Further to yesterday’s piece on nitrous oxide comes a use for the gas in soothing a broken heart. Possibly.

My experiment involved buying a can of whipped topping, and obtaining a large plastic freezer bag (a large Baggie). No no no, I did not stick my head in the bag. It wouldn’t fit anyway! The bag is way too small to put your head in, unless you’re a goddam mutant. What I did was stick the nozzle of the spray can deep into the bag, place the bag over my nose and mouth as best I could (with the rest of the can still sticking out), and shoot a blast of whipped cream into the bag while inhaling deeply. The cream fell to the bottom. I breathed the vapors. And I held my breath for a while (at least 15 seconds), to make sure the gases got trapped in my blood.

Personally I think you’d receive a far more effective happy gas fix from your dentist if you require it for this purpose though.

I’m not sure that my dentist would approve of me cancelling visits on the basis I’m trying to reduce my nitrous oxide footprint, but given that happy – or laughing – gas emissions are having a damaging effect on Earth’s ozone layer it might be time to consider curtailing the use of the gas. Or going to the dentist if you’d prefer to go that route.

“Right now, nitrous oxide is the most important ozone-depleting gas that is emitted,” says A. R. Ravishankara of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, lead author of the new research. “It will continue to be so unless something is done.”