s false because it would be pretty expensive to do, both for the oxygen itself and the equipment to oxygenate many cubic meters of air. Even a 5% greater oxygen concentration would be a heckuvalotof oxygen especially considering that absent strict airlock you’re gonna have to keep replenishing it.
Plus, and this is where my knowledge isn’t 100% certain, that 5% extra concentration would be both too much and too little. Too little to give any intoxicating effect and enough that there’d be long-term safety issues (although I’m sure the person telling you this was well aware of that last bit.)
I’d guess that if you pumped it up to the point where the above phenomena regularly happened due to oxygen intoxication, there would be enough ill-effects from it as well that epidemiologists would have long ago discovered it.
Well, first of all, I’m guessing we can assume that if this is done commonly whatsoever, that it is not secretive - since regulations would at least require specification and study of such artificially occurring environmental ingredients.
If they were using liquid oxygen, you’d see a big old tank somewhere outside the mall, plus oxygen tanker trucks would have to make regular appearances.
The other way to go, zeolite based [Oxygen Concentration](Oxygen Concentrators), is expensive, but more importantly it hasn’t been around more than a decade or so. Unless someone hopped right on the technology somewhere, there hasn’t yet been time for anyone to do a study which shows a bottom line benefit to stores which superoxygenate.
Hopefully a devil’s advocate will come along with a bunch of references and stories about how they saw oxygen added to the ventilation systems of churches and malls. Otherwise, I think this may have come from various news stories of hospitals, businesses, and huge malls and churches’ air conditioning and ventilation systems being poorly constructed and thus circulating “old” air. Do any of you know about ventilation system problems that may result in behaviors similar to an “oxygen high?”
To the o.p.: no, shopping malls, churches, and casinos do not hyperoxygenate air. As pointed out previously, it would expensive, make the atmosphere more combustable, and high concentrations of oxygen have to be handled by special regulator and plumbing systems as any Nitrox-certified scuba diver knows. If you want to keep people awake and energized it is much easier to stimulate them with loud noise, music, and flashing lights…which is exactly what shopping malls, churches, and casinos do.
Increasing the oxygen content of the building would be dangerous as it would increase the flammability of err, flammable objects and therefore creating a fire hazard. Remember 3 Apollo astronauts were burnt extra crispy when a small spark ignited in their oxygen rich capsule.
rubbish
think of the legal problems. You are assuming that these places are willing to risk lawsuits from customers who discover that they are exposed to potentially damaging treatments in the hope that their stores might make a bit more money. And it isn’t like such a thing could be concealed. Not even worth checking snopes on.
No I would have to say this is never done. You would need multiple tanker truck deleveried daily. The dangers would be huge. The insurance rates would be more than any increase in cash flow.
And I have never seen any signs of the equipment that it would require.
There are requirements for mim. frresh air when the fan units are in ecconomizer mode.
According to the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook handbook, the definitive source for these kinds of things, there are about 292,000 HVAC technicians in this country. Such a scheme as posited in the OP would require every one of these techs, plus innumerable ancillary workers, to be part of the conspiracy to keep it secret.
Not to mention the equipment and methods used to create the ‘oxygenated’ environment would be of interest to ASHRAE. I’ve used their handbooks and they cover a wide variety of systems and applications, but the don’t cover that.
There’s no doubt that the proliferation of Oxygen Bars did nothing whatsoever to foster an environment in which people developed all sorts of crazy ideas about the benefits of elevated oxygen levels.*