You should know that inhaling that will kill you. And at high temperatures, the vapors can be lethal, also. And you want people to carry it on PLANES! Shesh!.
For safety, all passengers should fly nude. Discounts offered to cheerleaders squads who get frequent flier miles.
I also would have assumed the opposite, had I not read the articles, which prove our assumptions invalid.
The other articles on cabin fires went into nice detail as to how hydrogen cyanide acts as a cellular asphyxiant by binding to mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase.
They explicitly stated that smoke particles are not deadly in an airplane crash.
So, what you, or I, would have assumed about smoke itself being deadly, is apparently wrong.
If you still think your (and my) initial assumption is right, then what we need is an article about cabin fires which says both that the smoke particles are deadly, and, that a wet cloth reduces them.
Otherwise, we're just making non-scientific assumptions.
Science isn't what you are I guess. Science is what can be tested & proven.
I'd be glad if you can find a tested/proven article on airplane fires which says that smoke particles, in and of themselves, constitute a life-threatening danger in the time it takes to exit a burning airplane.
We found more than a half dozen sources, including scientific papers, none of which said that the smoke particles were the immediate danger in cabin fires - nor did we find anything that said a wet cloth filters them out.
If we are to assume smoke particles are a life-threatening danger, we'd have to find at least one scientific article that said that the particulate matter itself could kill us in the time of a cabin fire.
Even then, we'd have to know that a wet towel would filter out those particles.
I looked for papers backing up our (apparently erroneous) assumptions. I can't find any.
I agree that we don't have actual ppm levels documented yet, but, we do know that the hydrogen cyanide gas is deadly within minutes.
One of the papers said death ensues within minutes.
Another one discussed how a hundred people died, none of whom had traumatic injury, all of whom died from the toxicity of the gases in the fire.
What we don't know is the ppm concentration REDUCTION that a wet towel provides us.
DHMO also contributes to severe weather and flash flooding.
Looking around right now, including looking in a mirror, I'd want a blindfold! I'm willing to make exceptions, but most of the time, a blindfold would keep you from getting an upset tummy.
Was there any mention of the radiated heat from these fires? After personally experiencing a major fire in a building adjacent to our home, I learned to apprecaite that aspect. For certain, a wet cloth over the head would help shield. To see the potential shielding just envision sticking your head into a barbecue pit with, and without, the wet towel. The air into your lungs gets cooled so won't sear as much and at least your corneas should remain intact.
I also heard that in the field urinate upon a 'dirty' wound to wash it, because urine is more sanitary than all that muck in there.
Also, heard good for jelly fish sting, at least appears in some films as such.
LOL! and now the Europeans have caught our 'fat' virus!
Per RobertMacy:
With the caution that that only applies to your own jelly fish sting... or, at least, a sting on somebody you know really, really well.... -)
If I'm in a burning about to crash plane, I think the last thing I would worry about would be the smoke ;)
Something to keep the father occupied and out of the way.
Unless one has a urinary tract infection, urine is sterile, aiui**.
I think that means two bottles of urine can't make a baby.
**so you're right.
Your making all kinds of bizarre leaps here. Just because inhalation of smoke particles during a fire isn't mentioned as deadly or the major cause of fatalities, doesn't mean that it's just an inconvenience. Some people die just from an asthma attack, so it seems entirely possible that inhaling soot could be a factor in whether somone survives or not. Most serious fire victims are going to have heat, gas, and particle inhalation and I would expect that you could have patients that survive because they didn't have the additional burden of the particles, while others that did inhale it die. The leading cause, the thing to be most worried about, etc is still the gases and heat, but that doesn't mean particle inhalation is just an inconvenience.
IDK what other article you're talking about. Link?
So far, all I see is you making wild assumptions. You're taking a fire guide for idiots from the FAA, as a scientific source. It's not. It's a layman's guide. It also looks like it could have been written in the 50's or 60's. And then you infer that because they don't say something, that means that soot inhalation is not a serious, possibly life threatening factor? It's just an inconvenience?
Here, from Fire Engineering. Not exactly a medical authority, but it is a lot more detailed as to the effects.
"Autopsy and experimental data show that serious injury and death result fr om exposure to contact irritants, primarily hydrogen chloride, and the cent ral systemic poisons, carbon monoxide (CO) and cyanide.1 Contact irritants cause cellular damage and death. In response to irritants, cells release fl uids, causing massive edema. Additional inflammatory responses cause cells to lose integrity and die.2
Systemic poisons are absorbed into the blood through the lungs. They act on specific cells in the body or within specific parts of every cell. Systemi c poisons either inhibit critical cell functions or cause cellular death.
Contact irritants include particulate matter such as soot. Particles larger than five microns will lodge in the upper airways, causing mechanical obst ruction. They are observed in the nose and the mouth. Particles smaller tha n one micron are inhaled deep into the lungs, where the carbonaceous soot i s toxic to the macrophages. Macrophages are cells that remove foreign parti cles. Heavy metals coating the surface of soot cause direct lung damage by forming free oxygen radicals which damage cilia and alveolar surfaces."
That doesn't sound like just an inconvenience.
Yes.
We noted that this flight safety PDF, which was all about protecting your airways in a cabin fire, explicitly said that the dry heat of a cabin fire isn't a major concern when it comes to protecting your breathing airways:
As already noted, they said, verbatim: "the human body?s upper airway naturally provides significant protection to the lower airway and lungs against extreme heat from hot, dry air."
Absolutely none of the air-safety PDFs yet mentioned *anything* about the wet cloth having anything to do with cooling hot air, so, we can safely assume the only *safety* purpose of the wet cloth is to trap some of the hydrogen cyanide gas.
I used to think that jumping up into the air when an elevator crashes to the ground, would stop me from crashing along with it. It's not supported by the facts.
Neither is the theory that the wet cloth is there to protect us from the heat of the air during a cabin fire supported by
*any* of the flight-safety references we have so far been able to find.Sounds good. I'd believe it myself, if I was just guessing.
But, there's *nothing* in those flight-safety PDFs that says that the wet cloth protects against heat in a cabin fire.
Now that's not to say that a cabin fire isn't *hot*. For example, this previously listed PDF shows the temperatures that can be reached in the cabin during a fuel-fed fire are extremely *HOT!*.
That article mentions that the wet cloth might filter out smoke particles (which don't seem to be an immediate danger), but it doesn't even hint at that wet cloth cooling down the air.
So, unless someone comes up with a good reference, I think we can safely say that the *assumption* that the wet cloth is there to cool down the air breathed in a cabin fire is a false assumption (however good it seems to "sound" to most of us).
Are you serious? (real question, no exasperation intended)
They poured the hot water in her to dilate the cervix?????? What do they do when they're not in a farm house in 1920? Same thing?
sw_sept06_p28-30.pdf
ficant
Just because some basic guides on what to do in a fire, don't specifically say something one way or the other, you can't "safely assume" anything. Yet you keep doing it.
You've assumed that particle inhalation from fires is just an inconvenience and not a contributor to injury or death. Even you own reference, from above, which you cite above, says otherwise. On page 29 at the bottom right they say that soot and particle inhalation is one of the primary sources of inhalation injury. .
It's frequently reported that people die of heartbreak also. And that Vikings wore horns on their helmets. And that Moses parted the water of the Red Sea. Or that George Washington had wooden teeth. Or that Benjamin Franklin publicly proposed the wild turkey be used (instead of the bald eagle) as the symbol of the US. Or that Napoleon Bonaparte was shorter than the average Frenchman of his time. etc.
Lots of things are "frequently reported" and just as frequently untrue. That's why I had asked for "scientific" answers.
Anyone can guess wrong.
Nothing I found, so far, says that the particles are life threatening.
The HCN gas can kill you in a couple of minutes, for example.
There was one reference which did say the wet cloth trapped particulate matter:
So, we can safetly assume that a wet cloth does trap particles, but, nobody has reported any real evidence that "smoke inhalation" (presumably that means particulate inhalation) is either immediately dangerous, or the *reason* for the wet cloth.
Based on the evidence repoted to date, the reason for the wet rag seems to be to trap water soluble gases, of which HCN is the most dangerous in a cabin fire (according to all the references).
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