improved safety in Cozumel

This is a bit dated, but just recently ran across it on Scubaboard.com and thought I'd copy and paste it here. It's the last bit of a several years of effort, but great news for divers and dive ops on the island.

Meridiano Fill Station Adding Analox Clear inline CO Monitors

This is big news for to me. The hidden risk of Carbon Monoxide tainted tank air was ignored industry wide with a common attitude of "no problems yet" so long that many divers far more experienced than I believed there were no problems, including local professionals. That attitude was naive in my mind even tho popular because if you don't test you really do not know - you're diving on hope. And it came unglued a couple of times this year when many compressors were working at their peak...
One successful and respected Operator with their own compressors incurred several injuries that had all the signs of CO toxicity. No public test results were ever announced of course, but the Op lost a lot of business and the injured divers were seemingly lucky to be alive.

Our tests of Meridiano filled tanks in August repeatedly showed readings over 7 ppm, some more than twice that. See the long story here.

And those were not the first CO cases on Coz. There are no other records to my knowledge of serious injuries, but that's a questionable story really. I could expand on that, but let's move on to good news...
I just didn't bother contacting the fill station as others have before, but things lined up better this time around. In addition to my amateur testing, another diver on the boat also had another brand of analyzer getting the same results - and if you can't trust an Anesthesiologist to test gases...?

Well, we couldn't have accomplished anything without Dave helping. He was skeptical at first, even resistant, as he is a gas expert in his own right, and had no reason to doubt the fill station before - but mostly with the Doc's help he kept an open mind, then got on our side.

Now I may well have some details off here and there, but that's the general story as I understand it. Whatever I got right and wrong, nonetheless, Dave is assisting with the acquisition of 5 inline units, possibly after helping talk them into acquiring and installing them.

Not that I will stop testing my tanks. I'll have my new Analox EII CO portable unit when I come back, but then Dave ordered one of those too so Aldora can also test tanks. I still think that more divers & all Operators need to be testing along with the fill stations, to guard against whatevers. The Doc & I put some some of our money into this, and it's rewarding to see Meridiano and Dave doing so as well.

And thanks again to Suprane, the Doc who didn't want to go public before now as well as Dave for their permission in allowing me to share all this.

I do hope all this is taken as a good example to embrace, by other divers, other Coz Operators, other Coz compressor owners, as well as other destinations beyond. The units are expensive investments, but for a serious operation only pennies a tank to guarantee safer air than the vast majority of other Caribbean & Latin America destinations.

And when you go to Roatan, Ambergris, or whever - take your CO tester, but ask them: "They run inline CO compressor monitors on Coz! Why don't you treat my safety as well?" Blame it on me; it's fine blame it on me.

To see the rest of the story do a search on the "other scuba diving board"

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