Case on the Death of Scuba Diver by Analyzing the Air in Nitrox Cylinder

Going underwater is supposed to begin with the history of human beings. At first it was confined to relatively shallow level, less than several meters by holding breath. Recently, deep level diving has been necessary for such purpose as construction, maritime salvage, military operations, research and sports by using SCUBA(self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) equipment. As one goes down into water, the pressure on the diver is increased due to water pressure with depth, usually 1 atm for each 10 m water level. In deep water, mixed gas or nitrox(EAN, enriched air nitrox) could be applied for the divers lest they should get disease due to high pressure. Of these, the former is usually composed of oxygen and inert gas like helium or hydrogen, the latter contains higher oxygen content than that in normal air in which the oxygen concentration is designated by the character "EAN" followed by vol. % of oxygen, for example, "EAN 40" contains 40% of oxygen. In this case, a victim was found at the 39 m below the sea surface breathing air and nitrox in cylinder wrongly marked as EAN 36, which was analyzed to contain 63% of oxygen by GC/TCD. The cause of death could not be exactly related with the oxygen content in the nitrox cylinder, because the accurate depth for the victim to dive was not known, even though the victim was just found at the depth of 39 m. However, the wrongly marked nitrox could be believed to be the main cause of the death at the depth unless there happened any other accident except that during diving.

Nitrox 공기통의 기체 분석에 의한 스쿠버다이버 사망원인 추정에 관한 사례연구