WITHIN a decade, divers will be able to take a pill that allows them to stay under water longer without risking decompression sickness when they get to the surface. That is the prediction of a team that thinks it has stumbled across a totally new way of preventing the bends.
The risk of the bends severely limits how long divers breathing compressed air can stay under water without having to make decompression stops on the way back up. At 30 metres, the safe period is just 20 minutes. Higher pressures at depth force nitrogen from the air in divers’ lungs…
