Quote:
Originally Posted by cyberia
Quote:
Originally Posted by McCoy
Quote:
Originally Posted by cyberia
An unspecified number of air crewmen died in World War II from complications due to extreme gastric pressure. Altitudes up to and beyond 20,000 ft. in unpressurized aircraft causes intestinal gas to expand 300%.
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Ouch! What a painful death that must be. |
I wonder about the validity of some of these things. Jim's a doctor, maybe he can shed some light on this claim? |
I doubt it. Note that the number was "unspecified". Think about it this way. When a diver goes down and adjusts to deep water pressures that are extremely high, so should the gas in his gut. When he comes up too fast he can get decompression sickness, known as "the bends". At higher pressure more gas can be dissolved in a liquid than at lower pressures and so in decompression sickness oxygen and (mostly) nitrogen bubble out of the blood and into tissue and vessels causing muscle pain and other symtoms. Gas is not known to rupture the gut in decompression sickness (though rupture can occur from high pressures during a dive if it is trapped in a "pocket", this is rare). The gut is an open tube and the gas generally expands and the person passes gas from above or below if needed.
Going from sea level to 30,000 feet involves significant decrease in pressure but not even close to the order of magnitude of coming up to sea level from a deep dive. At 10 meters under water, the pressure on the body is already twice that of air at sea level, three times at 20 meters, four times at 30 meters, etc. At 30,000 feet it is roughly one-third of atmospheric pressure. That's why air crews on these unpressurized planes did not get decompression sickness even with rapid climbs. The change was not that great, from a physiological point of view.