Dry Ice

[Alan Rutherford]

Carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) have very little in common as a practical matter. Carbon monoxide will kill you quietly and comfortably before you realize it's there but you would have to try hard to make that happen in a car these days. Leaving the engine running in a garage is one way. Carbon dioxide (the solid form of which is dry ice) can only kill you if you are in a closed environment such as a large storage tank where it can displace the air. It's heavier than air so it will sink to the bottom of an enclosed space. I would be extremely UNworried about having it in a car. If you manage to breathe too much CO2 you will begin breathing more heavily and are very likely to notice and feel the need for fresh air. Excess CO2 is why you pant when you exercise.

In a cooler, the frigid gas would tend to stay in the cooler because it's heavier than the air. Putting a tube in the cooler to drain the CO2 would suck ambient air into the cooler and reduce the value of the dry ice.

[Roger Feeley]

The main problem with dry ice is finding a source, Not many places are left where you can buy it.

I lived in suburban Kansas City area for 40 years. We could get it a5 the grocery store. There was this little freezer tucked in a corner so we couldn’t get a lot. I never bought more than ten pounds.

Now I live in northern Virginia and it’s the same thing here. Don’t try to get any when the power goes out. It sells out very fast.

[John K Jordan]

Hmmm. Wonder what they put in medical coolers. Just sayin'

Just answerin'. I asked the same question. If in doubt, just ask the local clinic. Usually they get medicines in bottles that need to be kept cold like eye drops for glaucoma patients (my wife gets these sent to her in small coolers). I'm sure the containers are as clean or cleaner inside than a cardboard shipping box. If you are imagining a container contaminated inside with leaking HIV infected blood, organs for transplant, fecal samples for analysis. or some horrible contagious pathogen from a secret research lab you can rest easy, the local doctor's office is not the market. The containers are new and immaculately clean inside. The outsides do sometimes have some FedEx truck rash. BTW, some of these come with temperature sensors to alert the recipient if the contents got too warm somewhere enroute. And remember, any frozen food you put inside you would first wrap well and put that it in a clean plastic bag or two.

The local farmer's store gets medicines for animals that go from the package into the cooler in the store. In the hot summer shipping in a well-insulated package is a precaution since you don't know how long a package will sit in a truck or depot.

Another thing I do with these and other pieces of styrofoam is give them to art classes where students cut them up and creatively reassemble and decorate. I do the same thing with wood scraps and other things. I once took them over 10,000 small cardboard microfiche boxes with lids - the art classes used them for years!

JKJ

[Stan Calow]

Styrofoam containers is how they transport body parts for transplants, and blood.

[Bill Dufour]

I have seen nice Aluminum army surplus coffins for sale online. They claim never been used. I keep my camping gear in similar but smaller surplus medical cases.
Bill D

[Alan Lightstone]

I would think CO2 would wake you up. CO will not. Too much CO and you look a nice healthy pink like you just did some exercise. I was told that pink glow is inside the body as well.
Bill D

Not to pile on, but as has been said, totally false.

We measure exhaled CO2 in all patients (as well as arterial CO2 in many patients). Pretty well everyone whose CO2 rises enough loses consciousness. Typically around a PaCO2 of around 80 (with 40 being normal). It's known as CO2 narcosis. Also your body tries to compensate for the respiratory acidosis resulting from this by dumping as much bicarbonate in your bloodstream as possible, but this eventually gets overwhelmed. So you get progressively more acidotic - also not a wonderful thing.

The exercise panting example mentioned above is also incorrect, as that deals with excess arterial CO2 needing to equilibrate with inhaled CO2 (which stimulates respiratory control centers: the dorsal respiratory group in the nucleus tractus solitarius, the ventral respiratory group in the medulla, and the pontine respiratory group in the pons), but high levels of inhaled CO2 can clearly and easily overwhelm this. Heavy breathing/panting only accomplishes transferring more CO2 from the inhaled gases to your bloodstream, making things worse, not better. TL;DR yet???

Basically, don't go in a non-ventilated, small area with dry ice evaporating. And if you've ever seen the Mythbusters where they turn 2 liter plastic soda bottles into bombs with dry ice, it's very impressive and dangerous. Don't try this at home.

On my list of things to do if we get a hurricane power failure is to quickly get some dry ice from our supermarket before its all bought up. I've never had to, but I often think of it.

If you can get a vacuum sealer for the meat (like a Foodsaver), I would think you would do better (avoiding freezer burn, etc...) And a good cooler always helps.

I did a test last year with a good quality Yeti cooler and just normal large frozen ice packs with a good quality thermometer. The cooler kept at safe temperatures for over 3 days. Ah the things you do in hurricane season.

[Paul Haus]

I used to work for a grocery wholesaler, left about 30 years ago. The casks they sent to the stores with ice cream and other frozen items were packed with dry ice and used that method for years. Sometimes if you have a cooperative store, you can get some of the dry ice used in the casks.
On a side note, dry ice can be used to take out hail dents on a vehicle. I had 2 vehicles damaged by hail and took out about 99% of the dents that way successfully. There is a trick on how to do it and unless the dent was on some of the trim or was creased in the bottom of the dent, most could be taken out with dry ice.

[Curt Harms]

Styrofoam containers is how they transport body parts for transplants, and blood.

When I was flying 'spare parts' it was always a Playmate cooler. They may have had a styrofoam container inside, I never had the urge to open one.

[Jim Becker]

When I was flying 'spare parts' it was always a Playmate cooler. They may have had a styrofoam container inside, I never had the urge to open one.

Curious, Curt...was that a "who's going to this city right now?" situation where you already had an existing assignment or a contracted run for that specific need? Again, just curious...

[Tom Stenzel]

Just to pile on about breathing carbon dioxide:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51680049

The Cliff notes if you don't wish to click on the link: There was a party in Moscow where they used dry ice to cool a swimming pool off. Three people died after diving in.

-Tom

[Alan Rutherford]

The YouTube video of this event shows a pool that might be 8 x 10 feet enclosed in a small room. When the 50+ pounds of dry ice is dumped in, the pool is hidden in a thick fog of carbon dioxide. At least one person climbs right in and disappears in the fog before briefly sticking his head above the gas. Tragic, but there is no comparison to realistic use of dry ice in a cooler in a vehicle. I would still not be worried about being in the vehicle under those circumstances but would agree that some ventilation would be a good idea and of course if someone is going to do something blatantly stupid, it can go badly.

[Kev Williams]

After reading thru this a couple more times, I remembered a dumb thing some of us did as Boy Scouts-- one of the dads got some dry ice to keep meat frozen for a week-long camping trip. We thought it would be cool to see what cans of soda pop would do in the coolers. We found out in about 20 minutes, when the cans started exploding! --dry ice, being minus-109°, freezes water pretty quickly!

So with that in mind, what about placing the frozen meat in the bottom of the cooler, then add cold water to submerge it, then use dry ice to freeze the water around the meat? Then you don't have to worry about the C02 fumes. And, no need to worry about the ice messing up the ice chest, as long as there's room for it to expand upwards, it won't expand outwards. I experimented with an empty Pepsi can just to find out:

water--
DSC05449.jpg

frozen solid-
DSC05453.JPG

with the can peeled away
xicedx1.jpg

--the ice didn't distort the aluminum whatsover...

Just thinking out loud (uh-oh)

[Jerry Bruette]

I went to the dry ice suppliers website and they recommended putting the meat in the bottom of the cooler then a divider and then the dry ice on top. That's the method for keeping something frozen, for keeping something cold you'd put the dry ice on the bottom.

I'm going to pack the cooler with 40# of ice Wed. night then Thur. morning dump the ice and load the meat. We'll then drive to Green Bay, about 45 min., buy the dry ice and pack it on top of the meat. I also turned the freezer down as far as it will go today in hopes of keeping the meat colder.

I'll let everyone know how this trip turns out later this week.

[Bert McMahan]

Not so. Dry ice is sometimes used for humane euthanization of small animals at home in a small, enclosed space as the CO2 gas created as the material "melts" will displace oxygen from the bottom of the container upward. So it's a worthy caution that ventilation is important. Fortunately, as Lee points out, modern vehicles tend to have that handled.

You definitely know when there's too much CO2. Your body can detect too much CO2 but not a lack of oxygen. The "I can't breathe" feeling you get is due to you not being able to evacuate CO2, not because there isn't oxygen. It might be more humane than, say, beating them to death with a shovel, but it's not painless. Nitrogen or Argon or most any other gas would be painless as you just get lightheaded then pass out. Granted, it's going to be like 1 or 2 seconds of gasping, so it's not a terribly long time to suffocate.

This is why scuba divers can't hold their breath any longer while under water than on the surface (not that you should hold your breath down there). At ~30 feet or so, you're breathing 2x more oxygen molecules per breath, so you'd think you can take 1/2 as many fewer breaths, right? Unfortunately, it's the partial pressure of the carbon dioxide that your body detects as alarming or harmful. That level increases independently of the oxygen concentration. If you can hold your breath for 30 seconds at the surface, you can hold it for 30 seconds breathing 2x the pressure of oxygen when underwater. Rebreather units take advantage of this not by adding more oxygen to the mix you're breathing, but by scrubbing out the CO2 from each breath. In effect, you breathe the same breath in and out each time. (The oxygen does deplete, so a little oxygen is added for each breath, but it's not like a normal tank where you get fresh air with each and every breath).

[Jerry Bruette]

Well the parcel was delivered yesterday about 6pm eastern time. The dry ice did it's job. We had 22# of dry ice and could possibly have done the job with half that amount. At $1.50 a pound it was cheap insurance. Thanks for all the advice and ideas.