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Boating and SCUBA Accidents, Low-Head Dams, and Beach Renourishment
Published in John R. Fletemeyer, Ivonne Schmid, Principles and Practices of Aquatic Law, 2018
Diving in this chapter is defined as any dive involving the use of compressed air. Of the several types of diving, the use of SCUBA is the most common. SCUBA is an acronym for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. SCUBA diving is considered an extreme sport, requiring specialized equipment and training. SCUBA diving was co-invented and made popular by Captain Jacques Cousteau in the late 1950s and early 1960s. SCUBA is a relatively safe activity. The Divers Alert Network (DAN) estimates that 1 out of every 211,864 dives ends in a fatality. Most forensic investigations of diving accidents, including fatal accidents, indicate that most are preventable. SCUBA diving fatalities occur in several different ways. Of the many ways that SCUBA divers die, drowning, air embolism, and cardiac arrest represent the leading causes.
Pediatric and adolescent injury in aquatic adventure sports
Published in Research in Sports Medicine, 2018
When the compressed air in a scuba tank expands as it is delivered to the diver, the temperature of the gas falls due to adiabatic cooling. Because of this, and because the air is very dry, asthmatic children should be carefully evaluated for scuba diving (Adir & Bove, 2016). A study comparing 18 diving children (aged >8 and <14 years) with 18 non-diving controls found that, after a scuba dive to just 3m depth for 25 minutes, the diving children had decreased 1-second forced expiratory volume (FEV1), maximal voluntary ventilation (MVV), peak expiratory flow (PEF), maximal expiratory flow (MEF) and forced mid-expiratory flow rate (FEF25-75%), indicating airway narrowing (Lemaitre, Tourny-Chollet, Hamidouche, & Lemouton, 2006). Among children of different ages, measurement of static resistance found the weakest pulmonary elasticity among the youngest children (Bryan & Mansell, 1977). For a similar level of activity, ceteris paribus, the child will have a higher level of ventilator work than an adult and the risk of air trapping, (with barotrauma the consequence), is highest in children less than 8 years old (Ducasse & Izard, 1996). Barotrauma is often the cause of an arterial gas embolism and children receiving hyperbaric oxygen therapy at the University of Hawaii presented with 2.5 times more arterial gas embolisms than adults treated there (Smerz, 2005).
Beneficial effect of enriched air nitrox on bubble formation during scuba diving. An open-water study
Published in Journal of Sports Sciences, 2018
Anne-Kathrin Brebeck, Andreas Deussen, Ursula Range, Costantino Balestra, Sinclair Cleveland, Jochen D. Schipke
Decreasing the nitrogen proportion in the breathing gas of scuba divers while simultaneously increasing the oxygen proportion (=nitrox) is a double-edged sword. This and previous studies both on dry divers (Souday et al., 2016) and on wet divers (Marinovic et al., 2012; Thom et al., 2013) convincingly demonstrate that nitrox reduces N2 bubble formation thus increasing diving safety. Better preserving cognitive performance by reducing the adverse effects of nitrogen narcosis is another of nitrox (Balestra et al., 2012; Brebeck, Deussen, Balestra, & Schipke, 2017). On the other hand, the partial pressure of oxygen cannot be increased arbitrarily, because of its potential toxic effects on human tissue, e.g., on the central nervous system and the pulmonary system (Fock et al., 2013; Shykoff, 2014). The adverse effects of increased oxidative stress in scuba divers could be avoided, if number/duration of dives remain limited. Thus, nitrox could be the better choice in situations, in which precise decisions or accurate judgements and actions are paramount (Germonpre, 2014).