Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: it's Christian Seger, and today I'm going to help you
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of a very pressing question. Why
Speaker 1: is dry ice dangerous? Well, it turns out that dry
Speaker 1: ice is dangerous for a couple of reasons, and one
Speaker 1: is temperature. Now it's ice, but it's really, really really
Speaker 1: cold ice. Dry ice is about negative one and nine
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit, which is something like seventy eight point five
Speaker 1: degrees celsius, which means it's very, very cold. It's so cold,
Speaker 1: in fact, that when your skin comes in contact with
Speaker 1: dry ice, it can get what's called a dry ice burn.
Speaker 1: This basically amounts to the dry ice just killing all
Speaker 1: of your skin cells dead within about a second. So
Speaker 1: you never want to touch dry ice with your bare hands,
Speaker 1: and you certainly never want to swallow it or eat it.
Speaker 1: Don't even look at it weird. Just be really careful
Speaker 1: when coming into contact with dry ice. I would recommend gloves, tongs,
Speaker 1: maybe some goggles, some duct tape over your mouth, and
Speaker 1: make sure that you can breathe out of your nose.
Speaker 1: And that is how you should handle dry ice, at
Speaker 1: least as far as I'm concerned. The other way dry
Speaker 1: ice can harm you, though, is through the carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: that it gives off. Dry ice sublimates, which means it
Speaker 1: goes from its solid state to its gaseous state, skipping
Speaker 1: the liquid state in between, which is why they call
Speaker 1: it dry ice. And when it goes into that gaseous state,
Speaker 1: it gives off carbon dioxide that can be toxic to you.
Speaker 1: The air we breathe has about seventy nitrogen to it
Speaker 1: and about oxygen and just a teeny tiny bit of
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide at any given point. Now, when you're in
Speaker 1: a car with the windows rolled up and dry ice
Speaker 1: is kind of spewing carbon dioxide everywhere, those carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: levels could rise, and once it goes beyond five, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a problem. The air becomes toxic. You choke,
Speaker 1: you'll probably drive off the side of the road, and
Speaker 1: you've got that duct tape all over your mouth and
Speaker 1: safety goggles on, and people just think you're into some
Speaker 1: really weird stuff because the dry ice, it's sublimated into nothingness,
Speaker 1: so you've just got an empty cooler next to you.
Speaker 1: It becomes a mystery basically. So in summation, I would
Speaker 1: just stay clear of dry ice entirely. Check out the
Speaker 1: brain stuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.