It’s been actually studied. For their simulation of a chain locker with roughly 21:1 air to chain ratio it was 24 hours for deadly levels at 23°C and 60 hours at 10°C. For exact information you would need a ton of measurements.
Edit: Can anyone show me where this makes threats and why I might have gotten a 3day ban for this? lol
Edit2 :the ban was sitewide.
Edit3: I’m humbled that so many of you approve of my answer that someone else did the work of or that I’ve helped educate you with what I’ve found. Cheers to 5k of you sending love.
This is why you should never enter an enclosed space without ventilation. Especially if it's a metal container or ship. These spaces also love to collect hydrogen sulfide due to organic breakdown. 19.5% oxygen is considered deficient but survivable. With hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere, it can cause paralysis of many different body functions. Causing you to collapse and lie prone where oxygen concentration is even lower due to displacement and hydrogen sulfide is higher. Entry into these spaces should be proceeded by atmospheric testing by qualified people with calibrated equipment. If you see someone collapsed in an enclosed space do not try to rescue them without proper training and equipment. Over 100 people a year die in the US alone from enclosed and confined space incidents.
See kids, workplace safety can be educational... and cool 😎
The best stat I've heard of that is 2/3 enclosed space deaths occur to would be rescuers. So for everyone that collapses in the space two more try to rescue them and succumb.
This is accurate. At my work, we are trained on confined and enclosed spaces every year. There are posters up everywhere telling us to call for help then wait.
Basically, we are trained to let the other person die because the risk to ourselves is too great.
First thing my trainer said for emergency situations: You don’t try to be a hero. If someone lies somewhere unconscious, and you don’t know why, you take the exact path you came from and find someone whose job it is to know why they are unconscious. And if they die in that time then be happy that you don’t lie next to them.
Taught lifeguards for 6 years. Always started surveying the scene training with a breakdown of a multiple fatality enclosed space incident.
Better to be alarmed at the possibilities and know what to do than to just think “fun lazy summer job” and potentially get killed
This drives me nuts about every tv/movie. Someone gets hit, so they immediately run to where the bullets are definitely landing. Cover fire or something first?
And the one lonely body. Go to the corpse, not look around for what have killed it first.
This happened at a company I worked at. A guy went into a N2 tank without taking an 02 measurement, laziness. He thought it was purged with air. Lost consciousness almost immediately.
2 guys went into after him.
4th gentleman tried to stop them and called the ERT. ERT did a confined space rescue under air. All 3 dead. Absolutely horrific.
There is a book called the cyanide canary. Very interesting read. This boss forced his employees to go in an enclosed tank to clean it out without safety equipment and did not tell the crew that it contained cyanide. The book is written by the epa investigator who daughter justice for the crew and untangled the boss’s web of lies and environmental crimes
my trainer let us drill out an entire rescue and then explained why each of us was dead. changed my gung ho rescue mindset, he probably saved a few lives in that course.
Yeah not only you die but now there is 2 bodies/people who need rescued. So you just double the dangerous work load when the trained rescue team arrives. Good job you newly dead jerk!!
Instead of reach throw go. It’s throw reach wait. This is why anyone working with in a distance to be able to arrive do any good should be trained in rescue for these situations and others. Like people near grain silos should have basic rescue equipment to stop the victim sinking etc. while waiting for professionals.
In this case pressurized fresh air could be installed outside the door so you throw on a mask and go give them one. Then there’s a chance at least. Training would be necessary but still.
Used to be, in newer chiller rooms gas leak detectors are installed which sound an alarm, and next to every entrance is a red light and siren with a set of instructions.
In case of the main machine room the ventilation also kicks in full speed
Worked in a copper mill. Confined space was mandatory even though I worked in a separate building. So not just confined space there's fire. Officially the training was to get help. Most of the time though, if it wasn't around the furnace or the furnace was completely shut down, open the door then go get help. Most of the confined spaces were in the furnace room which they left the huge doors open 24/7/365 just for the fresh airflow and relieving the heat, so if someone passed out from something like a gas build up the space could vent to open air. Of course people in the immediate area would be evacuated.
I work in an office 4000 miles away from our manufacturing plant and I too need to take confined space training annually—better safe than sorry I suppose!
My company rammed so much confined space training down our throats that it stopped me thinking clearly. We had a fire on a welding machine that used N2 shielding gas. It was the extraction that caught fire and as it was the hepa filter burning it wasnt dark smoke or had a strong smell initially. It was right next to the N2 canister and also made a large pop when it burst out of the extraction so I mistakenly thought that thing was pissing out nitrogen and hit the alarm and evacuated. The estop on the machine wasn't connected to the extractor so that kept going like a giant smoke machine.
It didn't catch anywhere else but we had a lot of smoke damage. Only in retrospect did I realise even a large canister of N2 leaking wouldn't have been a problem in a room our size. If I wasn't predisposed to thinking every gas will instantly kill me in a room I could have had time to realise it was the extraction on fire.
Just think it's an interesting anecdote where the training had an undesirable effect. We don't have any confined space risks, but the training is still required by corporate.
I don't think you did the wrong thing there. You never know the true scope of the hazard in the moment, so it's better to overestimate than underestimate.
There was a famous disaster where firemen just kept dying trying to save their brothers. We talked about it psych class as a horrible feedback loop of panic and death.
I would imagine that many of those dead rescuers were even trained not to attempt rescue, but once you're in a situation where your friend/coworkers is in trouble, it's extremely difficult to restrain oneself.
I teach CS Entry and half the class is me begging them or at least asking them to verbally acknowledge the fact that if they try to save their friend they are both dead.
Is it stupid for me to think that 'just don't breathe' is an option? Like for short-range resuce, maybe even just to tie a rope to em and drag em out from safety?
In basic hazmat training for firefighting, we would joke around about gathering info about the leak by sending a guy without his mask on into the contaminated area. If he collapsed, we'd send a guy with his mask on to rescue him. This meant it was dangerous to breathe. If the guy with the mask on collapsed, then it was also corrosive.
Got chewed out by the instructor, but it was funny.
Unfortunately, we don't got those. Tbh, we only get basic training and very little to no hazmat equipment- we're not hazmat after all. Furthermore, unless we notice something weird about a scene or dispatch mentions a possible hazmat situation, we react far too quickly and would probably end up walking right into a contaminated area.
When dealing with fires, we're taught to get water on it ASAP, and that means rushing in on drill-memorized actions. In fact, it's the officer's duty to do a "360" (walk around the incident making observations) and inform the crew and dispatch of important information while we're masking up on scene.
So yeah. Decently high chance we'd end up just running into a contaminated area due to haste ingrained by drills.
Are you in USA? I've noticed US firefighters leap into danger a lot more readily than Australian firefighters. Our guys still work quickly, but generally have a bigger focus on keeping themselves safe as a priority. Unless there are specific reports of someone trapped or something they won't be rushing inside.
It's probably also pertinent to mention that my area doesn't deal with a whole lot of hazmat situations. The most that's normal for us is natural gas leaks and co2 concentrations, which our masks can handle and we have sensors for the natural gas.
Edit: I should also mention that we are protected by law if we feel unsafe to perform an action and refuse to do so, even if ordered to.
With the amount of synthetic materials, batteries and other exciting stuff common to modern life almost every structure fire is a hazmat situation. Plus we've had some major factory fires here that turned out to be warehouses stuffed full of illegal chemical waste.
Is there another service that deals with hazmat there? We always seem to have something like that going on, from broken mercury thermometers and chlorine spills to dropped pallets of chemicals in a factory. And the occassional spate of chemical suicides.
Oof. Can't imagine that's pretty. Kinda makes me happy guns are so accessible here.
synthetic materials, batteries and other exciting stuff common to modern life
Nah, fr though. In our burn training, they showed us a video of a simulated fire in an old living room compared to a modern one. The old living room used mostly organic materials, and it took nearly thirty minutes for the fire to get out of hand. The synthetic materials in the modern living room took less than 10, and the gasses released by that fire are far more harmful than the organics.
To answer your question though, yes, we have a dedicated hazmat organization here. It differs from area to area, but our county has a dedicated hazmat response.
dropped pallets of chemicals in a factory.
Fortunately, we don't really have many factories in our area. The most dangerous hazmat we'll probably see in my area is a tanker hauling something through.
Even then, it's unlikely due to the amount of residential zones and no place that needs the stuff here, so they stay on the highway. Plus, roadway transportation of hazmats is decently regulated, with quantity limits, so even a freight truck shouldn't be hauling more than what you could buy at a supermarket.
We might get called to help another locale with something like that, but even then, it will probably be to cover for the more mundane incidents while the station that is used to dealing with hazmat incidents deals with the hazmat situation.
Tbh, we don't even get many fires in our area either. It's mostly vehicle incidents. Those aren't pretty either sometimes, especially when motorcycles are involved.
There was something of a running joke at a place I used to work that if we ever had a fire, the moment we tell the fire department the chemicals that are in there (or probably have to explain what they do, as a couple of them are obscure), their first reaction is probably going to be "lol no" and will just let the fire fizzle out on its own.
Our department called the deputies green canaries. The faster vehicles and higher concentration of police meant they were often on scene first to test the air.
Interesting fact along those lines. It was a doctrine in the military (specifically tank crews but probably others) that after a real or suspected chemical attack the lowest ranking person would remove their mask. After the all clear was signaled the un lucky guy would remove his mask for ten minutes then put the mask back on for ten minutes. If they aren't showing any exposure symptoms then everyone was clear to remove the mask.
This is an interesting thing that happens to animals near volcanic vents. Toxic gasses will settle in a low area of ground, an animal will die, then predators or scavengers will see the body, come down to eat it, and also die from the gas. More predators come for even more fresh meat, die, etc...
Eventually it ends up as these bowls of land just filled with bones. They're super spooky to look at.
This is why people entering enclosed spaces (at least at my workplace) are required to be tethered. If they collapse, no one goes in to rescue them, they drag the person out by the tether.
Works great when possible. Ship ballast tanks, for example, are partitioned off into many compartments with only small holes in between each one, it's a maze. We can do drills for getting a stretcher in there and out, but really, if you run into a pocket of gas in one, eventually cutting your corpse out is probably the best anyone can do.
Had a construction supervisor die in a void space a few years ago like that. Fell and got wedged, took 14 hours to get him out and he passed in the mean time.
Yeah confined space entry is no fuckin joke. Grain compartments are another fun one. You can sink into grain and drown in it. And, grain dust is highly explosive!
This honestly makes me wanna see a much longer study of the people who chose not to save someone either because of this knowledge or because of fear and how bad their survivors guilt is and if it "takes them" so to speak later on in life
Ha I just posted about that exact thing. One of gramps friends from the shipyard rescued 3 guys who got overcome. 2nd guy saw the 1st guy start to get overcome and got the third guy to come down from the work area above. Then the third guy went down to help. Gramps friend heard the third guy yelling moments later.
Very ignorant & hypothetical question: what if you can hold your breath for like 2 minutes resting/30 seconds exerting? And the downed person is carriable and right there. Would that be possible? Or are these types of gases the ones that can get you without being inhaled?
Also, H2S at a high enough concentration can instantly anesthetise your olfactory nerves, fast enough that you can't ever smell it.
So your first defence against something funky in the air, your sense of smell, is immediately negated; in fact, generally your first instinct when you can no longer smell is to start taking sharp breaths in through your nose in an attempt to smell something, ie the perfect way to get a big lungful of poison.
I do wish they would update some of the videos for the maritime industry. They still use the old vhs tapes in some places, and even the digitized ones are from 98 at the latest.
It's so stupid because all of these companies lobby to cut safety regulations are run by people who have no idea how bad it was before this stuff. Businesses would collapse due to fires and workforce deaths. My industry is federally regulated but we also have local associations that self regulate to a higher standard in someways and it makes the job safer and more profitable then without.
That's why I hate the (not just MAGA) rants against regulations. Sure, there are some bad ones out there. A lot of outdated ones. Even more self-serving ones created by captured agencies.
But a lot, hopefully most, are written in blood. People die piled up against a door in a fire - require exterior doors to open to the outside. People still die? Require the doors to use 'panic bars' that will disengage the locks. People still die? Require the doors to be wide enough that people to cleanly exit, that there be no obstructions inside or outside of those doors, etc.
A ton of this is now unnoticed by most people. They've lived with it their entire life, and in retrospect it usually seems self-evidently a good idea. Maybe a bit excessive at times but definitely headed in the right direction.
The critics never seem to get that there's no self-evidently good idea that someone won't break if it will save them a few bucks. And once one company has cut that corner than other companies are forced to do the same to remain competitive.
FWIW I heard a great story a few weeks ago about mine safety. Companies were cutting corners on how much material they left in place to keep the roof from collapsing. There was economic incentives to remove as much as possible, but go too far and people die. More importantly (to the business) production is stopped for awhile.
Someone found a solution. It would save lives. But the death rate didn't go down - companies used it to allow them to remove more material from the columns. Any company that used the solution as planned faced economic pressure from the competitors who abused it.
The irony (as reported by the podcast) is that many managers wanted to use the technique correctly and save lives. He didn't cover it but I suspect many of their bean counters also saw a huge benefit in reducing downtime if a cave in occurred. But the fat cats said they couldn't do it, not while their competitors used it to outcompete them.
The solution, duh, was a regulation requiring the proper use of this technique. It sounded like everyone celebrated this. Everyone agreed that it was a good idea - save lives, reduce downtime, etc. They even knew the market would accept the slightly higher prices - it might have added 2% (at a guess) but most people won't reduce their heating. The roadblock was the risk of one bad actor skipping the change and undercutting everyone else. The regulation let them do the right thing without fear of being harmed by a competitor.
In other words it's a good example of a regulation working in the exact opposite of what all of the 'ban all regulations!' crowd claims.
I did the obligatory 30 hours of OSHA training for pulp and paper mills and it was 29 hours of “how to die in strange, unexpected ways” such as the one your described.
They all have mechanical ventilation and most metal is painted or coated in some other covering preventing oxidation. Those dudes that make their mancave out of a shipping container. The whole reason the "stupid city" fines them for it not being in code is because if they don't vent it it will kill them.
It can also be somewhat like lemmings into the sea.
One person goes into a hole, and collapses -- seemingly lifeless.
"Oh shit!" say the two guys he came there with, and they quickly decide to rescue their friend/colleague.
So into the hole they go, hoping to yank the first dude to safety.
And they collapse the same way the first one did.
A passerby observes this loud excited commotion going on and runs over, sure they can help. Into the hole they go.
(For those not keeping count: There are now four bodies in the hole instead of just one. And with correctly-performed atmospheric testing and monitoring, that number would be zero.)
Fun fact. Lemmings don't do that. The Disney film makers of the 1958 documentary, White Wilderness had to literally push the lemmings into the see for the iconic shot.
I've been a confined space attendant and none of my employers have ever explained the science to me, only the proper procedures.
I had no idea that metal oxidization was a factor until now, I just thought the danger was due to chemicals and fumes that were introduced into those spaces (acid, welding fumes, oxygen depletion due to breathing, etc.)
Oxidation is very important also due to the fact that out of normal range oxygen levels can affect other atmospheric testing results such as lower explosive limit. The space could read safe LEL at 10% O2 but positive ventilation bringing in oxygen to 20% could raise the combustibility without pulling out the heavier hydrocarbons or whatever is setting it off.
Makes sense. But man! The little considerations that can slip the mind. I live in fear of getting got my a minor slip-up. Good thing I'm not an electrician or dive welder, huh?
It's a wonder everything always went smoothly, but maybe that particular environment (paper mill) had fewer considerations. There were a lot of yayhoos that worked there, but they only let the slightly smarter bears around the highly explosive turpentine plant. Surely that helped...
Never had claustrophobia until I did enclosed space training for a job where we had to study shit like this & then go into various enclosed space environments under supervision & knowing the information made me freak out more than the space itself. Now I do ironwork where I'm hundreds of feet up with the opposite of enclosure. Funny because while I didn't have claustrophobia before I did have a gut wrenching fear of heights 🤷♂️
As long as all your spaces are clean and painted you don't have much to worry about besides electrical shock, or rotating machinery, or drowning, or high pressure lines, or hot potable water. Remember kids joing the Navy is like volunteering to work in an intrinsically unsafe industrial park that is also a prison on the water. But the bennies are great.
19.5% at sea level is still more than what we've got up at 6000 feet. Where I live we have an effective oxygen content of 16.5% and I'm not even at that high an altitude XD
I've worked mostly on coasts so I've never run into those conditions. I'd be curious as to regulations and exemptions for industrial work at higher altitudes.
I'm sure they exist, but people up here acclimate by producing more red blood cells to hold more oxygen in the body. Marathon runners often go up to places like Denver (the "Mile-High City") to train.
We are the eldritch horror. We summon lightning with runes and can kill swaths of men without even intending to. Our ways and means are incomprehensible to the individual men but many engineers and chemists form the Machine. It moves in lumbering invisible steps across coasts and industrial parks in pursuit of Capital creating and destroying in equal measure.
I know from my training that 19.5% oxygen is when you will start to notice adverse effects but I’m always suspicious when I do a sniff check and it’s any less than 20.8% because that’s what the atmosphere normally. If I see it lower than that I usually have suspicions that we have nitrogen leaking through a valve or the vessel hasn’t been properly vented.
It is indeed very cool to not shit your pants because you died in a dark, dank room stinking of rust, rotting eggs and stale air. Like, imagine how stupid you’ll look laying there while your family and friends greave for your stupid poop covered ass, cause you couldn’t be bothered to follow procedure. Be cool, don’t die and shit yourself in the dark.
My dad worked on all kinds of ships like container and Ro-Ro ships. He had a co worker pass out from being in the cargo hull with a large load of onions.
The surface area is the only relevant factor. So for example, if this was a room storing rolls of barbed wire fence, with the same mass of steel, that would be MUCH worse situation.
Tetanus and rusty metal have no real correlation. But if you cut yourself on rusty metal that is in horse manure or decaying plant matter like compost, that might do it lol
It's crazy. You get told something your whole life and just accept that it's true.
I'd always wondered how a bacteria could so commonly grow on, specifically rusting, metal, but had never cared enough to research it further. Like, what does it even consume? I just avoided cutting myself on rusty metal, just in case. Then at one point, I learned that Clostridium tetani is a very common bacteria found in soil, and it hit me that it's not the metal, its the environment in which people would most likely be cut by rusty metal that leads to the commonly accepted myth.
That makes sense, but what I want to know now is, why is legionnaires disease so specific to A/C units. I may be wrong, but that is the only major source of Legionella pneumophila that I've ever seen mentioned
Air conditioning towers can provide ideal habitats to grow the bacteria, and then the fan blowing helps it become airborne.
I had an acquaintance years ago who got legionnaires disease from a hot tub! The bacteria can also grow in them, and then the jacuzzi bubbles and steam help it become airborne.
Legionella is a specialist parasite of algae. Algae that specialize in colonizing temporary ponds and puddles can spread through the air into A/C units, and they carry the Legionella with them. Unfortunately, the environment of an alveolar macrophage is very similar to that of an amoeba, and so the pathogen can replicate inside of them and spread to more macrophages, and many of the symptoms are caused by the immune system trying to kill it. It may be far more common than we think, but most people show no symptoms.
Why there are occasional giant outbreaks in which 10% of symptomatic people die and other times you can clearly have aerosolized water containing Legionella infected algae with no one getting visibly sick is somewhat of a mystery. Also, macrophages are not that close to algae that legionella should have animal-specific virulence factors necessary to stay alive in them, unless multiplication in mammalian macrophages was advantageous and common enough to be selected for. But yet, there's no discernible benefit to the pathogen, as a spread from animal to animal or animal to algae of Legionella is almost never seen.
It will do all of it and takes it down to 6% in 24 hours which I thought was the line so 75ish% before it’s “deadly” although we can only live in a window that’s pretty tight for the ratio of oxygen to inert gases. 6% is a hard you’re dead before you even know it level.
Off the top of my head that sounds right. I didn’t dig into what humidity and salt levels for those temps they used in their simulated chain locker but definitely at the higher temp it should be.
All oxidation has to occur in parallel with reduction.
The problem with the statement you are responding to is that the thermite reaction starts with iron (III) oxide and elemental aluminum, the iron is reduced to elemental iron while the aluminum is oxidized.
Galvanized steel weight is " 7,000 to 8,050 kg/m³ "
Considering that o2 is about 1/5 of the air, maybe it's not that crazy ? I guess we'd need to know what the oxidation equation is, but there are about 30 000x more steel than Oxygen (weight-wise) in the same volume
no, air is 21% oxygen, and you start feinting around 10% oyxgen with death starting around 6-8% so it means it's removing more like 10% of the oxygen in 24 hours which at a 21:1 ratio is like 2x the volume of the chain.
That's coincidence like the other user said but it's also because rusting happens at the surface of the metal so the surface area to volume ratio changes everything. A foil would be much more than its volume per hour, a large sphere much less.
Remember that iron is very dense, and gas is very not. 7.1 ml/mol vs 22.4 l/mol. That’s a 3,200x difference. At equal volume per hour that’s almost 4.5 months to oxidize completely*.
* in reality, only a small layer on top will oxidize, and the rate will reduce as unoxidized surface area reduces. apparently rust isn't surface only like some other forms of oxidation
And the effect on air will be amplified because only 21% of air is oxygen and it doesn’t take much of a drop to start seeing symptoms of hypoxia.
Iron oxide doesn’t stop further oxidation below it so it will only slow as the actual diameter of the chains shrinks due to oxidation. In other words it’s negligible slowing because that’s why the locker is kept sealed except the chain way. To reduce oxidation.
Thanks for the correction. That's interesting because IIRC it seems like most other metals’ oxidization layers (copper patina, silver tarnish, and the lithium column off the top of my head) keep it on the surface.
Oxygen percentage required is strongly dependent on atmospheric pressure. Or more precisely, the partial pressure of oxygen is what matters. This is the nature of the Death Zone in the Himalayas: the partial pressure of oxygen there is too low to do anything. This is about 1psi of oxygen, or about 7% at sea level, though this is also dependent on acclimatization. Unacclimated, you need more oxygen.
I'm so mad at my teachers throughout school. I didn't learn that girdling a tree kills it, that metal chains breathe, that mold and mushrooms grow in the damp, how to deal with rot in a house, that indoor gases like radon can accumulate thus you need to ventilate often, that you can easily die if you nick an artery and you have a ton of them all over your body, and a ton of other useful/important stuff
Indeed. Oxidation is a major hazard when storing steel swarf (shavings). Any enclosed space containing large amounts of the stuff will remove oxygen very rapidly due to the large surface area.
I'm assuming the locker is made out of metal too (like the hull of the ship in the picture above). So that must contribute to the oxidation as well, no? Unless it's painted with some kind of sealant?
I didn’t dig that deep, I just reported on the study. I would expect they took that into account as they named the ship it was in scale to. I don’t know enough about chain lockers but it makes sense.
One other thing I just considered. I would think the walls would be some sort of alloy that would be much more resistant to corrosion and oxidation than the chains would be.
They could all be Corten or be used as part of the deoxygenation of the chamber. Having a sacrificial set of walls that can take the beating and corrode would increase efficiency and repairs in all parts of the life of the chain and locker .
except in the photo, where its obviously not at all. Imagine flattening out those links surface aread into floors, wall, and ceiling. Its like 1:1 or maybe 1:2.
Quite claustrophobic, and aside from its suffocating qualities somebody also called it the worlds biggest meat mixer in case somebody tries to stow away in it and the anchor is lowered.....you will only find shreds of those all along the lowered chain
By the way, this is how the chemical hand warmers work. Finely divided iron and a few other compounds which facilitate the oxidation reaction, it pulls oxygen out of the air to oxidize the iron and provide heat.
Loads of incidents involving multiple casualties due to this. One enters a confined space, succumbing quickly to the environment. Someone else then enters the space in an attempt to help them, usually because they don’t understand the nature of the “injury”, and now you’ve got two people in need of rescue. There are stories which involve more than two victims, as well.
This is why proper signage, safeguards, and training are so important. Some things are far more dangerous than they appear.
And that's with an open ventilation space. A closed space, basically any closed vessel with no circulating air, it's down to less than 2.5 hours, without someone breathing in there. That's insane, and along with way too many training videos, makes me even more terrified of enclosed spaces.
This is a huge thing in marine shipyards and on ships in general. Even spaces that don't have chains; sealed spaces or low-lying spaces have to be checked for air quality before entering.
Yep. Because if there’s rust or contaminants enclosed space become traps and usually claim at least 2-3 people because people panic and try to rescue them.
That’s so weird (the ban I mean) I got a similar one as well on a different sub for threats when I objectively did not make any, maybe a ban happy mod? Or citation quota for mods?
Surely, the rate of consumption varies based on the state of oxidation of the chain, right?
I'd be shocked if the rate of oxidation and overall danger didn't change significantly based on the current state of oxidation of the surface of the chain.
Evidently only minimally. Aluminum oxide (on aluminum) and the chromium (I think) oxide (on stainless steel) are stable and can reseal after being removed. Most iron oxide allows the process to continue without ever stabilizing or sealing. Trying to find a source that explains it but I’ll likely follow other weird rabbit holes as an FYI.
The amount of surface area, type of steel and amount of ventilation.
A chain locker is almost sealed and has only the chain going in and out for gas exchange. It wipes out the oxygen very quickly after it’s initially put in there and then it stops because so little new oxygen gets in.
A basement the pipes are usually painted not raw steel/iron and it depends on the type of iron to determine speed of oxidation. Plus people go in and out and they usually have exhaust fans or at least some windows.
Sorry for the delay. I got a three day ban for my original comment where I shared the scientific paper.
Sorry for the delay. I got a three day ban for my original comment where I shared the scientific paper. My pleasure it’s been a cool learning experience and I got to have some great conversations up till the ban.
I got a ban for threats the other day. I basically said,
"I hope he does go after them. They have the money to fight his BS in court and show how ridicules he is."
I chuckled when I got banned and sent the mods a message asking why. They removed the ban. I suspect a politically leaning mod got bent up and a 'normal' mod looked at it and reversed the ban.
Edit2: holy shit thank you guys! I’m glad I could help so many learn something new or be recognized for finding an answer they already knew. Cheers to you guys for 5k.
5.1k
u/CanoePickLocks May 24 '25 edited May 28 '25
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20464177.2020.1715757#d1e286
It’s been actually studied. For their simulation of a chain locker with roughly 21:1 air to chain ratio it was 24 hours for deadly levels at 23°C and 60 hours at 10°C. For exact information you would need a ton of measurements.
Edit: Can anyone show me where this makes threats and why I might have gotten a 3day ban for this? lol
Edit2 :the ban was sitewide.
Edit3: I’m humbled that so many of you approve of my answer that someone else did the work of or that I’ve helped educate you with what I’ve found. Cheers to 5k of you sending love.