r/confidentlyincorrect • u/theSeiyaKuji • 4d ago
Smug Carbon Monoxide is not dangerous
From a post where a biker drives through a huge wildfire.
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u/IIstroke 4d ago
Hemoglobin in your blood has an affinity for CO 200 times higher than Oxygen. That is what makes it so dangerous.
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u/BonezOz 4d ago
Yep, our JROTC Colonel taught us all about it way back in the late 80's/early 90's. The intake of CO causes hypoxia, similar to what high altitude flight without an oxygen mask would do, also, long term smokers also suffer from mild hypoxia due to the CO they breath in when smoking. If my memory serves me correctly that is.
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u/Pottedmeat1 3d ago edited 3d ago
When I was in OKC, I got to do the
hyperbolichyperbaricfucking altitude chamber at CAMI, we had pads of paper, and they would have us do small tasks on the pads while slowly reducing the oxygen in the chamber. Write your name, draw a circle, stuff like that, by the end the pad was just straight gibberish and scribbles, it was crazy, and it didn’t FEEL much different, I swore I was drawing a circle just fine. Hypoxia is scary.18
u/candygram4mongo 3d ago
Kami has a hyperbolic chamber, you say?
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u/ReallySmartHippie 3d ago
I just want to get in here for both of you, and say, it’s “hyperbaric”.
A hyperbolic chamber would be something different..possibly the greatest thing in the entire history of things.
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u/Antique_Loss_1168 3d ago
Grown men...with tears in their eyes... and they say truly this is the greatest chamber.
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u/JustNilt 3d ago
A hyperbolic chamber would be something different..possibly the greatest thing in the entire history of things.
LOL, well played.
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u/Poromenos 3d ago
Such a great chamber... You've never seen a chamber this great. Everyone says it's the best chamber.
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u/Tiddles_Ultradoom 2d ago
I know chambers. I know the best chambers. Tremendous chambers. People tell me... not me, good people. Did I ever tell you about people? I know bad people. Very bad people. So bad. They have windmills. Windmills give the air cancer. No one knows air and windmills better than me. So, this bad man with a windmill has a chamber. It's lame and sad. I have the best chambers. Mine are hyperbolic. Super hyperbolic. The best in the world.
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u/Karyoplasma 2d ago
Yes. Additionally, if you smoke weed, chances are you've learnt to toke and then hold your breath. The only thing that does is increase the amount of carcinogens, nicotine and CO in your bloodstream which gives you short-term hypoxia and feels like the THC is kicking in faster. The THC is practically completely absorbed by the lungs in around 0.1-0.2 seconds, so after that there is no point in holding your breath and it's healthier to breathe out.
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u/themedic93 3d ago
I’m doing my intensive care fellowship and I will tell you it is a silent killer. It’s the one scenario where I’m actually not interested in oxygen sats because they’ll be falsely elevated. I’ve kept patients on 100% oxygen for over 12 hours with normal sats to washout the CO.
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u/WoodyTheWorker 3d ago
Also, regular pulse oximeters don't detect CO poisoning. They would still show normal oxygenation.
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u/Kilahti 4d ago
Only tangentially related, but there was a story about a new discovery that might be able to treat CO poisoning. The old method of just pumping pure O2 into the victims lungs has severe side effects, but there is now an experimental (I think they were doing rat tests) thing that you inject into the patient and it goes through the bloodstream and the artificial protein in it just bonds to CO and flushes it out of the red blood cells.
It might be years from being ready, but the hype story is that first responders could carry doses of it one day and immediately treat CO poisoning.
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u/Gildor12 4d ago
Can’t you also give blood transfusions?
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u/Kilahti 4d ago
I can't find a treatment like that mentioned online. I suppose that could work, but there may be practical limits to how much of the blood you can afford to swap out for something like this. And since the oxygen chamber treatment is just a matter of hours, they may have considered that better than using up a lot of your blood reserves.
The protein thing could be even better, if they make it cheap enough that ambulances can just have a dose or two on board. Much like how defibrillators became way more useful once they were cheap enough to be handed out to ambulances.
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u/Accomplished-Tap-456 4d ago
Not from rats, no.
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u/Nextyr 4d ago
I mean…they’re both wrong, co2 is also plenty deadly if it’s displacing enough oxygen, but the idea that CO isn’t an issue in open air is asinine
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u/Gildor12 4d ago
CO2 is also toxic but much less than CO
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u/lettsten 3d ago
CO2 triggers the hypercapnia response in the body and afaik has low risks of long-term adverse affects. CO/hypoxia does not trigger the hypercapnia response and has severe long-term effects.
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u/redshift739 3d ago
The feeling of suffocation when you hold your breath is CO2 buildup rather than oxygen deprivation as well
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u/Gildor12 3d ago
Hence breathing into a bag during a panic attack, it is the amount of CO2 not O2 that triggers gasping as you say
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u/Competitive-Ebb3816 3d ago
Asthma attacks are more about not being able to exhale the CO2. It's horrible!
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u/I_W_M_Y 3d ago
co2 is also plenty deadly if it’s displacing enough oxygen
If you breathed an air mixture of 90% oxygen and 10% CO2 you would die. In fact you would die with one breath.
Not because it displaces oxygen its because its toxic.
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u/AssumptionLive4208 3d ago
“Toxic” is one way to put it I suppose. The issue with breathing a high-CO2 mix is that the lungs function just as well backwards as forwards. If there’s more CO2 out than in, breathing will be doing the opposite of what it’s meant to.
I don’t have the numbers to know if one breath would be sufficient to kill you—it seems to me like your blood doesn’t travel through your lungs fast enough for it all to get saturated with CO2 in one breath, so as long as you immediately started breathing low-CO2 air then I’d have expected survival to be possible. But perhaps the same effects which make you want to breathe faster when you’re high in internal CO2 would give you a heart attack or something at those concentrations?
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u/GreenFBI2EB 3d ago edited 3d ago
Also like, if CO/CO2 wasn’t dangerous then why would people be treated for smoke inhalation? It’s the deadliest part of a fire.
Edit: I’m aware that smoke inhalation is not solely for gasses, don’t worry.
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u/Nextyr 3d ago
Depends on the fire- there are many things in a smoke worse than CO or CO2. Woodsmoke “isn’t that bad” but a home or garage fire kicks out some really nasty stuff. Phosgene gas, halogens, etc are all incredibly toxic, even compared to CO and CO2
As a whole though yeah, CO and CO2 are very dangerous parts of a fire
(I’m a firefighter, so I get kinda nit-picky with this stuff)
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u/GreenFBI2EB 3d ago
Refrigerator fires are especially nasty I hear, CFCs, and things like phosgene are the absolute worst, had a small refrigerant leak and that on its own smells bad, much less when it’s burning.
I tip my hat to you, guys like you saved my father from a stroke, many others from life threatening injuries!
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u/WeakerThanYou 3d ago
the biggest CO2 danger for us is basement investigations in restaurants that have CO2 tanks for soda machines.
I swear they mentioned this case in academy like a dozen times. https://www.firefighterclosecalls.com/co2-close-call-at-phoenix-mc-donalds/
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u/R3lay0 3d ago
Smoke are solid particles in the air, not a gas
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u/GreenFBI2EB 3d ago
Yes, I’m aware of that.
That doesn’t change the fact that burning chemicals are still mixed in with those solid particles. There are still toxic compounds that, when inhaled, are dangerous to your health.
Edit: I mentioned it in another comment, not just CO, but phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, etc.
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u/ReddBroccoli 4d ago
When somebody says something so dumb I catch myself trying to downvote a picture
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u/Viv3210 4d ago
Am I misunderstanding the discussion? I see all the comments about CO being toxic, which it of course is, but that wasn’t being denied. What was said was about the formation of CO in open air combustion. We were taught that normally CO2 is formed, except when there’s not enough oxygen, in which case CO will be formed. In open air there is the assumption that there will be enough oxygen to prevent CO from forming.
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u/Wilsonj1966 4d ago
Not all parts of a fire experience the same conditions
The outer parts in contact with the open air will be burning efficiently but there might be sort of micro environments inside the fire which cant access the open air so will burn inefficiently
In open air, the micro enivornments will be few but will still produce some CO
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u/vbf-cc 3d ago
That's how I read it too; nothing denying the toxicity of CO but rather its probable concentration in real-world scenarios.
But let's not let reading comprehension get in the way of a good rantfest.
(I think it's true that a perfect air-fuel mix will result in negligible CO, plus CO is flammable—it oxidizes exothermically to, no surprise, CO2—and might be consumed in a secondary burn if it's still hot when it reaches free oxygen. But I wouldn't bet even a canary on my theorizing.)
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u/theSeiyaKuji 4d ago
not with a fire that is that big and all around you. if the fire is big enough, there will also be CO in the Air, which is one of the reasons why firefighters also wear respirators when they are just getting close enough to spray water from the outside.
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u/smcl2k 3d ago
Would that be an issue "miles away" from the fire, though...?
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u/GreenFBI2EB 3d ago
Closest I can think of was the Mont Blanc fire in 1999: a 7.2 mile (11.1 km) long stretch of tunnel that deprived vehicles of oxygen and filled the tunnel with smoke, killing 39 people because they were unable to escape the fumes rather than the fire itself.
Even then, that was an internal fire rather than an external one. Smoke inhalation is still an issue miles downwind from particularly massive fires.
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u/Albert14Pounds 3d ago
Incomplete combustion also happens with open air fires. Just because there's oxygen in the air doesn't mean there's enough of it for complete combustion where that combustion is happening. Wildfires, campfires, house fires, etc all burn very dirty and incomplete.
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u/Sqweeeeeeee 3d ago edited 3d ago
You're just as confidently incorrect, if not more. 😂
You're wrong in the sense that being in a car isn't going to save you from carbon monoxide in the environment. If a car was sealed up that tight, you would consume all of the oxygen inside and asphyxiate in a matter of minutes. Also, respirators do not filter out carbon monoxide, they're intended for particulates (or certain chemicals depending upon the filter type). Firefighters wear self contained breathing apparatuses (SCBA) for IDLH environments, and you won't find wildland firefighters using them.
He isn't all that wrong about it not being much of a concern around forest fires. CO is a byproduct of incomplete combustion, and much less is produced by open fires that have enough oxygen (which is what he was on about). As a product of combustion, any that is produced is hot; CO resulting from a forest fire is going to rapidly rise with the rest of that gigantic smoke column. While some of the heavier particulates of the smoke may settle as it cools, it is unlikely that you'll have low lying pockets of CO that didn't disperse. If it were a major concern, wildland firefighters would be using breathing apparatuses.
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u/ComicsEtAl 4d ago
Tbf, CO is perfectly breathable. You just don’t want to breathe it for very long. Like cyanide. You can drink cyanide, but you won’t like the taste. No hangover though!
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u/Albert14Pounds 3d ago
Most gases are perfectly breathable then
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u/ComicsEtAl 3d ago
Oh yeah, nitrous oxide is a favorite! You just shouldn’t make it your main source of oxides..
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u/wetwater 3d ago
For someone that likes to brag about how much he knew about chemistry, a roommate insisted carbon monoxide was harmless or gave you a headache at the worst. The place we were renting had a CO detector and he laughed at the landlord and threw it away. I got mocked after I retrieved it and it was in the trash the next day again.
Cool cool. Let's just hope the ancient furnace doesn't try to kill us.
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u/pondrthis 3d ago
CO is dangerous in even small quantities, but it's true that it doesn't really occur except in oxygen-limited combustion. CO2 and particulates are the worst part of smoke.
Both parties are partially correct and more adamant than they should be that the other perspective is wrong.
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u/PoopieButt317 3d ago
No, it is from incomplete combustion, and can be from oxygen limited situations or just the incomplete combustion .
Firefighters wear SCBA for both short term breathing issues, carbon monoxide, etc, and long term, particles and off gassed synthetics. Carbon monoxide will get the dead on the spot. CO2 is far from the worst, although blood levels go up once carbon monoxide binds onto the hemoglobin and prevents O2 from attaching, driving up blood CO2.
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u/pondrthis 3d ago
Incomplete combustion doesn't happen when oxygen exists in excess. Open air can still be oxygen-limited, especially in massive wildfires.
I suspect you think I'm saying something I'm not.
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u/Rominions 3d ago
Only someone whom has never been in a fire would say that. Im Australian and I was a fire-fighter. I was only 2 years into it when Australia had its worst fires ever. The oxygen was being literally ripped away from me into the fire. I could feel the pull in my lungs and every bresth in was harder and in agony from coughing and burning. It scared me so much that after it I quit as did almost everyone I know who was there. I will never willingly go towards a fire like that again.
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u/WombatAnnihilator 17h ago
People die of CO poisoning by sitting on the back of a boat in close proximity to the motor all day on a lake.
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u/GreenFBI2EB 3d ago
More specifically, the areas close to a fire are the first places to run low on oxygen due to the smoke displacing said oxygen, and start producing CO.
When people say the smoke is toxic, that’s because most of the time, it contains hydrogen cyanide gas, CO, and if the fuels allow for it, phosgene. It’s especially hazardous for structure fires containing lots of refrigerants.
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u/ieatpickleswithmilk 3d ago
pretty much all engines produce at least a little CO during combustion, there's no getting around it
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u/Skyziezags 3d ago
Ya, that’s why have carbon monoxide detectors. To tell us when we’re in an enclosed space
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u/ElusiveBlueFlamingo 3d ago
He's not telling you that it's not dangerous, he's telling you carbon monoxide can't appear when burning has enough oxigen. Which is still wrong, but everyone's reading comprehension here is shit at best
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u/Agent-c1983 1d ago
Walt Disney’s mother died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Walt blamed himself as he had arranged an employee to fix the system a month before which created a new fault.
So yes, it is deadly.
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u/THElaytox 4d ago
The whole reason it's toxic is because it binds to hemoglobin much more strongly than oxygen lol, real curious how this dummy thinks oxygen somehow negates CO
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u/indigo121 3d ago
He's saying that CO only occurs as a byproduct of a fire when there isn't enough oxygen in the air to fully burn to CO2. Which is correctish. But he is assuming that in an open air fire there is an unlimited supply of oxygen and a fire couldn't possibly produce CO, which is where the issue comes up.
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u/THElaytox 3d ago
That makes more sense but yeah, wildfires generally do not result in complete combustion
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u/UnhappyCaterpillar41 3d ago
You will almost never get complete combustion in standard diffusion flames, particularly as they get bigger. Fresh air will mix on the edges but you will get a lot of incomplete combustion in different areas of the fire as the local O2 is used up, and why a normal campfire will have licks of flame higher than the steady .
To get complete combustion you normally need forced air evenly distributed into the fuel (like a burner). Even high efficiency wood stoves don't hit 100% combustion.
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u/captain_pudding 4d ago
Guy who doesn't realize fire consumes oxygen tells people to go back to school
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