View report page

41
FATAL GASES IN SHIP'S HOLD.
I have to record three deaths which have occurred on shipboard, illustrating
the dangers of poison gases in two phases of their action on the human body.
The first case was one of active poisoning, and occurred on February 1st,
in a man engaged in disinfesting a ship by means of Zyklon B. The claim for
this method of disinfestation is that methyl chlor-formate, or tear gas, by which
the presence of hydrocyanic acid gas—the active ingredient—is indicated, is
a safeguard against the deadliness of the latter gas.
The inquiry into the death showed that the tear gas ingredient of the mixture
had given due warning and that disregard of the warning was accountable for
the fatal issue.
The holds after disinfestation had been opened out for no less a period than
twenty-four hours before the fatality. On entering one of them, a stevedore
experienced a burning, choking sensation in the throat and smarting in the eyes.
He came out. The man in charge of the fumigation then entered the hold, without
precaution, to rig a fan, later seeking to retreat, he fell back from the ladder into
the hold, and died in hospital after a few hours from the result of the poisoning.
The whole case illustrates:—
(1) The substantiation of the claim for Zyklon B. as affording some
tection in the use of cyanide gas.
(2) The impossibility of undertaking Hydrocyanic acid fumigation
with mere empirical knowledge of this gas. The first or the
fiftieth experience of its action may be the fatal one.
The second case includes two fatalities from the development of carbon
dioxide gas in a hold.
While the ship was in the Red Sea, on February 2nd, an officer went down
into No. 4 hold to look for his keys, which had been dropped between the loose
hatch covers separating the lower portion of the hold from the baggage room.
The baggage room was itself in the upper part of this hold, in the 'tween decks.
The hold contained, of dead oxygen-absorbing material, bales of skins and
bags of polished rice, of living oxygen-absorbing material, mustard seed and
ground nuts. The living element would simultaneously be giving off Carbon
Dioxide in respiration, and the dead, especially the rice, would be yielding the
same gas under insensible and sensible fermentation.
There was seven feet of space between the deck which floored the baggage room,
and the cargo.
It appears therefore that the officer and his would-be rescuer—a lascar—
dropped into a space in which a heavily charged atmosphere of Carbon Dioxide
had accumulated, though only a few bags of rice discharged at Marseilles showed
gross activation of fermentation by moisture. In the case of the lascar, the wouldbe
rescuer of the officer, suffocation beyond recovery ensued within three minutes.
Another rescuer, secured by a rope, immediately felt giddy on entering the fatal
space.
To the shipping companies the dangers of grain containing spaces, and especially
those containing polished rice, need no emphasizing.

* Includes repeated Inspections.