Move follows Alabama’s recent killing of death row inmate Kenneth Smith using previously untested method
Three of the largest manufacturers of medical-grade nitrogen gas in the US have barred their products from being used in executions, following Alabama’s recent killing of the death row inmate Kenneth Smith using a previously untested method known as nitrogen hypoxia.
The three companies have confirmed to the Guardian that they have put in place mechanisms that will prevent their nitrogen cylinders falling into the hands of departments of correction in death penalty states. The move by the trio marks the first signs of corporate action to stop medical nitrogen, which is designed to preserve life, being used for the exact opposite – killing people.
The green shoots of a corporate blockade for nitrogen echoes the almost total boycott that is now in place for medical drugs used in lethal injections. That boycott has made it so difficult for death penalty states to procure drugs such as pentobarbital and midazolam that a growing number are turning to nitrogen as an alternative killing technique.
Now, nitrogen producers are engaging in their own efforts to prevent the abuse of their products. The march has been led by Airgas, which is owned by the French multinational Air Liquide.
I take it you failed aviation physiology class?
I didn’t. Then I earned a flight instructor certificate and taught it for a few years. And I’ve flown unpressurized airplanes to their service ceilings. Lemme tell ya: Hypoxia is some serious shit.
The brain needs oxygen to live. No oxygen, brain die. I wonder how much adrenaline was in the systems of all them cave divers who ran out of air over the years.
Done correctly, the condemned won’t live long enough for hyperventilation to be a factor. But go ahead and try; it’ll only kill you faster.
Harken back to 9th grade health class and recall that mammalian lungs function by diffusion. Oxygen enters your blood only because chemicals want to pass from areas of relatively high concentration to relatively low concentration. Blood that has entered the lungs from the body doesn’t have much oxygen in it; some but less than fresh air. So oxygen flows in, and CO2 flows out. The reason putting your head in a bag sucks so much is because CO2 quickly builds up in the bag, and then it stops flowing out of your blood. Your body has the ability to feel too much CO2, and that sensation sucks a lot. If you’re in a big room full of nothing but nitrogen, your body can get rid of the CO2, and it will actually get rid of oxygen too. The blood in your veins, returning from your body to your lungs, that doesn’t have much oxygen in it, does have some. And if the air in your lungs has absolutely no oxygen in it, that “some” oxygen in your blood will diffuse out.
In normal air, hyperventilation sucks because you actually remove too much CO2 and that messes with your body’s natural ability to regulate your breathing. But, it doesn’t take many lungfuls of zero oxygen air before you lose consciousness.
That feeling of panic you get when holding your breath, or breathing with your head in a bag, where you’re breathing in your own old breath, and it hurts and sucks? That feeling happens because there’s too much CO2. In a low oxygen environment with plenty of air for you to exhale in, that doesn’t happen. You just get a little dizzy, you get a little lightheaded, you fall over and just fucking die before you realize what the problem is. Happens to sailors sometimes; there are compartments of big steel ships that are usually sealed, the walls use up all the oxygen in there by rusting, then a sailor has to go in there to maintain something. They open a door, climb in, take a few steps, and fall over and just fucking die.
That’s how you would describe it if you were his buddy at the door watching him. “He was fine, then he fell over and just fucking died.” Because the air around your face outside the door is safe to breathe, the air 6 feet away on the other side of the door killed your friend in less than a minute and it’ll kill you too if you try to climb in and help him.
And the scariest thing is it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t smell, it doesn’t taste, it doesn’t feel. It breathes like normal air because normal air is mostly nitrogen. We breathe it all the time; most of the gas in your lungs right now is nitrogen.
And Commander Adama might set his light saber to warp drive. Have you considered that?
List of the human body’s “known 02 sources:”
That’s it. Your body doesn’t have any spare oxygen saved up in your bones or whatever. No oxygen go in mouth and nose, no oxygen go in blood, no oxygen go in brain, brain die.
The heart can pump all it wants, if the heart pumps blood with no oxygen to the brain, the brain dies. That’s the fundamental principle we’re working with here.
I had to go through fairly extensive training so that I didn’t kill myself and several other people this way by accident, yet Alabama couldn’t manage it properly on purpose.