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Comment by cowkingdeluxe | Hacker News Reader

The articles you linked are older (24th & 25th) than the article from the headline ( January 27, 2017 2:15 PM ).

Further investigation and toxicology reports revealed carbon monoxide (fixed) poisoning. It appears the initial statements ruling out carbon monoxide poisoning were in error.

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CO or CO2? Both are possible, CO2 poisoning is quite horrible though, whereas CO poisoning may go unnoticed.

Yeah really -- I can't imagine you could die of CO2 poisoning without noticing in time to GTFO. I've sucked a lungful of CO2 and it was awful.

There is a difference between high and low concentrations of CO2 and reactions. In high concentrations you get similar effect to lack of oxygen (as it completely replaces oxygen in the air), in low concentrations it prevents the HbCO2 from unbinding (only 7% of CO2 in air is enough to do that IIRC) and causes silent death. There are stories of miners sitting down for a lunch and never standing up again because of that.

CO2 poisoning is insidious, and can go unrecognised, due to its cognitive effects. It's a known risk in using rebreathers when scuba diving.

The UK HSE has published a video of a real-life incident where someone experiences CO2 toxicity from a rebreather (the victim survived and recovered) [1].

[1] http://www.hse.gov.uk/diving/video/co2video.htm

Carbon monoxide is "CO". CO2 is carbon _di_oxide.

Would a laser cutter cause CO2 poisoning?

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