Dry ice - carbon dioxide

Peter Creasey

Peter Creasey
Dry ice can be a very serious hazard in a small space that isn't well-ventilated. As dry ice melts, it turns into carbon dioxide gas. In a small space, this gas can build up. If enough carbon dioxide gas is present, a person can become unconscious, and in some cases, die.

This in fact happened to a couple here in town. For some reason (???), they had dry ice in their wine cellar. It had melted. They were in their wine cellar and died from the carbon dioxide gas.

. . . . . Pete
 
One minor point of pedantry: dry ice doesn’t melt; it sublimes (direct transition from solid to gas). You can get liquid CO2, but only under high pressure conditions, where it becomes a supercritical fluid. As esoteric as that sounds, supercritical CO2 is used to decaffeinate coffee beans (the so-called “Swiss water” process).
 
About 35-40 years ago a vigneron in Volnay died while he was treading on the grapes in a vat to crush them because the released CO2 overwhelmed him.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
About 35-40 years ago a vigneron in Volnay died while he was treading on the grapes in a vat to crush them because the released CO2 overwhelmed him.

A second minor point: there is no CO2 before fermentation starts.
 
originally posted by mark e:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
About 35-40 years ago a vigneron in Volnay died while he was treading on the grapes in a vat to crush them because the released CO2 overwhelmed him.

A second minor point: there is no CO2 before fermentation starts.
My sloppiness. It was during pigeage.
 
a vigneron friend told about during wine school (in burgundy) when they'd be up late (mainly playing cards) going thru grape stomping, the person doing the pigeage had to sing while in the vat, and if the singing stopped they'd know to go rescue the stomper.
 
originally posted by robert ames:
a vigneron friend told about during wine school (in burgundy) when they'd be up late (mainly playing cards) going thru grape stomping, the person doing the pigeage had to sing while in the vat, and if the singing stopped they'd know to go rescue the stomper.
At the winery I worked in Sonoma, anyone who did punch downs on tanks had to be fitted with a harness and have another intern standing by to haul them out should they fall in. ‘Seemed like every year an intern would die from falling into a tank somewhere in wine country. Lack of O2 will kill you quick.
 
You know the one about my uncle? The one who died in a vat of whiskey? A real tragedy. It would have been much faster if he hadn't gotten out four times to go to the bathroom.
 
When I visited the Franconian Brewing Museum in Bamberg, there was a section devoted to recognizing the brewers who had succumbed to CO2 in the fermentation cellars and vats. We have a pretty reliable CO2 monitoring setup in our production facility.

FWIW, a historic source of Disorderly amusement seems to have become totally unusable. The formerly interesting and useful MMWR appears to have drifted (been steered?) into a lifeless blob. I used to be able to find reports of winery CO2 deaths there. Now "winery" auto corrects to "Winter." The results are meaningless.
 
originally posted by Ken Schramm:
When I visited the Franconian Brewing Museum in Bamberg, there was a section devoted to recognizing the brewers who had succumbed to CO2 in the fermentation cellars and vats. We have a pretty reliable CO2 monitoring setup in our production facility.

FWIW, a historic source of Disorderly amusement seems to have become totally unusable. The formerly interesting and useful MMWR appears to have drifted (been steered?) into a lifeless blob. I used to be able to find reports of winery CO2 deaths there. Now "winery" auto corrects to "Winter." The results are meaningless.

If you use "Advanced Search" and "This exact word or phrase" you can find stuff like this:
Introduced Autochthonous Vivax Malaria -- California, 1980-1981
Two cases of locally introduced Plasmodium vivax malaria have recently been reported from the Central Valley of California. The case histories are described below.

Case 1. On August 20, 1980, a 55-year-old truck driver left his home in San Bernardino County to haul grapes from vineyards to wineries in the Central Valley of California.
 
Well...

MMWR_screenshot.jpg
Tried it all the way back to 1950. Nada.
 
took a summer job in college with a delivery service, sending me on random runs as wild as driving an envelope from new jersey to boston asap, without asking what's in it.
one day i show up for a pick-up at the famed S&S Cheesecake on 238th in the Bronx (hey you could walk there from Don Rice's place come to think of it), which incidentally is the best cheesecake in new york i've ever tasted. Like I am 99 points on that. It's basically a factory behind big scary metal doors that you have to knock on loudly, followed by a growling "what do you want?!", akin to Joe Dressner's greeting when you'd call up his office wondering when Desvignes would finally release the current vintage. "I want a cheesecake and I have cash!" is advisable at that point.
on this first occasion however i had never heard of them which in itself impressed my counterpart, compelling him to give me a sample.
just as I was leaving for an atlantic city hotel with my jeep filled with cheesecake boxes, the guy casually mentions that i may want to drive with windows rolled down since he had filled the car with dry ice as well
 
Great story, Tovarisch. Beats to hell my summer job delivering pizzas for Leaning Tower of Pizza in Berkeley. Our most regular customers were the working girls at the “massage parlors” on University Ave. Fay at Viking Massage was a particularly unpleasant piece of work, verbally abusive and never tipped, but some modicum of sympathy kept me civil at all times.

Aah, the memories
Mark Lipton
 
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