I'm a bit confused by reports of three workers who died on the weekend in the Townships, specifically that they died from inhaling "deadly argon gas." Argon is about as nonreactive as an element gets. Our air is 1% argon, but it's more or less irrelevant since it doesn't interact with anything and certainly doesn't hurt anybody.

I presume these people died because there was so much argon that there wasn't any oxygen. I've heard of someone dying because they were working in a tank that had nitrogen in it, for the same reason. The gas is not deadly – it just displaces oxygen.

(Later edit: the story's been straightened out a bit, although "fumes" is still a bit misleading.)
posted at 11:19