BAD AIR DAY
If you suffer a contaminated air fill while on a charter boat, don't count on the authorities to take action on your behalf. An incident in the Channel last summer put at risk the lives of six divers it also exposed a worrying loophole in UK safety regulations.
Pete Harrison reports
In June 1997, a group of 14 divers from the south of England, headed by BSAC member Paul Wilkin, booked a six-day trip on the Loyal Moderator. The 27m charter boat worked out of Brighton, operated by Colin Christian.
Like most divers, this group assumed when they boarded that the owner and the skipper had taken all the steps necessary to ensure their safety.
On the third day out, six of the divers were preparing for a 50m mid-Channel wreck dive. They were on the point of entering the water when one of them noticed a faint sickly odour to his air.
Further checks revealed that all their cylinders were contaminated, so the dive was aborted. The group had no choice but to head home.
On their return, they contacted the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to arrange an analysis of the gas. "Judging by the smell of the air, something was seriously wrong with that compressor," says Wilkin.
The HSE's reaction was to pass the tanks immediately to the laboratories of the DERA Centre for Marine Technology, where analysis showed that the air was contaminated to a staggering degree.
According to Gavin Anthony of DERA's Sea Systems Department, infra-red analysis showed that the oil level in the divers' air "exceeded the calibrated level of the instrument". By means of extrapolation, however, he estimated that "the true value is likely to be in the order of 8-9 mg/cu m".
This is a figure almost 10 times greater than the specified limits for breathing air. But this was not all.
Levels of deadly carbon monoxide exceeded Def-Stan and BS4001 limits by a factor of five, and carbon dioxide was also in excess of industry standards. DERA went further still, by analysing the oil contaminants.
This revealed a lethal cocktail of acetone, ethanol, acetaldehyde, siloxanes, propanol, butanone, 2-methyl propanal, and various isomers of butene and pentene.
"According to the HSE, there would almost certainly have been a fatality if we had made it to the planned 50m," says Wilkin.
"In retrospect, I had felt unusually breathless on a dive earlier in the week," he says. The group could have been suffering from mild carbon monoxide poisoning for some time. It was only when oil started entering the system that they realised something was wrong.
Oil contamination would result from neglect of compressor maintenance, leading to mechanical failure. Because the HSE found no logbook or other record of compressor usage on board, there was no way of checking whether maintenance had been carried out or not, or when oil and filters had last been changed.
The contaminants, in most cases, can be traced to source. The siloxanes identified in the analysis are likely to be a product of silicon grease used in the compressor's cylinder valves. The carbon monoxide is thought to have arisen from an "intake of exhaust gases" into the compressor, possibly from the compressor's motor or from the ship's main engines and generator.
By contrast, the source of the aldehydes, according to Anthony, was "vapour from industrial solvents or paints".
Understandably, Wilkin was horrified by the list of dangers to which he had unknowingly been exposed. So he wasted no time in trying to establish how this situation had been allowed to arise.
His priority was to find out which authority governs air quality on charter boats but he soon discovered that it is not regulated at all. The safety of divers using charter boats is simply down to "voluntary codes".
Despite its involvement, the HSE could have elected to stay clear of the situation. Whereas the safety of air compressors on land is the responsibility of the HSE and of local authorities, air compressors at sea fall under the jurisdiction of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), which held an inquiry into the incident, the results of which have not been made public.
The MCA addresses its responsibility in section 3.4 of the Code of Practice for Small Commercial Vessels, a section that deals with sport diving, sea angling and "other water-based activities".
According to the MCA's Chief Executive Maurice Storey: "The chartering of the vessel per se falls under MCA jurisdiction, but the leisure activities conducted from it, including the specialist equipment used in those activities, do not."
In fact, having distanced itself from this responsibility, the MCA goes on to state that: "It is for charterers to agree with the boat owner that the equipment used for the sport or pleasure is safe, and to make appropriate checks."
So it's a case of buyer beware. All very well, in theory. Many would argue that divers are a self-sufficient breed and that the last thing we need is a nanny state.
In reality, however, consider the "appropriate checks" that Paul Wilkin and his group were required to make. First they would have had to check the compressor's oil and scrutinise the (non-existent) logbook to ensure recent replacement.
Then they would have had to dismantle first-, second-, third- and fourth-stage cylinder valves to check the state of lubrication there.
Next they would have had to locate the compressor's air intake to ensure that there was no risk of taking in exhaust gases.
And, when all this had been done, they would have had to mount a thorough search to locate the "industrial solvents/paints" that caused the aldehyde contamination.
"In short, the MCA is recommending that we take a compressor engineer with us each time we go on holiday," says Wilkin.
So a question now hangs over what the MCA considers to be an "appropriate check". A full dismantling of the compressor is certainly going too far. But in the future you might be required to check your charter boat's logbook.
Of course, to gain any meaningful insight from it, you might also have to contact the manufacturer to get an independent opinion on recommended oil specifications, filter types and maintenance periods.
In reality, no diver is going to go to such lengths to ensure air quality. "Rightly or wrongly, like anyone, we expected the authorities to be looking after matters," Wilkin explains. It appears he was wrong.
So, if the authorities are not there to protect us, you might assume that the British Sub-Aqua Club, as diving's governing body, has an opinion on this legislative grey area. It does: it was the BSAC that helped draft it in the first place.
To be fair, the BSAC's main priority at the time was to ensure that government legislation did not tangle up club boats in too much red tape and bureaucracy: an admirable intention, and this is why it opted for voluntary codes.
Moreover, the intended codes were unworkable for club RIBs because they entailed a huge inventory of extraneous safety equipment. "Applying those codes to RIBs would mean that to leave port they would have such an equipment load that there would be no room left for the divers," explains the BSAC's National Diving Officer Bob Boler.
To its credit, the BSAC was also aware of the loophole it had helped create. For this reason, Howard Painter, the BSAC's chairman at the time, instigated a "diveboat regulation scheme" in association with the National Federation of Charter-boat Skippers. The legislation was not perfect, but at least a workable scheme seemed to be in place to plug the gap.
"Unfortunately, the scheme rather died a death under Chris Allen," observes one source at BSAC HQ.
Where the government had failed, perhaps divers might have expected the BSAC to fill the gap, but Bob Boler feels it is not that simple. The diveboat regulation scheme was still a voluntary one, and it met resistance from a significant proportion of charter skippers. "Those that played by the book volunteered happily, but the cowboys would still always opt out," he says.
The BSAC objects to suggestions that it has let down its members, and is keen to take action. "If the situation is really as serious as it now appears, it has given a loophole for unscrupulous operators to compromise safety. We are unhappy about that," stresses Boler.
The Club has now written to the various agencies seeking further clarification of the law. It is not alone in being unhappy "These grey areas do sometimes occur and it's difficult to get them sorted," comments one government official who was involved with the Loyal Moderator inquiry.
The problem is that in the mists of time one key point has been forgotten. "When the legislation was initially created, a clause was inserted saying that where safety is concerned the sport's governing body should issue guidelines. This means that anything the BSAC recommends, the MCA is obliged to enforce," says Howard Painter.
Trying to pin this clause down is another matter. It has somehow slipped from the codes. The question that now remains is how to effect a change.
It is essential to remember that the HSE and MCA do not write the rules themselves. They are no more than bodies that enforce legislation, so time spent writing to them is time wasted. Any changes in legislation can only occur at government level. In the words of one official: "If you want to get things done, then you have no choice but to go to the top" in this case John Reid, Minister for Transport, who is responsible for shipping, or Chris Smith, Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, who is responsible for diving.
The MCA inspected the Loyal Moderator after the incident in the Channel last summer and found other defects under the Small Commercial Vessel Code, which had to be put right.
The HSE ensured that the compressor was safe and proposed to follow up its initial findings, but was unable to do so because Colin Christian sold his boat. No other action was taken.
The incident that almost led to the deaths of six divers may yet turn out positively. Without it, the loophole would remain hidden in the legislative undergrowth, ready to snare and perhaps kill the next unwary passer-by.
Paul Wilkin has not wasted the chance to highlight the danger, and has received criticism for it. But if he also receives the support of people who care about their own safety, his efforts may yet gain results.
Have you had any similar experiences with dangerous compressors at sea? Diver is putting together its own dossier, and we want to hear from you. Send your account to Diver, 55 High Street, Teddington TW11 8HA
Appeared in DIVER - October 1998
