From: FJORDING@aol.com
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 17:17:54 EDT
Subject: Re: Breathing Helium - this needs reading.
To: balloon@balloonhq.com

 Helium IS helium, there is no different "compound." As to your poor pay, I 
can't help what they pay nurses in the UK. The fact remains, despite your 
ignorance, that helium does not interact with your vocal chords, as you say, 
because "relaxing" them would lower the pitch and your voice. Listen to 
divers breathing theses mixes, and their voices are high, for the duration, 
of the dive, not after. Helium does not react in the blood, it is inert. If 
it did, it would not be useful as a diving mix. The sole reason for not 
breathing it, unless you consider opooing a lung trying to inhale it from the 
tilt-valve, remains oxygen deprivation. It happens faster with a breathful of 
helium than it does if you simply hold your breath because you are starting 
out with NO oxygen in the lungs. If you just hold your breath, there is that 
one lungful of oxygen to use up before deprivation begins. Oh, and in a 
helium mix environment, divers feel colder, because it conducts heat faster 
than air and body heat is carried away faster.