Nitrogen asphyxiation is very real & has happenned in North America to the extent that there are mandatory courses required depending upon which industry you work in.
Like carbon monoxide it is a very silent & veiled killer indeed.
Nitrogen kills not so much by displacing oxygen than by displacing carbon dioxide in your lungs. It is carbon dioxide in the lungs & blood stream that triggers the body to breathe. Without it, there is no urge to breathe & the victim suffocates.
bota7800, don't take nitrogen so lightly. Even a building (depending on size & size of release of N2) can be considered a confined space.
I know of an example at work. We use N2 as a back-up to our instrument air supply. For some reason our normal air supply failed & auto switch over to N2 occurred. A service tech unaware of this opened a pneumatic junction box that was out in the open. (NO CONFINED SPACE) Other workers saw what happened next. As soon as the box was opened the service tech fell backward onto the ground & was out. Not sure for how long but obviously it shows how quickly he was overcome.
From reponses in this thread the THREAT of N2 asphyxiation is not very well appreciated if known at all.
Be aware & stay alive. Just think of it. If you take in N2 which then displaces carbon dioxide & your body no longer has the trigger to breathe, it won't matter if there is all the O2 in the world around you because you will no longer be inhaling another breath. That's why it is so deadly......& few people realize it. That's why I think the average layman should not use nitrogen period.
Vic
Vic
