Fire officials warn of oxygen-tank dangers
Home oxygen equipment is a lifesaver. It allows patients with breathing problems to stay in their homes and lead a normal life. But like many other medical devices, it can be deadly if used incorrectly.The story lists several cases where people died in fires that were exacerbated by smoking around portable oxygen canisters. Look, oxygen is not flammable - it is necessary for combustion, but the gas itself does not burn. In these stories, the folks who were killed or injured provided the flame - the oxygen tanks didn't just decide to go up on their own. It's a shame that people die, especially from fire; however the deaths are entirely preventable, and I applaud the attempt by the fire departments to educate people.
In Massachusetts, several fatal and near-fatal fires have moved officials to press local fire departments and hospitals to warn the public about the dangers of smoking around home oxygen equipment.
It's a fool's errand, but good on them for trying.
Look. We're talking about people who need oxygen to live who are still smoking. There is quite simply no way on G-d's Green Earth you can be on oxygen and not know that:
a) smoking is bad for you already; and
b) smoking around an oxygen container is REALLY bad for you.
My mother-in-law is on oxygen for her COPD. There are warnings EVERYWHERE about not smoking, being extra careful around open flame, etc. Unless someone was both illiterate and completely naive about the ways of the world, there is simply no way you can not know that oxygen + flame of any kind = conflagration. There have been enough horror stories in the news - they're quick to mention the 45 deaths a year from people smoking with oxygen tanks - that anyone with an IQ above that of fruit salad ought to know the two don't mix...
The fire department's efforts are commendable; however they might as well try to repeal the law of gravity here...
That is all.
14 comments:
Legislative action will be taken in 3... 2... 1...
A neighbor of my Grandmother's at the Assisted Living facility invited me in to show me somthing-or-other.
I don't remember what she wanted to show me, but I DO remember the whole apartment (and IIRC her unit door to the common area) were COVERED with the warning signs and no smoking signs. I also remember that the apartment was the perfect environment to cure bacon.
Just sayin'
An older lady in our town turned herself into a human torch with an oxygen tank and smokes.
Fortunately nobody else in her apartment building was hurt - just homeless for a while.
There are HUGE warning labels all over the canisters themselves.
If they ignore those and basic common sense Darwin and his blue-footed boobies might just pay them a visit. No law will stop that.
You can't fix stupid.
It's self correcting.
The afflicted either get better or die trying.
And it hurts, just like it is supposed to.
In my EMS career I've seen more people than I can remember smoking while on oxygen.
I have a new respect for the intelligence of fruit salad.
Blue got it right... sigh...
However, you can only cure stupidity one way...
"oxygen + flame of any kind = conflagration"
While technically true, a more sound way of saying this is
oxygen + flame of any kind = deflagration
There are warnings EVERYWHERE about not smoking, being extra careful around open flame, etc.
The thing that strikes me about that is that I have a 40 cu. ft. oxygen cylinder at home... that I use to run a torch.
It's maybe three feet away from a 4" long oxygen-propane flame (while the torch is on), at something like 5,000 degrees F.
It's not a danger, because those connections are checked to be leak-free and the flame isn't moving, and thus can't get anywhere near the supply lines, which also aren't moving.
Smoking while inhaling oxygen, however, puts a smoldering thing in very close conjunction to pure oxygen, and if a cigarette melts a plastic oxygen line...
Bad times.
"Smoking while inhaling oxygen, however, puts a smoldering thing in very close conjunction to pure oxygen, and if a cigarette melts a plastic oxygen line..."
The real danger is that medical oxygen masks and cannulas let the O2 escape at the delivery end, and after a few hours (or less) of use, the person's clothing gets saturated with O2, making it much more flammible than normal. These fires tend to happen more because the person's clothes catch fire than because they've accidentally melted the tubing.
Up until fairly recently, doctors would not prescribe Oxygen for people who still smoked. For some reason that has changed and now it's not uncommon to see people on Oxygen puffing away merrily.
BTW, it's also not uncommon to see people smoking outside the Emergency Room entrance to one of the world's greatest hospitals. Which wouldn't seem strange except that some of them are receiving IV chemo therapy while they do it.
You can put a tag on soup bowls warning people of the risk of drowning, and it will still happen. It seems like the fire department is trying to cover the 'due diligence' portion of their EMS calls.
In my line of work, we're required to come up with 'near misses' every single reporting period as a learning tool.
Mebbe the FD's are dealing with the same ISM (International Safety Management) compliance deals for insurance like we do in the marine trades.
Looks like I picked a bad day to give up sniffing glue.
TOTWTYTR nailed it. I've gone on calls where the patient is alternating drags between their O2 mask and their Camel Light. Unreal. (We insist on the cancer-stick going bye-bye.)
One of the more amusing (in hindsight) calls was for a deck fire...
Well, it turned out that the resident in question had been sitting on her deck smoking in the sun, while still using her nasal cannula for supplementary oxygen. I'm not entirely sure of the sequence of events, but the cigarette went *POOF* in her face, she dropped it, the oxygen tube was yanked off her face, and the still-burning butt lit a piece of the deck on fire.
She looked *exactly* like Wile E. Coyote after a job with Acme explosives: face covered in streaky soot radiating out from center, eyebrows singed, eyes kinda wide-open and surprised...
We all lol'd ... after we got back to the station.
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