DRY
ICE - SCI & TECH
News:
What is ‘dry ice’, at the centre of the
Gurugram restaurant incident?
What's
in the news?
●
Dry ice which was mistakenly offered to a
party of diners at a Gurugram restaurant on March 2, 2024 and subsequently
caused them to vomit blood.
Dry
Ice:
●
Dry Ice is the solid form of carbon dioxide.
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It is commonly used as a cooling agent for food products like ice
cream, frozen desserts etc.
●
It is frequently used for food items that
are needed to be cold or frozen, without the use of mechanical cooling.
●
However, if not handled properly it may
endanger human health, as it sublimes
into large quantities of carbon dioxide gas which could pose a danger of
breathlessness (hypercapnia).
●
For this reason, it should be used/exposed
to open air in a well-ventilated environment.
●
Dry
ice is a lethal substance, according to the Food Safety and
Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), the United States Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC).
●
It must never be touched, even with ‘bare
hands’, let alone ingested. If touched or ingested, it ‘can cause severe damage to skin and internal organs’.
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It also finds use in industrial cleaning processes like dry ice blasting.
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Dry ice is also used as hygroscopic nuclei in the Cloud seeding
technique which is otherwise called as Artificial
rainfall.