Smoking in an ambulance

T

Todd Merrifield

I stopped at Dwayne's today on my way home from tornado-ravaged northern Ohio. I love this car! It needs some work, but everything that needs fixed is mostly common Cadillac parts or basic body work. At least all the Superior-specific parts are there and in decent shape. Needs a lot of wires tidied up and a headliner (probably the hardest part to fix). Hopefully a windshield will turn up somewhere, but if not at least the crack is way over on the passenger side.

It appears to be just about all original, so even the stuff that needs fixed has a pattern to go by. The biggest mystery right now is that there are a few interior panels that are missing that may or may not be in the car somewhere (there is still a storage cabinet to be uncovered under the carpet in the back.) It's possible that the headliner might have come down that far as well.

Biggest chuckle I got out of it is that there appears to be a factory Cadillac lighter and ashtray built into THE CUSTOM SUPERIOR COACHWORK IN THE PATIENT AREA. What's up with that? I can't think of any reason why that would get put back there, right next to the big window in the passenger side in the back, but it appears to have always been there.

I'm trying to persuade Dwayne to keep the original logos on the doors and on the sign up top. The top sign is not a sticker, they are raised plastic letters and the are all there.
 
Ashtray

The '68 Miller-Meteor combination has an ashtray on the left rear ledgeboard near the head of the cot. No lighter, though. Guess they figured if somebody else couldn't - or wouldn't - light it, the patient was out of luck!
 

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I think Dwayne's has a lighter in it.

But why have it at all? It looks like the coachbuilders designed it in, but for what purpose? Did they have stuff that plugged into cigarette lighters back in 66? And what would you use the ashtray for? Didn't all ambulances from the 60's and 70's carry oxygen?
 
My '66 has a spot for 2 oxygen tanks built into the front medical cabinet. The ash tray IS an ash tray with a lighter built in too, and the slide-over cover has a cadillac crest on it. It sure looks original... thanks for pointing that out Todd I hadn't noticed it was even in there.
 
1966 was a totally different era when it comes to smoking and health care (although I was only 6 at the time). Smoking was even encouraged in some instances! Not suprising that there was an ash tray and a lighter...really shows that the builder was providing what the customer wanted. Neat that it's pure Cadillac product!
 
Back then we smoked in the front of the car and that was no farther from the oxygen than the cot in the back. Like Bill said it was a different time then. We smoked right at the front desk of the hospital, I knew and saw doctors in seeing patients and sitting and smoking a cigarette with them. Why not have an ashtray in the back so the attendant and patient could enjoy a smoke?
 
The smoking in hospitals and such isn't as much a safety issue as it is "bad practice" (at the front desk anyway), since everyone pretty much knows it's unhealthy and it looks bad in an environment that supposedly promotes good health (or at least getting back to it).

I would have though even in the sixties though that someone would have been aware of the dangers of smoking in an oxygen-rich environment. Even though it's not flammable itself, when in use it raises the oxygen level of everything it comes in contact with, so the slightest little ash or spark sets off a mini wildfire. If it gets hot enough I would assume it would melt crucial components on the tank, causing it to release it's contents at high volume, which aside from the danger that comes with high psi gas rapidly escaping also releases a huge amount of raw oxygen into an area that is most likely still on fire. I'm not even close to being a scientist and I can put this together, but in the sixties an ambulance building outfit (or several, apparently) didn't see a problem with someone catching a drag in an environment like that, enough that they put lighters and ashtrays back there?

Maybe we didn't make it to the moon after all... :confused:
 
Back in the 70s and early 80s smoking was still widely acceptable although the outright hysteria had still not yet broken out. People in a ER were often times upset and a smoke would settle em down. Oxygen supports combustion but does not burn or explode. It will enhance a hell of a flame though.
 
All that talk about smoking being dangerous, yadda yadda yadda. :blahblah:

It was the '60's. Everybody smoked. Attendants, patients, doctors, pregnant women... News anchors smoked on the air while they delivered the news. TV stars smoked on their shows (Desi: "Hey Lucy, let's have a Chesterfield."). The Marlboro Man was the icon of macho. Winston Cigarettes sponsored car races (you know, the Winston Cup?). You could even smoke on an airplane, and use your lighter or matches.

Nobody knew that smoking was dangerous. And those who did know were paid to keep their mouths shut. And most folks didn't really care that it was dangerous.

We think it's dumb and dangerous now, but we are looking at it with our 2010-vision. If you looked at it with 1960's-vision, you'd think it was unusual not to smoke, and you probably wouldn't buy an ambulance that didn't have a lighter, or at least an ashtray, in the back. I've seen plenty of ambulances with ashtrays in the back right next to the stretcher.

Heck, we run patients now who are in a nursing home, who require oxygen 24/7 for emphysema, and they have the oxygen cannula in their nose and a cigarette in their mouth. Dangerous? You bet. But the addiction to smoking is that strong.

I never smoked, but my mother smoked in the house and in the car all the time while I was a kid. And I (*cough*) turned out OK.

Now, about the lack of seatbelts.....
 
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Thanks for breaking this out into a new thread Paul. Dwayne's car deserves it's own unmolested thread.

I guess I grew up in the generation that made smoking unacceptable, but to be clear the main issue that I found unbelieveable was providing accommodations for smoking in a vehicle that everyone knew was going to carry concentrated oxygen. I just assumed that everyone would know that that would not be a good mix. To me it makes just about as much sense as keeping a stack of fireworks next to your stove. Sure, if you use the stove properly and are careful not to knock the fireworks over you might be able to do it for years on end without incident, but I think everybody would agree it would be a bad idea.

I have a friend whose Mom keeps a stack of cookbooks on her stove burner. Sure, she knows to move them before lighting the stove, but what if a kid somehow turns the burner on accidentally? If there's nothing on it, no problem, but if it has a stack of books on it it's probably going to be trouble.

So lets say someone "accidentally" leaves the oxygen on going to the mask in that ambulance, then leaves the mask on the gurney. Now all the sheets on the gurney are saturated with oxygen and Joe Police Officer (or anyone else that might be at the scene that might not know about oxygen) lights a cigarette with the lighter in the back of the ambulance. Someone calls for him and he spins around, bumping his lit cigarette on the cot bar. An ember falls on the cot and suddenly the flame-retardant (in normal atmosphere) sheets are fully engulfed. That's the kind of situation that was in the back of my mind that made me surprised to see it there.
 
come on now you ever use a welding torch. O2 supports combustion. now then I have seen and treated a few people that were lighting the stub of a cig off the gas stove, got close enough to rich-en the air with the O2 from there cannula and the flair up lite the plastic on fire. the O2 keep it going till they got it off. one line of burn from the nose to the ear. believe it or not I have see this on more then one person. but never the same one twice. you don't want a open fire going with the O2 bottle. if you don't light your smoke with a match in that room, then toss it down with out putting the flame out so it catches the curtains on fire. you don't have to worry about fire. hence the no smoking in the room with the O2 going.
you never even think about welding and cutting right next to your tanks in the shop. but while your talking about hazards how about those 25 gallons of high test gas just under the pt compartment? one spark just right and it goes up big time. we never even thing about that. watched a man weld a crack in one that was full. smoking and drinking hair dyed with make up on while PG mothers, lead base paint, playing with mercury ridding bikes with out all that gear, climbing trees, leaving the house at 8 not showing up till 5 or you got a whipping. now that was growing up. smoking, everyone was smoking. that ain't nothing, just watch this I double dog dare you.
 
I can't quite follow what you're saying, but if you're comparing smoking in the back of an oxygen-carrying ambulance to smoking while welding I don't buy it. The only similarity is that both use oxygen tanks. When you are welding, 98% of the time the oxygen is on it is being consumed by a controlled flame. You are in a relatively open environment, and you know to turn the oxygen off when you're done.

In an ambulance you are in an enclosed environment, and when the oxygen is used it's not necessarily always all going into the patient. Not to mention in a critical care environment there is a heightened chance that the oxygen can be left on and going into the atmosphere unused while the attendant responsible for controlling the tank may be preoccupied with critical care. (That may be different now, with systems that automatically meter the oxygen flow, but back then I'm guessing the systems were more rudimentary.)

I mean, there is obviously a reason why any modern ambulance has warning signs all over it that say "no smoking, oxygen in use". Was this danger not discovered until recently, or is it just that enough people/vehicles went up in flames that prompted the installation of warning signs?

Do todays ambulances have cigarette lighters and ashtrays in the patient compartment?
 
One other thing to take into consideration is the size of the tanks that were used. "Piped in Oxygen" as we know it today was not the norm back then. Most services that I know of used the smaller sized portable tanks. Once the larger tanks started to be used there were other changes such as all those signs "No Smoking" and by the way I also did not hear of any ambulance having a fire problem because of 02 until it had a big tank in the back of the front seat. Wish I still had the picture, you would not believe how bad the ambulance looked after the fire. The final report showed the valve broke and by the time the crew was back with their patient from the house no ambulance left to transport!:stars: and no it was not my ambulance nor do I know where it was from.
 
the point is no smoking so you don't start a fire with smoking materials the open flame used to light the cigarette will light other things to. the cigarette will not because it's not a open flame. you could not get the O2 consatration up enought in the back of a moving ambulance or a sitting one to be able to worry. neather could you in a closed room. it's just one of those things that got started that sound so right. again not baised of any real fact. it just sounds like somethng you should say or have posted to look cool. now light a match under a O2 tent would be a different story
 
Well, the "open flame" argument adds a new wrinkle to things. I hadn't thought of that. I guess you could make the case that, if everyone in the world at the time was smoking, having a cigarette lighter back there was safer than not having one, which would force a smoker to use a match or lighter instead.
 
No smoking signs

Hey Toddd...no one ever said it was smart to smoke in the back of an ambulance...it's just something that was accepted at the time...similar to the other points that Ed brought up. As a kid I can remember going for many a car ride laying, sitting, standing, roaming in every part of the car while it was in motion including the back deck below the window (not so great for using that rear-view mirror...sorry dad). Bicycle helmet? They weren't even around to buy if you wanted one.

I think No Smoking signs appeared when it was realized that it was just not good risk management to smoke in the ambulance and people's behaviors needed to be changed (and reminded not to smoke).
 
Smoking Smarts

Hey Todd, this will really curl your toes. We had a hospital supply side of the ambulance service and more often than I wanted, I had to deliver home oxygen H tanks to people with emphysema and so on. It would never fail you would go into a house and see a guy or lady with a nasal cannula running at 2 lpm while smoking a cigarette.
 
Ron Devies said:
It would never fail you would go into a house and see a guy or lady with a nasal cannula running at 2 lpm while smoking a cigarette.
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Yeah, that has always worried me when I'd see a little ole blue haired lady out somewhere dragging an O2 tank behind her with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth as well!:wowguy::boom:
 
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