Man injured when his oxygen tank explodes, after he pounded on it with a hammer

If we had a large enough population, I truly think we could give Florida Man a run for his money. I guess we should count our blessings, then?

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Probably a much larger tank but there’s still a massive amount of energy in these things

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I first imagined you had too many zeroes but I just checked and those medical oxygen tanks run to 2000 psi and scuba tanks to sometimes 3000 psi. I never imagined the pressure to be that high.
What I don’t understand is the burns. That oxygen doesn’t burn by itself - was he smoking a cigarette? Even if the hammer had created a spark would that actually explode?

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When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

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This is an obviously stupid situation, but the reality is that I never see pressurized vessels secured properly. I see trucks barreling down the highway with bottles just loosely jammed in with other debris and had never even seen a storage cage until I bought one for my workplace (which the crew subsequently ignored after having to move it once). Hell, I just took the kids to the dentist recently and not one of the nitrous or oxygen tanks had hoods on them (though they were thankfully in what looked like a proper stand setup).

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I can hardly believe the Advanced Care Medical Equipment company did not know what they were doing when they adopted that name. :wink:

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When the plan doesn’t come together.

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An alarmingly high number of SCUBA instructors I’ve talked to have a cylinder-becomes-a-rocket mishap story.

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The skinny green O2 cylinders that medical patients wheel around are usually steel, and are general pressed to 1200 psi.

The fatter backpack firefighters’ SCBA tanks use compressed air, not pure O2, and are usually carbon-fiber composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs). Pressure varies by model – 150, 300, or 380 bar (2216, 4500, or 5500 psi, respectively) variants are common.

(As for burns, i dunno, but rapidly expanding gas can cause flash-freezing of skin surfaces, and the resulting injuries are very like burns.)

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When your only tool is a hammer…

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When the guy is only a tool with a hammer…

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Those tanks were full of compressed air, not pure oxygen.

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Hey, are you by any chance in Portland OR? I’m trying to find a dentist here who will give me NO2 for the painful scaling of my teeth plaque – after the retirement of my periodontist who offered it.

Yes, I am a sort of drug seeker! Maybe when I cold call periodontists with this one question, they lie to me?

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Absolutely. My vet school had pics of the hole in a cinder block wall where someone stupidly dropped a similarly sized small backup tank for an anesthetic machine. Kind of like the Mythbusters episode, but smaller, and I imagine a bit faster with less mass/inertia to deal with.

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No, the Hudson Valley. And the kids’ dentist now charge $20 for the gas. Just do some whippets in the parking lot. :man_shrugging:t2:

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Given the times we live in, I wonder what his Youtube channel is.

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What a maroon.

Here’s a little something for people who like to see things go whoosh under pressure:

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