Quote:
Are you sure that it was CO2 (carbon dioxide)? Combustion engines produce CO (carbon monoxide), which will cause confusion, drowsiness, and headaches before it knocks you out. Elevated CO2 blood levels cause hypercapnia, leading to panic and hyperventilation:
http://www.answers.com/topic/hypercapnia
If you aren't breathing, the CO2 fraction in your blood increases, leading to hypercapnia, which causes the panicky "suffocation" feeling. This is why free divers often hyperventilate before diving, to flush the blood of CO2 and allow them to stay down longer before the CO2 build-up sends them to the surface:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-diving#Training
edit: one of my friends lived in an apartment that had a furnace with a cracked heat exchanger; she complained of the same symptoms you mentioned before it was repaired. The gas in that case was CO (carbon monoxide).
Could be, but it seems that the reports showed elevated CO2 levels in the blood, it has been 30 years. But I can tell you from experience from diving that that when you inhale water in place of air it causes panic, not pain. Anybody who has dived without the use of tanks, has experienced it. Tests have been done on animals that have been euthanize by use of CO2 and the common factors of panic are not present in the blood or tissue with CO2 used properly as a agent to dispense them. It is also common for the SPCA to use gas chambers with CO2.
You would have had elevated CO levels in the blood; the hemoglobin in your RBC will attach to CO molecules more readily than O2 and they (CO) are more difficult to remove from your system (how the docs get their readings from you blood). Once the hemoglobin picks up a molecule of either O2 or CO, it is programed to pick up only that type of molecule (there are 4 places on the hemoglobin for O2).
You are lucky to still be with us!
Are you sure that it was CO2 (carbon dioxide)? Combustion engines produce CO (carbon monoxide), which will cause confusion, drowsiness, and headaches before it knocks you out. Elevated CO2 blood levels cause hypercapnia, leading to panic and hyperventilation:
http://www.answers.com/topic/hypercapnia
If you aren't breathing, the CO2 fraction in your blood increases, leading to hypercapnia, which causes the panicky "suffocation" feeling. This is why free divers often hyperventilate before diving, to flush the blood of CO2 and allow them to stay down longer before the CO2 build-up sends them to the surface:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-diving#Training
edit: one of my friends lived in an apartment that had a furnace with a cracked heat exchanger; she complained of the same symptoms you mentioned before it was repaired. The gas in that case was CO (carbon monoxide).
Could be, but it seems that the reports showed elevated CO2 levels in the blood, it has been 30 years. But I can tell you from experience from diving that that when you inhale water in place of air it causes panic, not pain. Anybody who has dived without the use of tanks, has experienced it. Tests have been done on animals that have been euthanize by use of CO2 and the common factors of panic are not present in the blood or tissue with CO2 used properly as a agent to dispense them. It is also common for the SPCA to use gas chambers with CO2.
You would have had elevated CO levels in the blood; the hemoglobin in your RBC will attach to CO molecules more readily than O2 and they (CO) are more difficult to remove from your system (how the docs get their readings from you blood). Once the hemoglobin picks up a molecule of either O2 or CO, it is programed to pick up only that type of molecule (there are 4 places on the hemoglobin for O2).
You are lucky to still be with us!
