Nitrogen asphyxiation
Encyclopedia
Nitrogen asphyxiation is an occasional cause of accidental death and a theoretical method of capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...

 advocated in a National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

article, "Killing with kindness – capital punishment by nitrogen asphyxiation" (Creque 1995). The painful experience of suffocation
Suffocation
Suffocation is the process of Asphyxia.Suffocation may also refer to:* Suffocation , an American death metal band* "Suffocation", a song on Morbid Angel's debut album, Altars of Madness...

 is not caused by lack of oxygen
Oxygen
Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...

, but rather because of a buildup of carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

 in the bloodstream which is exhaled under normal circumstances.

When humans breathe in pure nitrogen
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...

, they exhale carbon dioxide without resupplying oxygen. Nitrogen is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas that constitutes approximately 78 percent of the Earth's atmosphere. As such, the subject would detect no abnormal sensation. This leads to asphyxiation without the painful and traumatic feeling of suffocation. Because of this property, nitrogen in Hebrew is called חנקן ("asphyxiator"),in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 is called "Stickstoff", in Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

 "stikstof", ("suffocation matter") - the Scandinavian languages call it "kväve", "kvælstof" and "kvelstoff" from "kväva/kvele/kvæle" ("to asphyxiate"), in Russian "азот" ("not life-friendly"), in Serbian "азот" ("not life-friendly"), in Croatian "dušik" (from the now archaic word "dušiti", meaning "to asphyxiate"), in Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 窒素 ("asphyxiation element").

For this reason, accidental nitrogen asphyxiation is a possible hazard where large quantities of nitrogen are used. Also, deliberate nitrogen asphyxiation is viewed by some as a more humane way to end a human life in a controlled setting. As the principal component in air, nitrogen poses no significant risk upon discharge.

As an execution method

Although execution by nitrogen asphyxia
Asphyxia
Asphyxia or asphyxiation is a condition of severely deficient supply of oxygen to the body that arises from being unable to breathe normally. An example of asphyxia is choking. Asphyxia causes generalized hypoxia, which primarily affects the tissues and organs...

tion was discussed briefly in print in 1995 (Creque), it is not used by any nation.

In a televised documentary in 2007, the UK political commentator (and former Member of Parliament United Kingdom), Michael Portillo
Michael Portillo
Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo is a British journalist, broadcaster, and former Conservative Party politician and Cabinet Minister...

 examined execution techniques in use around the world and found them unsatisfactory; his conclusion was that nitrogen asphyxiation would be the best method.

Accidental deaths

Accidental nitrogen asphyxiation causes about 8 deaths per year in the United States, which is asserted to be more than from any other industrial gas. For example in 1981, shortly before the launch of the first Space Shuttle mission
STS-1
STS-1 was the first orbital flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program. Space Shuttle Columbia launched on 12 April 1981, and returned to Earth on 14 April, having orbited the Earth 37 times during the 54.5-hour mission. It was the first American manned space flight since the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project...

, two technicians lost consciousness and one of them died after they entered the Orbiter aft compartment which was pressurized with pure nitrogen as a precaution against fire.

A laboratory assistant died in Scotland in 1999, apparently from asphyxiation, after liquid nitrogen
Liquid nitrogen
Liquid nitrogen is nitrogen in a liquid state at a very low temperature. It is produced industrially by fractional distillation of liquid air. Liquid nitrogen is a colourless clear liquid with density of 0.807 g/mL at its boiling point and a dielectric constant of 1.4...

 spilled in a basement storage room.

Physiology

A typical human breathes between 12 and 20 times per minute at a rate primarily influenced by carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

 concentration, and thus pH
PH
In chemistry, pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. Pure water is said to be neutral, with a pH close to 7.0 at . Solutions with a pH less than 7 are said to be acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are basic or alkaline...

, in the blood
Blood
Blood is a specialized bodily fluid in animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells....

. With each breath, a volume of about 0.6 liters is exchanged from an active lung volume
Lung volumes
Lung volumes and lung capacities refer to the volume of air associated with different phases of the respiratory cycle. Lung volumes are directly measured...

 (tidal volume + functional residual capacity) of about 3 liters. Normal Earth atmosphere is about 78 percent nitrogen
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...

, 21 percent oxygen
Oxygen
Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...

, and 1 percent argon
Argon
Argon is a chemical element represented by the symbol Ar. Argon has atomic number 18 and is the third element in group 18 of the periodic table . Argon is the third most common gas in the Earth's atmosphere, at 0.93%, making it more common than carbon dioxide...

, carbon dioxide, and other gases. After just two or three breaths of nitrogen, the oxygen concentration in the lungs would be low enough for some oxygen already in the bloodstream to exchange back to the lungs and be eliminated by exhalation. Crude simulation of oxygen transport through the lungs and blood stream suggests that the partial pressure of oxygen in arterial blood would be about 50 percent of saturation 1 minute after switching gases and would reach zero within 3 minutes.

Unconsciousness
Unconsciousness
Unconsciousness is the condition of being not conscious—in a mental state that involves complete or near-complete lack of responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli. Being in a comatose state or coma is a type of unconsciousness. Fainting due to a drop in blood pressure and a...

 in cases of accidental asphyxia can occur within 1 minute. Loss of consciousness results from critical hypoxia, when arterial oxygen saturation is less than 60% (Fisher n.d.). “At oxygen concentrations [in air] of 4 to 6%, there is loss of consciousness in 40 seconds and death within a few minutes” (DiMaio & DiMaio 2001:231). As this procedure provides an atmosphere completely devoid of oxygen, the sequence of effects should be expected to occur even more quickly. At an altitude greater than 43,000 ft (13,000 m), where the ambient oxygen concentration is equivalent to 3.6% at sea level, an average individual is able to perform flying duties efficiently for only 9 to 12 seconds without oxygen supplementation (Fisher n.d.). The US Air Force trains air crews to recognize their individual subjective signs of approaching hypoxia. Some individuals experience headache, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, or euphoria, but some become unconscious without warning (Fisher n.d.). Equivalent training is unlikely for a condemned individual, making unconsciousness without warning probable, although as much as a 30 second warning is possible.

Loss of consciousness may be accompanied by convulsions (Fisher n.d.) and is followed by cyanosis
Cyanosis
Cyanosis is the appearance of a blue or purple coloration of the skin or mucous membranes due to the tissues near the skin surface being low on oxygen. The onset of cyanosis is 2.5 g/dL of deoxyhemoglobin. The bluish color is more readily apparent in those with high hemoglobin counts than it is...

 and cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest, is the cessation of normal circulation of the blood due to failure of the heart to contract effectively...

. About 7 minutes of oxygen deprivation causes death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....

 of the cerebral cortex
Cerebral cortex
The cerebral cortex is a sheet of neural tissue that is outermost to the cerebrum of the mammalian brain. It plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. It is constituted of up to six horizontal layers, each of which has a different...

 and presumably the medulla oblongata
Medulla oblongata
The medulla oblongata is the lower half of the brainstem. In discussions of neurology and similar contexts where no ambiguity will result, it is often referred to as simply the medulla...

, which controls breathing and heart action.

See also

  • Air hunger
  • Asphyxiant gas
    Asphyxiant gas
    An asphyxiant gas is a non-toxic or minimally toxic gas which reduces or diplaces the normal oxygen concentration in breathing air. Prolonged breathing of oxygen depleted air can lead to death by asphyxiation...

  • Capital punishment
    Capital punishment
    Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...

  • Capital punishment debate
    Capital punishment debate
    The use of capital punishment, frequently known as the death penalty, is highly controversial.-Retribution:Supporters of the death penalty argued that death penalty is morally justified when applied in murder especially with aggravating elements such as multiple homicide, child murder, torture...

  • Positional asphyxia
    Positional asphyxia
    Positional asphyxia, also known as postural asphyxia, is a form of asphyxia which occurs when someone's position prevents them from breathing adequately. A small but significant number of people die suddenly and without apparent reason during restraint by police, prison officers and health care...


External links

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