March 1. 1915.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



319 



Immunity from Danger in Smoke and Noxious Fumes. 



By Robert G. Skerrett. 



ONLY a short while ago an appalling catastrophe was 

 narrowly escaped in the subway of the Rapid Transit 

 system oi New York City. In some way, possibly 

 through an overload or a short circuit, the insulation of the 

 power cables gave way. and the intense heat of the electric 

 arc consumed the rubber coating, filling the underground 

 traffic way with smoke and suffocating fumes just at the time 

 when the lines were crowded with the morning rush of office- 

 li. iiiin 1 pa .!!■■! 



More by good luck than good management on the part of 

 the railway 

 i . impany, only a 

 single life was 

 sacrificed, b u t 

 scores were 

 o\ ercome by the 

 stilling fumes. 

 F ortunate- 

 ly, through the 

 i Mi its of the tire 

 .1. partment, as- 

 sisted by some 

 of the subwaj 

 employes and a 

 few passengers 

 who kept their 

 wits about them, 

 those who had 

 been stricken 

 were gradually 

 removed from 

 the subwaj and 

 carried to the 

 air, where si ime 

 revived, w h i 1 e 

 others, more af- 

 fi ted by the 

 t u m e s , were 

 taken to hospi- 

 tals. In this 

 work, a number 



of the firemen were rendered unconscious by the smoke, and 

 the accident served to call forcibly to the attention of the 

 public the inadequacy of existing relief facilities. 



Since then, a rescue squad has been proposed in connection 

 with the fire department and is in the process of organiza- 

 tion, and these men are to be equipped with helmets and a 

 supplemental breathing apparatus which will make it possible 

 for them to carry on their task of life saving for an hour or 

 more when atmospheric conditions would otherwise halt 

 their efforts. Once more we have an example of the all- 

 important part that rubber plays in modern safety devices. 

 The equipment chosen for this rescue work is of foreign in- 

 ception but is already extensively recognized in this country 

 not only by the government and civic authorities hut by 

 certain of the most progressive of our industries in which 

 danger from smoke, gas, or other harmful fumes, lurks. 



There are rescue helmets of a variety of makes on the 

 market, and all of them aim to accomplish the same end by 

 more or less kindred methods of functioning, but probably 

 the highest development of these life-saving auxiliaries are 

 those produced by the famous Draeger Works of Lubeck, 

 Germany. Only by persistence and endless experimenting in 



Endurance Tests for Two Score Mine Rescue Outfits. 



Hi, effort in improve has this combined helmet and supple- 

 mental breathing outfit reached its present perfection and its 

 now rapidly widening adoption. 



\ 1 .. .li t twenty two years ago, the founders of the company 

 recognized the important part that compressed oxygen might 

 play in all branches oi rescue work. And they set about 

 devising a uniform typi equipment in which the 



motive power contained in compressed oxygen should be 

 used to best advantage. At the same time they sought to 

 find a compact auxiliary which would permit of the cleansing 



and regenerat- 

 ing of the ex- 

 haled air, so that 

 the in a n de- 

 pendent upon 

 the supply could 

 .breathe without 

 restraint and re- 

 ceive the chem- 

 ical constituents 

 needful to sus- 

 tain his powers, 

 while the in- 

 creased dis- 

 charge of car- 

 bonic acid gas 

 from his lungs 

 should be prop- 

 erly taken care 

 of during his 

 moments of 

 greatest muscu- 

 lar exertion. 



The harder a 

 man works tin- 

 more he con- 

 sumes body tis- 

 sues and the 

 greater is the 

 measure of car- 

 bonic acid 

 technically called carbon-dioxide, which that combustion 

 induces. Accordingly, the fouler, so to speak, the exhalation 

 from the lungs. Logically, this means that a rescue helmet 

 in which the wearer must breathe must be so arranged that 

 it can take care of this poisonous gas ; and to do this efficient- 

 ly and also economicaly there must be some automatic way 

 of handling this gaseous bi-product of the toiling body. Now 

 this feature of economy has been in the past one of the most 

 crucial phases of the problem, and the world owes a debt to 

 the patient and exhaustive researches of Bernhard Draeger. 

 As far back as 1908, at the First International Rescue 

 Congress, held at Frankfort-on-the-Main, this investigator 

 announced that any rescue apparatus capable of meeting the 

 heaviest demands should be able to supply 50 litres of pure 

 air per minute and be constructed so as to furnish two litres 

 of oxygen per minute. Resides doing this, the apparatus 

 must he capable of absorbing 94 litres of carbon dioxide, which 

 the average worker would exhale during a period of two 

 hours. Prior to 1904 these values were unknown to physio- 

 logical science, and their announcement was received with 

 skepticism. Since then the professional world has come to 

 realize the correctness of these requirements. 



