NITROUS OXIDE ( nos / n2o ) advice forum

So the inevitable happened, i let my misses loose with nitrous 6 months ago and shes gone and hurt herself.

Opened the bottle with the supply line not tightened up enough resulting in a FULL bottle at 950psi spraying onto her bare finger

A few tears later and all was fine, took 8 hours or so for the feeling to come back in her hand though.

Just a quick warning to people who dont show enough respect whilst handling nitrous, it bites!

Ouch, what did you do for First Aid?

I took a guess at immersing in warm/tepid water.
Just confirmed that is the correct procedure.
Worth knowing for future reference.

Im pretty sure she learned her lesson lol, for first aid we wet a clean rag with cold water and wrapped it round the finger.

That n2o stuff is cold lol!

You're NOT supposed to use cold water, that's for heat burns.
Freeze burns, you use warm/tepid water.
Worth remembering for everyone, if it happens again

Hope she recovers soon

That's very unfortunate and I know EXACTLY how that feels (x100), so I feel for her but luckily a freeze burn is certainly less painful than a heat burn, so make sure she stays away from hot exhaust pipes.

Richard are you sure about the first aid, personally I spit on my burns IMMEDIATELY and then treat with normal burn cream.

Yes Trev, As company First Aider and St Johns Ambulance trained, I keep upto date on these things.

As soon as possible immerse the part of the body exposed to the
cryogenic material in a bath or basin containing tepid water at a
temperature of 42-45ºC (the water temperature should be a little
warmer than body temperature). It is better to err on the side of
cooler water rather than too warm. Never use dry radiant heat which
will superimpose a burn upon the frozen tissues.This can occur
because blood is not flowing through the frozen part and the
capability of conducting heat away from the warmed part does not
exist.The intention is to allow slow warmth to penetrate from
the outside.

Hi

Whenever I show someone how to fill and use Nitrous botttles I ALWAYS teach them to wear gloves like the Snap-On ones I use...and I mean always...




Like these..as we have all got burned from Nitrous and once is enough...


All the best Brett

She was lucky Ben!!

Thats a nice tidy freeze burn. No broken skin!. As Richard says. The normal procedure is to immerse the burn area in warm water which is just above normal body temp so you can raise the tissue temperature back to normal asap. For gods sake dont pop the blisters. that can cause infection if you pop them and pull the skin off. They will either subside or burst when they want to as the skin dries. But ideally she should have loose plasters over those blisters with some of that gooey sterile gauze to keep the skin moist for a few days. Then the body will do its own thing and fix the problem. After about 7 days she may well see the blisters shrinking and getting ready to shed skin.

I've seen this many times in the last 32 years of working with refrigerants. And I have actually lost a friend / workmate when an ammonia fridge line let go at an ice cream factory.
The poor bugger got it full in the chest and face for about 10 seconds. It was not a pretty sight I can tell you.

But the good thing is that she will now have more respect when she tinkers.

Hopefully the good lady will have no scars and will look back on this with a new perspective of how to work with nitrous.

Hope she is ok mate.
regards
Perry

Hi Richard,

I guessed you might know more about that than I do.

That statement should tell you a lot about how SAFE my systems are, because there can be NOBODY in the world who has handled more nitrous than I have in a relatively high risk situation and yet I can count on one hand the number of burns I've experienced and those I've had reported to me in 35 years.

I've had 2 relatively major burns (much worse than this customers current burn) and both healed without a scar, so I'm confident she'll heal OK.

Its worth noting for everyones attention that this was due to human error and NOT a failing WON product.

Simple case that supply line was done up finger tight the night before when she didnt have a spanner handy and forgot to do it the day after

It happens and just for the record I've never used gloves and nor do my team but I certainly agree with Brett, that everyone should do that.

If the suppliers equipment is good then all casualties are always down to USER ERROR Ben
User error is the main cause of most "incidents"

Just like when we skin our knuckles or stick a screwdriver or spike through our fingers when trying to poke out a blockage of some sort through a fitting. In time we all learn to relate our previous injuries in a certain situation and then rely on our powers of memory recall to provide us with the ultimate knowledge...... That knowledge allows us to view a certain situation where we all say to ourselves that this will result in injury if we dont ????
how many times have you watched "You've been framed" and predictied the result of the video clip ??

Thats because they are all staged to earn a few cheeky bob lol.