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There certainly have been some horror stories about kerosene appliances but on the whole people managed to live with them. Since then we have all moved to electricity. Electricity doesn't start a fire quite as easily but that does not make it safe by any means. Of course, our social perception of what is safe gets stricter and stricter as we make a bigger and bigger fuss about smaller and smaller incidents.
Having said that, in this incident a person (Cynthia Ching) died. Not many people die in Australia from fuel burns anymore so it is a bit of an exceptional circumstance. A quick google scan pulls up a list of articles from which we can hope to extract details about what happened:
After scanning the articles, the first thing I notice is (as usual) they are not consistent about the details. Moreover, they are selective about which facts they present and how they are presented. If the journalists were on a witness stand, we would have to say that they were failing to uphold their obligation to tell the truth.
I'll outline my ideas about what really went wrong. I might be mistaken, but I've got a bit of background information.
From "The SAS Survival Handbook" by John Wiseman (first published 1986):
If you have had a mechanical failure and crashed or broken down with fuels intact you can burn petroleum, antifreeze, hydraulic fluid and other combustible liquids. Even insect repellant in inflammable. Anti-freeze is an excellent primer for igniting heavier engine oils. With a little potassium permanganate (from your survival kit) you can set it alight in a few seconds.In very cold areas drain oil from an engine sump before it congeals. If you have no container drain it on to the ground to use later in its solid state.
Tyres, upholstery, rubber seals and much of any wreckage can be burned. Soak less combustible materials in oil before trying to make them burn.
Mix petrol with sand and burn it in a container as a stove, or dig a hole and make a fire pit.
Burn oil by mixing in petrol or antifreeze. Do not set a light directly to liquid fuels but make a wick and let that provide the flame. The same goes for insect repellent.
A little aside here... the same info as above turns up in other places attributed to other authors. For example here in another fire-making instruction page, this time attributed to "Richard".
The same survival info comes up yet again in this "Sniper Country" Website which claims the authors as Roger Perron and David R. Reed and contains and injects additional wisdom:
Sniper Note: Liquid fuels like gas or a mixture of gas and oil when soaked in a sand pot make a very hot, long burning fire. Ice fisherman use a coffee can with a roll of toilet paper soaked in kerosene (fuel oil) to do the same thing. JP-4 (Jet fuel) can be used too. High octane AvGas is pretty dangerous stuff, you must be very careful with it.
Sounds like they've given it a bit of a try, or talked to someone who has.
So how dangerous is Avgas?
This safety sheet is kindly provided by BP (they sell the stuff, they should provide info).
CHEMICAL COMPOSITION
A complex mixture of volatile hydrocarbons containing paraffins, naphthenes, olefins and aromatics with carbon numbers predominantly between C4 and C12. May contain oxygenates. May also contain small quantities of proprietary performance additives. Contains lead compounds.
In other words, it contains a bit of everything... whatever they had spare that would burn nicely and that includes enough of the light hydrocarbons to easily vaporise and leave fumes floating around.
HAZARDS IDENTIFICATION
Extremely flammable. Explosive air/vapour mixtures may form at ambient temperature.
As above, the volatile light hydrocarbons cause fumes which are the main danger, mostly because of the risk of ignition and also because of the danger of breathing the fumes.
ACCIDENTAL RELEASE MEASURESAs this product has a very low flash point any spillage or leak is a severe fire and/or explosion hazard. Spilled material may make surfaces slippery. It is advised that stocks of suitable absorbent material should be held in quantities sufficient to deal with any spillage which may be reasonably anticipated. Vapour is heavier than air and may travel to remote sources of ignition (eg. along drainage systems, in basements etc.).
Isolate spillage from all ignition sources including road traffic. Evacuate all non essential personnel from the immediate area. If spillage has occurred in a confined space, ensure adequate ventilation and check that a safe, breathable atmosphere is present before entry. Ensure good ventilation. Wear protective clothing. See Exposure Controls/Personal Protection, section 8, of this Safety Data Sheet. Large and uncontained spillages should be smothered with foam to reduce the risk of ignition.
So judging from all of the above, I would say that running a stove or lantern in a metal container using mixed light hydrocarbons and medium hydrocarbons with sand as a moderating agent sounds like a quite safe and cheap method of generating heat and light. Some people might be surprised by this conclusion but most of the volatile light hydrocarbons are going to burn off quite quickly, getting the thing started, heating up the sand and once started the heavier fuel components will wick up through the sand to give a nice steady burn.
There is one problem with the design which is how to go about refueling a such a fire once it has burned down. Refueling has some fundamental problems:
None of the various firemaking documents mentioned above provide a refueling strategy for this type of fire. Indeed, with the old kerosene heaters, refueling a heater while it was hot was always a problem.
From the articles about the helicopter pilot and his homemade lanterns, it is explained that the accident did happen during refueling. There are also a few other things that contributed to the death in this particular case:
The last one is much more significant than most people realise. Lots of people die from secondary infections, often they die when they are in hospital -- often they got infected AFTER they got to the hospital. If you think about it, hospitals are a great place to get sick because that's where all the other sick people are who can give you something.
Our medical system has not yet come to terms with the fact that most antibiotics are nearly useless. A few of them are moderately effective and NONE of them are fully effective. Evolution is a fact, not a theory. The bacterial adaptation to human use of antibiotics has been demonstrated with rock solid evidence... but not everyone has accepted it yet.
Here's my tabulation of the material covered by the above sample of articles.
| Issue Covered by Report | Count of Articles | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Lanterns used sand/fuel mix | 7 | 30% |
| Accident happened while refueling | 18 | 78% |
| Fuel spill was not taken seriously | 2 | 9% |
| Consumption of Alcohol was involved | 9 | 39% |
| Synthetic clothing was involved | 3 | 13% |
| "Severe burns to 40 percent of her body" | 1 | 4% |
| Burns to "50 percent of her body" | 1 | 4% |
| Burns to "more than 50 percent of her body" | 1 | 4% |
| Burns to "60 percent of her body" | 9 | 39% |
| "Severe burns to 60 percent of her body" | 2 | 9% |
| Time delay before medical care was available | 4 | 17% |
| Wounds became infected | 6 | 26% |
| Edward Lee could not be extradited to face charges | 18 | 78% |
| Cynthia "swallowed some fuel" | 1 | 4% |
| Cynthia "inhaled the flames and her insides were burnt" | 1 | 4% |
A few interesting trends are observable here... blaming someone for the event is very important so the difficulty in extradition ranks high as does his direct involvement in the refueling.
The actual nature of the lanterns (i.e. the sand/fuel mix) is not considered very important by reporters, so most readers are left with the false impression that the lanterns were burning Avgas in an open container. The lingering nature of the fumes and the importance of immediate attention to spillage (which is one of the most prominent warnings in the safety sheet) is barely given a mention. Only the senior pilot who ran the charter company understood the significance of this and all the reporters have ignored it.
The "swallowed some fuel" is obviously complete rubbish.
The "inhaled the flames" is a far more likely scenario, also pointing to a fuel/air explosion caused by a build-up of fumes.
The consumption of alcohol rated a medium high mention, presumably most reporters and their readers could understand the significance of this as a risk factor.
The exact amount of her burns seems to have a random spread of percentages, you would think that if you are going to quote a number you might as well try to get it right. Putting a number in the picture makes the report seem more accurate even when the number is completely arbitrary. I also notice that her age is often reported but the number is not consistent.
The issue of synthetic clothing as a fire hazard seems to be right off the radar. I'm kind of shocked about how few people take this seriously but then again such clothing is very popular. I've spent a lot of time in houses with open fires, and camping in the bush, and with fire in the laboratory or workshop. I've always had a strong respect for the danger of fire and synthetic fibres. Sadly, I suspect that a great many people have no idea whatsoever, and with the information they are given, they probably never will be warned.
The big shock for me is the miniscule attention paid to the fact that she died quite some time after the event, not of burns but of infection. The number of people getting infections in hospital is bloody frightening but the way it never gets reported (and their death is put down to other causes) is even more frightening.
This article cites a study that estimated more than 1700 deaths per year are a result of hospital infection. I would say that is a significantly more dangerous situation than burning fuel/sand mix in a lantern.
In February last year, NSW Government figures showed that for every 1 million hospital procedures, at least 20,000 people went home with infections acquired during surgery or recovering in the ward.
That puts the risk at 1 in 50 of getting infected. Of course, most of these people can fight off the infection but this is supposed to be a place where they care for sick people, it seems that it is one of the most dangerous places you can go (more dangerous than partying with young pilots).
This medical article puts even worse figures on the situation:
About 6% of patients acquire an infection in hospital, and the incidence of hospital-acquired infections may be increasing.
The last detailed study of such infections in Australian hospitals was the "National Nosocomial Prevalence Survey" in 1984, which was over 20 years ago! We are taking the strategy of making sure we don't look anywhere to ensure that we never find anything.
If the parents of Cynthia Ching and the rest of the Ching family want to do something of benefit to Australia and want to make sure that their daughter didn't die for nothing, they should give up any attempt at revenge against Edward Lee and focus on pushing the Australian government into a fully detailed (and public) study of infections in ALL our hospitals.
Such a study would no doubt reveal the most serious "Dangerous Act Causing Death" in Australia is happening right now as we speak.
However, more recent research suggests that the human immune system itself is responsible. It is normal for the immune system to trigger a sepsis reaction when the body is confronted with infection -- this may include fever, increased heart rate, changes to blood flow, etc. Mild sepsis is a warning sign but not harmful in itself. Unfortunately, there are times when the immune system goes too far, triggering off an inappropriate and overblown immune reaction which is called "severe sepsis". Symptoms are: high fever, high heart rate, low blood pressure, shaking, delirium and hyperventilation. Severe sepsis is dangerous and poorly understood.
The scary things about severe sepsis are the speed at which it sets in and the statistics. According to the NewScientist article, only two thirds of patients manage to survive a bout of severe sepsis. Severe sepsis is the third greatest cause of death for hospital patients in the western world. A study by Angus DC, et al. called "Epidemiology of severe sepsis in the United States: Analysis of incidence, outcome, and associated costs of care" estimated 751,000 cases of severe sepsis each year and 215,000 deaths each year in the USA. As far as I can find, there are no survey figures for Australia.
When a patient goes into severe sepsis, doctors don't have much time to react, worse yet, doctors don't have many options with regards to treatment either. Usually they throw antibiotics at the problem, which might help remove the infection that triggered the problem, but increasingly bacteria are becoming antibiotic resistant and there may not be sufficient time for the antibiotics to do their work. More recent work with "drotrecogin alfa" has demonstrated some benefit but there is a lot more research to be done on this topic.
Relatively minor infections have been known to cause severe sepsis. The famous "Curse of the Pharaoh" which killed Lord Carnarvon was very likely due to severe sepsis triggered by a minor skin infection.
Compare a high-profile disease such as AIDS to the almost completely unreported disease of severe sepsis. We have several practical methods of prevention of the spread of AIDS, but we have no method to prevent severe sepsis (and our current partial protection -- which is antibiotics -- is getting less effective). Severe sepsis kills more Australians than AIDS and gets less research funding. It's amazing what a bit of publicity will do.
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