Why Is It Dangerous To Hold Your Breath While Scuba Diving?
It’s dangerous to hold your breath while scuba diving because if you do you risk a lung over expansion. A lung over expansion can lead to a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) or an arterial gas embolism (which can lead to a stroke). You’ll learn in your diver training the most important rule in scuba diving is to not hold your breath. You’ll learn about Boyle’s law, where the air in a diver’s lungs expands during ascent and contracts during descent. Breath holding underwater can result in one of the above two serious injuries and even death.