My trade instructor at work told us that welding oxygen is even more pure than medical grade oxy.
A quick googling and it appears that "medical" grade oxy is only 93% pure O2, and gets run through a humidifier to moisturize it. After all, the normal air we breathe is only 21% or so.
As I understand it, the only real difference when buying different grades of Oxygen is the insurance liability, not the purity of product, since both come from the same bulk liquid O2 tank.
Many have commented so far. let me add my 2 cents.
The O2 in a welding tank is the same as the O2 in a medical bottle. That is an established industry standard.
HOWEVER...
Medical O2 bottles are certified CLEAN, industrial bottles are NOT.
I teach at the Divers Institute of Technology in Seattle. A commercial diver training school.
We would NEVER use welding oxygen on a decompression chamber. We have 2 active chambers on campus. We use what are called APO bottles ( Aviator Provider Oxygen ) They look just like a large industrial oxygen cylinder, but are green instead of blue and are are clearly marked on the tank label as breathing oxygen. If an APO bottle is ever used for a cutting torch it can NEVER be used for medical oxygen again. That happened on campus last year. We had a cutting torch rigged up on the welding barge. I looked up at the peer and saw a green bottle hooked up to my torch and shut the whole operation down. We had to call Central welding immediately and have them haul away the tank to be decertified for medical use and restamped at the fill plant.
No joke.
I have used my cutting torch oxygen in the past to get over temporary breathing difficulties from excessive aluminum oxide dust, but I never breathed only the bottle oxygen. I fed it into my cupped hand to mix with air. Still makes me nervous not knowing who might have contaminated that bottle in the past.
What you refer to is a mythical hazard. Putting 2,000+ PSI of pure O2 on top of just about any contamination would be a serious hazard. If heard similar worries about rust in an O2 cylinder, rust won't make it past the inlet filter on the regulator and wouldn't harm you even if it did. You simply will not get any contamination in welding grade O2 that will harm you.
If you or a loved one are in medical distress, call 911 or the applicable emergency number in your area. Do not self-treat. Rely on competent medical help.
The symptoms outlined in this post are consistent with dangerous, communicable disease.
However, yes.
Twice over the last decade, I've recovered from excessive breathing difficulty caused by 'lung gunk', apparent by violent coughing and a 'crackly' noise when inhaling. "Lung Gunk" is fluid trapped in the lungs which gets progressively worse, can result in colored sputum but does not clear by itself.
I stumbled into the 'shop' and began breathing ~100% O2 from my oxygas rig for several minutes per session. After three sessions, I was breathing much more easily. The coughing stopped and I was able to return to bed. By morning almost all the fluid had been eliminated, the 'crackling' noise was much reduced and I was breathing normally. Two days later, I was free of symptoms.
It worked for me twice but "two anecdotes do not equal data", or medical advice.
YMMV.
--Winston
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You might get one of the devices described in the link, Winston. The FDA has finally approved this thing for sale in the US. I bought mine in Germany, and it seems to loosen up the "lung gunk". I'm afflicted with that anytime I've got a bad cold also. Big Time.
Putting LOX - liquid Oxygen that is - from a tanker - a pool across the blacktop highway or parking lot (delivery point) will detonate the carbon if you walk on it or drive on it.
Rather tricky stuff - freeze you then blow you up!
I'd tend to guess that the reason that the rule is so strict is because when the tank goes empty, there's a non-zero chance that something other than pharmaceutical oxygen might get into it.
I've spent some time sucking on an industrial tank of O2 when I got a serious case of asthma from the smoke from a lot of rosin flux in a fairly large solder pot (8x10" IIRC.)
It worked fine -- and I am still here about fourty years later.
2011 17:33:23 -0600 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:
Yes. There is nothing medical about oxygen in a tank marked "For Medical Use" - other than the Blessing of the Bureaucrats.
o2 is o2 - there aren't going to be any "contaminates" in the "Welding" oxygen, due to the ever so small detail hat Oxygen is an oxidizer, and will react vigorously with any other elements it comes in contact with. One of the reasons your are advised _not_ to grease or oil any of the fittings on your oxygen line - even the ones used just for welding.
Unusual, Ernie. From 1974 to 1980, we used welding oxygen offshore in the Gulf of Mexico for decompression. But then, the standards were looser then, and we were using antiquated Navy diving charts, and there was VERY little OSHA regulation. Oh, wait, OSHA does not apply past a few miles offshore. I found that out after being injured one time. And you have to be a documented seaman or assigned to a vessel before the Jones Act kicks in.
Loopholes, loopholes, loopholes.
We did a lot of things that were outside the envelope, and I believe many men paid the price later in their lives. I know I did.
About 1975, my friend found his two children passed out from CO poisoning. They had gotten under a blanket on top of a heater register in his rented trailer. We were just starting out after diving school, and worked for a diving company, and he couldn't afford a doctor or ER. They were unconscious and cyanotic. We took a short bottle of O2 and took the torch off. We forced the oxygen into them through our cupped hands, allowing for exhalation, and had the pressure about 5 psi. They started coming around and breathing on their own. We put the kids in the back seat of his car, and shot them over to the yard, and he got into a decompression chamber with them. I ran the three of them down to forty feet. They stayed in about half an hour, breathing O2 through the nasal masks. They came around, and their cyanosis disappeared.
Did we do anything wrong? Probably. Did we save their lives? You bet. Would we do it differently today? Maybe. I just know that at the time, we were running 90, and it seemed the best thing to do. We had just come off
16 weeks of divers training that dealt with emergency diving situations, CPR, the bends, central nervous hits, and hyperbaric scenarios.
Over the years, many divers went into our chambers in the yard who were recovering from various injuries, myself included. Healing is speeded up by hyperbaric exposure, and is used today for treating many afflictions, and whole wings of hospitals are hyperbaric.
But I recall someone got the FAA to admit in writing that there was no legal basis [i.e FARS] prohibiting use of "welding" O2 in aviation applications.
"Welding" O2 is drier than the Aviation spec, but I bet that is a max moisture spec, not minimum. [I.e. the av-grade is likely just as dry.]
Welding O2 used like this is often used to kill a morning headache caused by too much night before. Many mornings there would be a line-up at my rig. Seems to work best when repeated at regular and lengthening intervals. Does not take a lot to make a real (or at least perceived) difference. YMMV.
Medical O2 is not used for aviation breathing because it can contain moisture and freeze at altitude. Use of welding O2 to recharge private aviation tanks is very common, but of questionable legality depending on many levels of regulation and if certification is required.
I expect the real value of that tool is in obtaining a diagnostic sample rather than in clearing the lungs of fluid during a 'breathing emergency', in that the Japanese study showed that 20% of participants were not able to expel any sputum while using the device and best-case production was 5 ml.
The welding O2 purity standard is stricter than the medical (USP) or "Aviator" grades of O2, and by a notable amount. Impurities that will not hurt a person breathing the O2 will screw up a critical weld.
Welding O2 bottles get reused in an uncontrolled environment. You might possibly end up with a welding bottle of oxygen that was used in a lab and had something terrible backflowed into it before the last filling....
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