Huffing propane can kill you, Nunavut coroner warns

A view of Kugluktuk’s yellow wooden lockable boxes where people can store their gas and propane safely and keep them out of the hands of would-be inhalant abusers. (FILE PHOTO)

Huffing propane, sniffing gasoline, and drinking paint thinners or antifreeze can kill you, the Nunavut chief coroner, Padma Suramala said Sept. 9.

She issued the warning after a young man, 19, was pronounced dead at the Pond Inlet health centre Sept. 7.

“Huffing propane, sniffing gas, drinking paint thinners and antifreeze is dangerous to health and can cause immediate death,” Suramala said.

She said she issued the warning to prevent similar deaths in the future.

And she recommended that the Government of Nunavut continue to do publicity campaigns on the dangers of solvent abuse.

Sniffing or huffing inhalants can lead to what the Council on Drug Abuse calls “sudden sniffing death syndrome” — usually heart failure caused by stresses inflicted on the body by inhaling an intoxicant.

Besides heart failure, another cause of instant death is suffocation, when the ingestion prevents the lungs from absorbing oxygen.

The Canadian Paediatric Society, in a paper published in 2010, estimated that 1.3 per cent of Canadians over the age of 15 had inhaled intoxicants at some point in 2004.

But that study didn’t measure inhalant abuse among children and youth.

The Council on Drug Abuse, on the other hand, estimated that 10.1 per cent of Canadian Grade 8 students have abused inhalants at least once in the past year and 5.6 per cent of 10th graders.

In Nunavut, the 2007-08 Inuit Health Survey found that three per cent of respondents age 18 and older had tried to get high with gasoline, propane, naptha, glue, hairspray, or vanilla within the 12-month period prior to the survey.

But that study did not generate numbers for people under the age of 18.

In 2013, the Hamlet of Kugluktuk, as part of a campaign to deter gasoline and propane huffing, built and distributed 121 lockable storage boxes.

Kugluktuk residents use them to safely store gasoline and propane to keep those substances out of the hands of kids.

At the same time, wellness and health workers went on the community radio to talk about the dangers of abusing inhalants.