HIGH SPEED FATAL.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3142, 11 February 1911, Page 3

HIGH SPEED FATAL.

MOTORISTS DIE FROM’ CARBONIC

ACID

A curious explanation is now given by medical authorities of sudden deaths of automobile drivers and airmen: which have hitherto been unexplained. Doctors do not accept- sudden heart failure as a sufficient explanation. J lie real cause ;s given as carbonic acid gas poisoning, duo to the pressure on the- mouth resulting from driving fast through the air, and the consequent inability to expel the poisoned air which has been breathed. . Air once- breathed is practically carbonic acid gas. A hen you are passing rapidly through the air in a car or an aeroplane this suffocating carbonic acid gas is pushed back into the lungs and only a little cap get away, because of the wall of air pressing into the mouth. So it is rebreathed, and the result is carbonic acid gas poisoning, which produces a kind of narcotic sleep. Automobilists and airmen, it- is urged, should wear a mouth, guard with a l - shaped tube, the ends of winch should iijx'n behind the ears and point backward. so that the breath carbonic acid gas could get away. Hus guard ought to coyer the nose also. Peonle are not likely to come to grief from direct poisoning the first time they drive fast, but in process oi time a disease, it seems, is produced. Automobolists who run past their destination without knowing why should be-wr.-c. for it- is a sign that: the disease is getting hold of them. 'Phe danger is especially great in winter, when-the air is very cold. One cannot inhale such a quantity of air m winter as in summer for there is a mechanism in the breathing' apparatus which m-event? too e-old- air from rushing in and freezing the lungs.