Wikibooks: Planet Earth/4c. Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.
=Mysterious Deaths= Her body was found when the vault was opened. Ester Penn lay inside the large locked bank vault at the Depository Trust Building on 55 Water Street in Lower Manhattan New York. Security cameras revealed that no one had entered or left the bank vault after 9pm. Her body showed no...
| Format: | Book |
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| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Planet_Earth/4c._Carbon_Dioxide_in_the_Atmosphere. |
| Summary: | =Mysterious Deaths= Her body was found when the vault was opened. Ester Penn lay inside the large locked bank vault at the Depository Trust Building on 55 Water Street in Lower Manhattan New York. Security cameras revealed that no one had entered or left the bank vault after 9pm. Her body showed no signs of trauma no forced entry was made into the vault and nothing was missing. Ester Penn was a healthy 35 year old single mother of two who was about to move into a new apartment in Brooklyn that overlooked the Manhattan skyline. Now she was dead. On August 21 1986 the small West Africa villages near became a ghastly scene of death when every creature including 1 746 people within the villages died suddenly in the night. The soundless morning brought no sounds of insects no cries of roosters nor children playing in the streets. . Each mysterious death has been attributed to carbon dioxide toxicity. The human body can tolerate levels up to 5 000 ppm or 0.5% carbon dioxide but levels above 3 to 4% can be fatal. A medical condition called hypercapnia occurs when the lungs are filled with elevated carbon dioxide which causes respiratory acidosis. Normally the body is able to expel carbon dioxide produced during metabolism through the lungs but if there is too much carbon dioxide in the air the blood will become enriched in carbonic acid ( nowrap CO 2 + H 2 O → H 2 CO 3 ) resulting in partial pressures of carbon dioxide above 45 mmHg. For the villagers around Lake Nyos carbon dioxide was suddenly released from the lake where volcanic gasses had enriched the waters with the gas while in the case of Ms. Penn she released the carbon dioxide when she pulled a fire alarm from within the vault which trigger a spray of carbon dioxide as a fire suppressant. https //www.nytimes.com/2000/07/29/nyregion/woman dies of suffocation after locking herself in a vault.html Divers submarine operators and astronauts all worry about the effects of too much carbon dioxide in the air they breathe. No more dramatic episode in carbon dioxide ... |
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