
LUTZ - The tomato red balloon with thick black letters advertising the Lakeview at Calusa Trace Luxury Apartments was designed to grab attention from great distances. About 8 feet in diameter, the plastic globe was big enough for two people to climb inside. Two people who did just that Friday night or early Saturday were found dead by an apartment complex manager, Hillsborough County sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said. Jason Ackerman and Sara Rydman, both 21, were underneath the partially deflated balloon at 18101 Culusa Trace Blvd., about 75 feet from Ackerman's vehicle and only blocks away from their homes. Property developer Jeff Ricketts said the advertising balloon was filled with helium the previous day and was flown about 100 feet in the air. It was secured by a rope tied to a fence near the entrance to the 240-apartment complex. The manager arrived between 8 and 9 a.m. to prepare for an open house. When he went to re-inflate the balloon, he saw feet sticking out from underneath, Ricketts said. Carter said there were no signs of foul play and no visible signs of alcohol or drug use at the scene. Toxicology results from the autopsies will not be available for a few weeks, she said. Efforts to reach Ackerman's family were unsuccessful. Rydman's mother said her daughter possibly thought it would be fun to breathe helium and talk funny; she likely had no idea how dangerous it was. The open house was canceled as apartment staff told residents and talked with investigators and reporters. "Our condolences go out to the parents and families of these children," Ricketts said. "It's a tragedy." Helium is not significantly toxic enough to cause death, but being in an oxygen-depleted environment is, said Cynthia Lewis-Younger, a physician and director of the Poison Information Center at Tampa General Hospital. "Unconsciousness can occur within a minute and a half or two minutes in an environment lacking sufficient oxygen," she said. "Death can set in after four to six minutes. ... It would have been fairly rapid." Helium does not give a drug-like high, she said. |

Helium does not give a drug-like high, she said. |
Originally Posted By capnrob97: Just Darwin thining out the herd... |
Originally Posted By C-4: Darwin award candidates or not, there will be a lawsuit, and there will be a large payout to the family. If these were a pair of 6 year-olds, the story would have an entirely different flavor. |

Originally Posted By npd233: I passed out on helium once after taking numerous breaths in a row from a balloon. Fell into a bunch of bushes and cut my arm. Came to immediately. It's kind of funny looking back on it, I sounded like Alvin the Chipmunk as I was cursing. |

Originally Posted By thebeekeeper1:
Most six y/o children have better sense than to do something like this. ![]() No doubt though, this is the same as both families winning the lottery. Sad state of affairs in this country. I can only imagine the rush of scumbag lawyers beating their doors down. |
Killing with kindness. (capital punishment by nitrogen asphyxiation) Research our free archive of 2 million free full-text articles. National Review National Review; 9/11/1995; Creque, Stuart A. Search for more information on HighBeam Research for space shuttle asphyxia death. Opponents of the death penalty often focus on the physical cruelty of existing methods of killing the condemned, so proponents should consider a new alternative, death by nitrogen asphyxiation. Capital punishment by nitrogen asphyxiation would be painless and relatively simple to conduct. Capital punishment needn't be cruel or unusual -- especially if you use nitrogen asphyxiation to put people to sleep. LAST October, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the 9th U.S. District Court ruled that execution in California's gas chamber is a form of cruel and unusual punishment, the first ruling ever by a state or federal judge to invalidate a method of execution on Eighth Amendment grounds. She noted that the evidence showed that the condemned man might remain conscious for several minutes, experiencing the emotions of `anxiety, panic, terror,' as well as `exquisitely painful muscle spasms' and `intense visceral pain.' On its face, Judge Patel's ruling applies only to the gas chamber, but every method of execution in current use involves toxic chemicals or physical trauma to induce death -- and every method can go awry. An ideal hanging snaps the condemned man's neck cleanly; a botched one either strangles him slowly or severs the head entirely from the body. A firing squad that misses its mark leaves the condemned man conscious as he bleeds to death. In the electric chair, according to eyewitness accounts, some condemned men have literally been cooked until their flesh was charred and loosened from the bone; some had sparks and flame emanating from their cranial-cap electrodes. Besides society's concern for the condemned man's physical suffering, all of these methods implicitly require an executioner to inflict some degree of trauma upon the condemned. Concern for the executioner's conscience drives such customs as loading one of the guns for a firing squad with a blank cartridge, so that each member of the squad can imagine that his will be the non-lethal shot. And with lethal injection, the executioner's use of skills and procedures normally devoted to life-saving poses ethical questions for medical caregivers. Given these defects, abolitionists will presumably press to have each of these methods declared `cruel and unusual.' The intended result of these efforts is to make the death penalty unconstitutional in practice, even if it remains constitutional in theory. It is in fact possible to conceive of a method of execution that would cause neither pain nor physical trauma, require no medical procedure (other than pronouncing death), and use no hazardous chemicals. A case of accidental death suggests such a method. Early in the Space Shuttle program, a worker at Kennedy Space Center walked into an external fuel tank (a vessel nearly as big inside as a Boeing 737) to inspect it. He was not aware that it had been purged with pure nitrogen gas to prevent oxygen in the air from corroding its interior. Since nitrogen is the major component of ordinary air, pure nitrogen has no distinctive feel, smell, or taste; the worker had no indication that anything was out of the ordinary. After walking a short distance into the tank, he lost consciousness and collapsed. A co-worker, not realizing that his collapse had an external cause, ran in to aid him and succumbed also. By the time other workers realized what was happening, the two men were dead. More recently, a bizarre accident involving nitrogen killed two people in the Bay Area. They had stolen from a hospital a gas cylinder containing what they thought was laughing gas. However, the cylinder contained not the anaesthetic nitrous oxide but pure nitrogen. When the two men stopped their car to partake of their booty, the nitrogen gas displaced the air in the car, leaving them without oxygen. Had they had any indication of the problem, they could have saved their lives simply by opening the car doors. These deaths were similar in cause to a relatively common drowning accident known as shallow-water blackout, mentioned specifically in certification classes for recreational scuba diving. When a person is skin diving (that is, without scuba gear), his bottom time is limited by how long he can hold his breath. Occasionally, a skin diver will attempt to lengthen the time he can stay under by hyperventilating before a dive. Unfortunately, this can lead to his losing consciousness underwater, sometimes only a few feet before reaching the surface. THE connection between nitrogen asphyxiation and shallow-water blackout lies in human respiratory physiology. When you hold your breath, you begin to develop a powerful urge to breathe. This is caused not by the depletion of oxygen from your body, but by the buildup of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream, which changes the pH of the blood. The ambitious skin diver ``blows off' most of the carbon dioxide in his bloodstream when he hyperventilates; as a result, he notices the urge to breathe much later than he normally would, at a point when his blood oxygen is dangerously low. If his blood oxygen falls too low before he reaches the surface, he blacks out and drowns. Because the Kennedy Space Center workers continued to exhale carbon dioxide with each breath, neither of them noticed an unusual urge to breathe, even though they were completely deprived of oxygen. Nitrogen asphyxiation is a unique way to die. The victim is not racked by a choking sensation or a burning urge to breathe, because as far as his body knows, he is breathing normally. Carbon dioxide is not building up in his bloodstream, so he never realizes that anything is wrong, nor does he experience any discomfort; he simply passes out when his blood oxygen falls too low. Nitrogen asphyxiation is therefore a perfect method of execution. It uses a cheap and universally available working medium that requires no special environmental precautions for its storage and disposal. Its first symptom is loss of conscious sensation, a primary goal in a humane execution. It involves no physical trauma, no toxic drugs; the executed man's organs will even be suitable for donation, a factor cited in a recent stay of execution for a Georgia killer. Assuming that the prisoner's guilt has been sufficiently proved, nitrogen asphyxiation is perhaps the most gentle way to deal with him. A condemned man awaiting death by nitrogen asphyxiation would experience no more pain or suffering than he created in his own mind. COPYRIGHT 1995 National Review, Inc. |
Originally Posted By thebeekeeper1:
Was there brain damage? ![]() Just asking. |
Originally Posted By npd233: I passed out on helium once after taking numerous breaths in a row from a balloon. Fell into a bunch of bushes and cut my arm. Came to immediately. It's kind of funny looking back on it, I sounded like Alvin the Chipmunk as I was cursing. |
Originally Posted By FrankSymptoms: BTW... how did they get into the helium balloon? The neck on such a balloon is about 2" in diameter. |

Originally Posted By tc556guy: How many times today is this story going to get posted? Isn't this #3 so far? http://www.jobrelatedstuff.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=470574 http://www.jobrelatedstuff.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=470621 |
Originally Posted By captainpooby:
Uh, no. This is the first post about this, check the times. I posted this at 8am this morning, the others are dupes. See? As they say, reading is fundamental. Posted :: 6/4/2006 7:06:16 PM Posted :: 6/4/2006 3:38:53 PM |
Originally Posted By tc556guy:
I didn't check the times; this one must have gotten buried fast and then booted back to the top. I saw the others earlier in the day. Sorry about that. |

Originally Posted By npd233: I passed out on helium once after taking numerous breaths in a row from a balloon. Fell into a bunch of bushes and cut my arm. Came to immediately. It's kind of funny looking back on it, I sounded like Alvin the Chipmunk as I was cursing. |
She survived. Originally Posted By npd233: I passed out on helium once after taking numerous breaths in a row from a balloon. Fell into a bunch of bushes and cut my arm. Came to immediately. It's kind of funny looking back on it, I sounded like Alvin the Chipmunk as I was cursing. |
Originally Posted By FrankSymptoms:
You are D*AMED lucky! Most people don't know that carbon dioxide is what triggers your breathing reflex.Too much C02 makes you pant. When you breathe helium your body no longer has any oxygen to burn and convert to C02... so you stop breathing! On the few occasions I've huffed helium, I had to force myself to breathe until my head cleared. BTW... how did they get into the helium balloon? The neck on such a balloon is about 2" in diameter. |

Originally Posted By Deej86:
I witnessed a girl do that in high school, by cutting open a card shop balloon and breathing the air from the hole, no injuries ensued but she did have a high pitched voice as a result. I don't understand why people sometimes do the insane pranks they do. Once I witnessed a girl swallow a live goldfish. She survived. |
Originally Posted By 82ndAbn: "Children?" |
Originally Posted By npd233: (snip) You might want to keep the goldfish swallower nearby. |
Originally Posted By Deej86:
Why? I'm confused. |
Originally Posted By thebeekeeper1:
Don't ask. IM incoming. |

Originally Posted By FrankSymptoms: Was she from a family of blondes? |