States Turn to an Unproven Method of Execution: Nitrogen Gas
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/07/health/death-penalty-nitrogen-executions.html...Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi have authorized nitrogen for executions and are developing protocols to use it, which represents a leap into the unknown. There is no scientific data on executing people with nitrogen, leading some experts to question whether states, in trying to solve old problems, may create new ones....
...In March, Oklahoma’s attorney general, Mike Hunter, said that using nitrogen was “the safest, the best and the most effective method available.â€
There is scant scientific data to back up that statement. What little is known about human death by nitrogen comes from industrial and medical accidents and its use in suicide. In accidents, when people have been exposed to high levels of nitrogen and little air in an enclosed space, they have died quickly. In some cases co-workers who rushed in to rescue them also collapsed and died.
Nitrogen itself is not poisonous, but someone who inhales it, with no air, will pass out quickly, probably in less than a minute, and die soon after — from lack of oxygen. The same is true of other physiologically inert gases, including helium and argon, which kill only by replacing oxygen.
A report from the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said that breathing “an oxygen-deficient atmosphere†can knock a person unconscious after just one or two breaths, and that “the exposed person has no warning and cannot sense that the oxygen level is too low.â€...
...Death from nitrogen is thought to be painless. It should prevent the condition that causes feelings of suffocation: the buildup of carbon dioxide from not being able to exhale. Humans are highly sensitive to carbon dioxide — too much brings on the panicky feeling of not being able to breathe. Somewhat surprisingly, the lack of oxygen doesn’t trigger that same reflex. Someone breathing pure nitrogen can still exhale carbon dioxide and therefore should not have the sensation of smothering....