In this episode of The Dive Locker Podcast we look at handling scuba cylinders the right way.
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Welcome to The Dive Locker Podcast, the podcast for dive professionals where we bring you the latest in diving industry resources that make you excellent at teaching techniques, risk management and dive business.
Days ago I saw an Instagram post from PADI. It was of a female divemaster carrying tanks through the water on a beautiful beach. The caption was something about how carrying tanks makes you feel like a bad ass. Well, it is a cool Instagram post, in fact it got 11,000 likes.
But at the same time I looked at it and cringed. The photo is technically not safe. The young lady is carrying one cylinder on her shoulder and the second cylinder is at her side, but she’s holding the valve improperly.
If I put my 1980’s divemaster hat on, I can remember schlepping 60 tanks on and off the dive boat each trip, then filling them and getting em out for the next trip. I was not really focused on how I was handling them. But when I put on my modern day instructor and risk manager hat on, well there’s a potential air embolism in the hand, and neck-spinal-back muscle or disk injury with the high and low weight distribution – and in soft sand and thigh deep water.
But I’m not alone, others in the comments mentioned this. In fact divingwithbubbles says “Can I have permission to use this picture in my next talk on tank handling and compressed air injuries?”
And nocrs0659 said “Not the best pic to use to demonstrate tank carrying technique. Especially her right hand.”
So, I realized that perhaps there’s not a lot of PSI/PCI Cylinder Inspectors /Instructors out there that routinely teach hazmat handling of scuba cylinders. Yep, a scuba tank is technically a hazardous material. Anything over 40 psi of compressed air is called a high pressure container and falls under OSHA guidelines for hazmat.
Because of this I wondered how many are teaching proper handling of tanks to students and demonstrating it properly. So for this episode we’re gonna talk about handling scuba cylinders safely, especially teaching students how to handle them safely. It’s short and sweet and hopefully, you come away from this episode with some new facts and figures and techniques for your students.
Items In This Episode
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Thanks For Listening!
That’s it for today, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher, that way you’ll be notified of new episodes as soon as they go live and please leave a rating. Items talked about in this episode can be found on the show notes Page at scubaguru.com . There you can also click the microphone and leave us a comment. Thanks again. We’ll see you in the next episode. Safe diving and take good care of my friends.
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