Originally Posted by
gschaut
One of the doctors here can chime in, but my understanding is that there are TWO separate issues with oxygen toxicity.
Neurological toxicity and pulmonary toxicity. The immediate PPO2 being the majority factor in Neuro toxicity (convulsions, ect) and the OTU clock being the majority factor in pulmonary toxicity (damage to lung,cardiac, venous tissues).
Pulmonary toxicity being the cumulative damage that occurs to tissues thru long term exposure (days/weeks) to high PPO2. If exposure is limited to one 24 hr period, there is a much higher OTU that is tolerated. But for repeated exposures, several times a day over multiple days, much lower OTU tolerances are used.
AND... the OTU schedule used on the dive site should be conservative enough to allow Table 6 recompression (if needed) without causing pulmonary damage.