I find it very strange that many folks see O2 as being dangerous.
Granted it does come in 2250 PSI tanks but so does my scuba air.
It will accelerate the combustion of things.
Well, Jeff, youâve nicely described exactly why itâs dangerous. Just
like your scuba tank, if you knock over the full tank and the
unlikely event of the neck cracking or valve breaking off, etc, then
either type of tank then becomes a heavy, extremely powerful rocket
engine capable of causing a whole LOT of damage. Properly stored,
handled, moved, etc, to keep this danger controlled, itâs not a
problem. But people who think itâs just a big chunk of steel are
wrong.
I recall once seeing a scuba shop in Ft. Lauderdale where they used
a concrete âwellâ filled with water to hold the tanks while filling
them. Safe, until someone slipped and dropped a newly filled tank
while lifting it from that âwellâ. The result was that the tank took
out most of the cinder blodk rear wall of the building, flew about
200 yards, knocked a five foot wide gap in the seawall, and finally
came to rest another fifty yards out in the ocean. Itâs just dumb
luck nobody was killed.
And in the event of a fire in your shop, should the tank fail and
release all that oxygen, a manageable fire could quickly become
explosively unmanageable. Again, an unlikely situation. But itâs real
enough on those rare occasions when it happens.
Oxygen tanks are not highly dangerous. In fact, theyâre quite safe
to use, handle, store, etc, so long as doing so is done properly, and
with respect for the very high pressures inside. If, on the other
hand, some idiot who feels theyâre completely safe then forgets to
treat them right, and the unlikely event then occurs, well, suddenly
theyâre not so safe. Then, in fact, they can become very dangerous
indeed. Itâs rare, and itâs up to the person using the tank to
determine whether itâs safe or not, depending almost entirely on the
way that person treats and uses the tank.
Peter Rowe