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What is laughing gas?

2020-05-03T02:44:32.816Z


Laughing gas, that sounds nice and harmless. But what does that have to do with rapeseed, toothache and Joko Winterscheidt? A few facts about gas, which can also be fatal, for World Laughter Day.


Laughing gas, that sounds nice and harmless. But what does that have to do with rapeseed, toothache and Joko Winterscheidt? A few facts about gas, which can also be fatal, for World Laughter Day.

Berlin (dpa) - Laughter is healthy, it is said. This does not necessarily apply to nitrous oxide, as the laughing gas is actually called. Time to approach the gas discovered in 1772.

- Kick: "If laughing gas is inhaled as a sniffing substance, after a few seconds there is an intoxication with weak hallucinations, feelings of warmth and happiness," says the Federal Center for Health Education. Nitrous oxide can be purchased legally and is filled, for example, as a propellant in spray cans and as a foaming agent in cream dispenser capsules.

Drug researchers from the University of Frankfurt found in a study in 2018 that the number of adolescent nitrous oxide users in Germany had doubled within three years: 12 percent of adolescents had previously used nitrous oxide. Most of the time it is just trying it out.

Laughing gas is not harmless: if inhaled frequently, the internal organs and the nervous system could be damaged, warns the Federal Center for Health Education. Nitrous oxide damages the bone marrow and destroys the isolation of the nerve pathways. This could lead to coordination problems and limit the ability to remember. To increase the intensity of the inhalation and thus the effect, some consumers pull a plastic bag over their heads. You can pass out - and suffocate.

- Commerce: In the neighboring country of the Netherlands, the growing popularity of gas is also causing traders such as the "nitrous oxide king" Deniz Üresin. In pre-Corona times, he had balloons filled with nitrous oxide delivered by cargo bike in the evenings and at night in the Amsterdam pub quarters - for sniffing directly on the street.

- Comedian: Do you really have to laugh at laughing gas? Yes and no Among other things, the gas stimulates the diaphragm, which can lead to salmon symptoms. However, the effect only lasts for a short time, as was shown in the show "Joko and Klaas against Prosieben": Joko Winterscheidt should inhale nitrous oxide for one task. Minutes later, however, he was completely old again.

- Climate: The effects of gas on the climate are not funny at all. Laughing gas, like carbon dioxide and methane, is a so-called greenhouse gas. N2O is also very harmful to the ozone layer. Because it remains in the atmosphere for a very long time, each molecule has a global warming effect that is around 300 times stronger than CO2, according to the IPCC, and is therefore in third place in terms of carbon dioxide and methane among the climate-damaging gases.

- Grief: The dentist Horace Wells noticed in 1844 how someone injured under the influence of nitrous oxide but felt no pain, says the medical historian Matthis Krischel. A day later, Wells tried the gas himself and had a colleague pull a tooth. But when the dentist tried to demonstrate his discovery to colleagues, the anesthetic failed, the story goes. While others had great success with the gas, Wells' reputation was ruined. He later committed suicide.

- Giggling patients: laughing gas has been used in medicine since the end of the 19th century. Nowadays, only a few hospitals in Germany still work with the substance, explains anesthetist Christian Hermanns. According to the German Dental Association, it is still used especially in dentistry - to calm anxious patients.

Information on nitrous oxide from the BzgA

History of anesthesia

Nitrous oxide textbook

Federal Environment Agency on nitrous oxide

BZgA information on nitrous oxide

Source: merkur

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