Let’s say I go up to 17,500 in an unpressurized plane, and I’m PIC wearing oxygen, but my passengers, one human, one canine, don’t use it. Is there any short or long term harm in spending a couple hours at that altitude without supplemental o2? I’ve done some googling, but I’m not getting a good feel for it. I would expect headache and lethargy to be short terms symptoms on arrival, anything worse than that?
Harmful effects of low oxygen for passengers
- Thread starter Salty
- Start date
Essentially the passengers could potentially develop altitude sickness or acute mountain sickness. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude_sicknessSalty said:
The chronic effects of high altitude are not going to come about in a few hours.
There is a great deal of variability in human responses to this kind of change. Some of the effects of AMS are quite serious, including cerebral and pulmonary edema though one usually sees warning signs. I can’t say that I would recommend messing around with this.
I cannot comment directly on the dog, but would expect some might respond similarly to humans and be subject to similar risks.
I wonder if there actually was some data regarding this limit. I believe the the regulations for pilots were based on some older hypoxia experiments and the likelihood of problems.Salty said:
The following article says “The brain gets affected when the SpO2 level falls below 80-85%.
Cyanosis develops when the SpO2 level drops below 65%.”
https://www.medicinenet.com/what_are_blood_oxygen_levels/article.htm
I think I would become concerned if spO2 was showing below 80 and would be willing to wake someone up to see how they are doing.
As noted above, the primary acute risks with these high altitudes are for people with other conditions that can turn out very poorly, such as causing heart attacks. Exposure over 4-6 hours can cause pulmonary or cerebral edema which are quite serious. But there is a lot of individual variability in how people tolerate these sort of things.
The military has studied this question - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA575842.pdf
Cyanosis develops when the SpO2 level drops below 65%.”
https://www.medicinenet.com/what_are_blood_oxygen_levels/article.htm
I think I would become concerned if spO2 was showing below 80 and would be willing to wake someone up to see how they are doing.
As noted above, the primary acute risks with these high altitudes are for people with other conditions that can turn out very poorly, such as causing heart attacks. Exposure over 4-6 hours can cause pulmonary or cerebral edema which are quite serious. But there is a lot of individual variability in how people tolerate these sort of things.
The military has studied this question - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA575842.pdf
