Do you keep Dust Off in your home.

I received an email from my sister-in-law that inspired me to share with ATS members.

It is about Dust Off, canned compressed air to keep our keyboard and computers clean.

I was surprised to read that kids are using it to get high!

Here is the email....

D U S T I N G

First, I'm going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name is Jeff. I am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for its crime rate. We have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were #2 in the nation in homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was shot in the line of duty. He lives with us now and I still train with him because he likes it. I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring drugs into my house. Thor wouldn't allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I say this is so you understand that I know about drugs.

I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at least once a week if they used any drugs. Makes them promise they won't.

I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used. I talked to my kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them.

On February 28 I went back to the computer store. They didn't have the 3 pack which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went home and set it down beside my computer. On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get up. He didn't move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell back asleep. He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead.

I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy, that only the propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM. I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kids ages 9 through 15. They even have a name for it. It's called dusting. A take off from the
Dust Off name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy. A boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn't hurt you. It's just compressed air. It can't hurt you. His best friend said no.

Kyle was wrong. It's not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant called R2. It's a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a heavy gas, heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out that's why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain, to your heart. Kyle was right. It can't hurt you. IT KILLS YOU!

The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level that kills you. It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly wrong. Roll the dice and if your number comes up you die. IT'S NOT AN OVERDOSE. It's Russian Roulette. You don't die later. Or not feel good and say I've had too much. You usually die as you're breathing it in, if not you die within 2 seconds of finishing 'the hit.' That's why the straw was still in Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open.

The experts want to call this huffing. The kids don't believe its huffing. As adults we tend to lump many things together. But it doesn't fit here. And that's why it's more accepted. There is no chemical reaction, no strong odor. It doesn't follow the huffing signals. Kyle complained a few days before he died of his tongue hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite. If I had only known. It's easy to say hey, it's my life
and I'll do what I want. But it isn't. Others are always affected. This has forever changed our family's life. I have a hole in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I can't describe it. There's nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don't ever cry. I do what I'm supposed to do but I don't really care. My kids are messed up. One won't talk about it. The other will only sleep in our room at night. And my wife, I can't even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were safe because of Thor. I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and talked to our kids about them.

After Kyle died another story came out. A probation Officer went to the school system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will tell you they don't have a drug problem there. They don't even have a dare or plus program there. So rather than tell everyone about this 'new' way of getting high they found, they hid it.

The probation officer told the media after Kyle's death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have told the media and I had heard, it wouldn't have been in my house.

We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off isn't new and some 'professionals' do know about. It just isn't talked about much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it.

April 2nd was 1 month since Kyle died. April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And every weekday I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and waiting to see him get off the bus. I know Kyle is in heaven but I can't help but wonder if I died and went to Hell.

This Officer is asking for EVERYONE who receives this email to forward it to everyone in their address book, even Law Enforcement Officers. Even if you do not have children, you can still forward this to friends & family who do.

I checked it out and Snopes.com confirms it is a real story and adds to it.

snopes.com

I get a lot of crazy emails everyday that are chain letters or urban legends. I always check them out or just delete them. (Mostly delete them)

I truly hope all parents are made aware of stuff like this. We all must keep informed in this global neighborhood.

[edit on 9/4/08 by Rhain]

reply to post by Rhain


I feel very sad for you.

you should sue the makers for not warning about the dangers for a $100 million.


also why are american kids so screwed up that they need to be on a high all the time...?

sniff this snort that..inject this inject that...


american kids should all be packed of to poverty africa to live there with the bare minimum for a few years instead of brain washing with britney crap.


also a damp cloth is all you need to clean a keyboard.


americans are so lazy they have invent a chemical spray for it.


i actually wash mine in warm water and leave in the sun to dry outside on the clothes line.



[edit on 10-4-2008 by esecallum]

I had a few friends that "dusted" for a brief period, They were just stupid punks back then that would try anything, they also learned that if you hold the can upside down and spray your skin you will have a burn scar for several years. I really wonder about the punks walking the streets these days, I mean who comes up with this stuff, somebody somewhere had to try inhaling several different products until they found dust off.

I keep a lot of things in my home.

Dust off is not one of them.


Don't have any kids either, but they sure as hell would not be allowed into the workshop anyway, where I keep all my alcohol, acetylene, acetone, kerosene, propane, butane, sulphur, benzene, iodine, gasoline, chlorine, whitespirit, gunpowder, primers, black powder, nitrocellulose, nitrogen gas, hydrogen peroxide, lye, morphine... yup.. you could have a lot of fun with that stuff, one way or another

I was a bit skeptical of this so I checked it up on snopes (urban legend website). Just to be clear to everyone before they reply.....

This is true....completely true!

Shocked me...lol

Here's the link anyway, so now nobody can bag the op's story

www.snopes.com...

Its very true. Been happening for the better part of ten years or so atleast to my knowledge. Always good to bring up topics like this for parents though, its a VERY dangerous way for kids to get high. It seems like any more people will try to use anything to get high because our government outlaws the safer chemicals.

It's just basically "huffing" -- it's been around alot longer than 10 years, no offense to prior poster (I gave you a star) Kids started looking for aerosols to "huff" probably at least twice that long now. It is the WORST kind of thing someone can do in regards to trying to "get high" -- something like this is a great point added to the argument to other 'drugs' being legal. At the very least, marijuana.

I knew a kid in highschool... ummm... 25 years ago. He died at his kitchen table from ultimately drowning. Drowning? you ask... sure... a towel over top his head... face overtop a bowl of gasoline... huffing it with his head all covered up... passed out into the bowl and sucked in the gasoline. That's the extreme of what huffing can get ya' I guess. The least is a whole lot of dead braincells. I believe this is actually part of the lack of "common sense" problem in this country today.

Originally posted by OzWeatherman
I was a bit skeptical of this so I checked it up on snopes (urban legend website). Just to be clear to everyone before they reply.....

This is true....completely true!

Shocked me...lol

Here's the link anyway, so now nobody can bag the op's story

www.snopes.com...

Thanks for the post OzWeatherman.

But as you can see in my OP I had already checked on the validity of the story and posted the snopes link as well.

I posted this so we can all be aware that kids do the darnedest things.

It's not only dustoff though.

Kids get high from ALL types of spray cans!


If you have whipped cream on cans, that is the same as dustoff, although hard to get high off, because of the cream blocking any large stream of the gas available. If you have cooking grease on spray cans, kids also get high off that. The same propellant is used in all spray cans, even paint but there you have the same problem as with the whipped cream cans.

Here there is a ban on cooking grease in spray cans too, for people under 18.



All this getting high off household stuff is a sign of the negative society kids are growing up in today, where getting high is the only way they get of feeling good.
Public schools are hell, I'm not talking about kids getting picked on, although they do, but rather the curriculum.
Put them in private schools or take them out and teach them yourselves. They will become smarter and will have good values and will make good decisions in life.

Get rid of all fluoride, buy guns and carry them, and DON'T go to church, because those are already under the control of the propaganda networks. When was the last time your priest was apologetic about immigrant crime? He doesn't know #. Muslims are NOT people of GOD. They denie the very essence of being a christian, they denie Jesus, the crusifixion and resurrection, and they denie the consept of SIN and saving from sin. Their religion is an instruction manual in how to lie convincingly. Their "god" allah which when you take the arabic letters of "allah" and write them in greek, they say "666 in the name of allah". "and the number of his name is 666"

"the devil is a kindly charming man"

the word allah is a serpent reading a book. Look it up.


There are 6,666 verses in the koran.
Muslims consider 666 the number of allah and the most holy number in the world.
They love death instead of life.
They put death before life. "we die and live for allah" they say.
Satan also does this, and also the theory of evolution, where all life starts with death and destruction in this theory.


Let this stand as truth, because if anyone can not bear it, then why not?


But do not go out and kill all muslims, if you are attacked you can kill them. If they refuse Jesus then also kill them, because they will fight you. But the wars right now are just to stir up the muslims and then pull out and let them attack all of christianity in a giant wave of 200 000 000.

If you have whipped cream on cans, that is the same as dustoff, although hard to get high off, because of the cream blocking any large stream of the gas available.

Sorry, but this could not be further from the truth. The gas in whipped cream canisters is n2o, or nitrous oxide. This is the same gas they give you when you go to the dentist, or have any surgical procedure that requires anesthesia. A comment like this just opens my eyes even more to the ignorance of society.

Dust off contains TOXIC and HARMFUL chemicals, where nitrous oxide is on the other hand, im sorry, quite safe actually.

Originally posted by Rhain

Originally posted by OzWeatherman
I was a bit skeptical of this so I checked it up on snopes (urban legend website). Just to be clear to everyone before they reply.....

This is true....completely true!

Shocked me...lol

Here's the link anyway, so now nobody can bag the op's story

www.snopes.com...

Thanks for the post OzWeatherman.

But as you can see in my OP I had already checked on the validity of the story and posted the snopes link as well.

I posted this so we can all be aware that kids do the darnedest things.

Whoops my apologies....I didnt read the stuff at the end of the story

Good job on checking it out before posting it though. Not many people do that

Yeah, I found out about it when I was carded buying some one time. Was't surprised, probably some of the idiots i knew and know have done or do it. There are a million and one ways to get high off of something, even gummi bears, if you know what you're doing.
Never used the stuff to clean my keyboard, mainly used it as a quick way to get he dust out of the heat sink on my CPU fan, and some of the dust out of my power supply. Sometimes turned it over to cool down some of the wax stuff i worked on.

reply to post by OzWeatherman


Thank OzWeatherman. Hey no biggy, as long as word gets out about this and other potential hazardous stuff.

My own children were pretty surprised that kids would jeopardize their lives just to get high.

Originally posted by deadline527
Sorry, but this could not be further from the truth. The gas in whipped cream canisters is n2o, or nitrous oxide.

In my country the gas in whipped cream is BUTANE.

Originally posted by Rocambole

Originally posted by deadline527
Sorry, but this could not be further from the truth. The gas in whipped cream canisters is n2o, or nitrous oxide.

In my country the gas in whipped cream is BUTANE.

Ouch! really? wow.. bet that really changes the taste, lol. I stand corrected then. Here in the united states they use nitrous oxide which is the same gas many medical professions use, as well as what many party goers enjoy filling balloons with in the parking lots of concerts, sporting events, and so on.

Yeah, unfortunately "huffing/dusting" has been a problem for well over a decade. I'm more than a bit surprised that a cop, especially one who specializes in drugs (K9 unit), hadn't heard of such. This leads me to believe that the e-mail is either fake (for dramatic effect), or reeeeeally old and passed around for ages.

Regardless, it is good for parents to be aware of such dangers. No one wants their kid(s) to die, or to end up looking like this guy...



[edit on 4/14/08 by redmage]

Originally posted by redmage
Yeah, unfortunately "huffing/dusting" has been a problem for well over a decade. I'm more than a bit surprised that a cop, especially one who specializes in drugs (K9 unit), hadn't heard of such. This leads me to believe that the e-mail is either fake (for dramatic effect), or reeeeeally old and passed around for ages.

Regardless, it is good for parents to be aware of such dangers. No one wants their kid(s) to die, or to end up looking like this guy...

[edit on 4/14/08 by redmage]

Whats wrong with that? Obviously he used the wrong color blush!