O Pioneer: He Aims to Pull Money Out of the Air

"If you hold it down continuously," he says, now holding his breath like a stoner who's just hit a bong, "it's about four and a half minutes of oxygen."

Once DelGaudio exhales, he explains the benefits of canned oxygen, which he says include an increase in energy and a cure for hangovers. But it's bigger than that. DelGaudio's case for oxygen spans history and disciplines, and it includes a claim that the atmosphere of Earth -- which is 21 percent oxygen -- contains much less oxygen than it did even a few hundred years ago. He blames this on deforestation and the rise of the industrial economy, or as he succinctly puts it: "More factories, less oxygen. More processed food, less oxygen in your body. You don't need a doctor to figure that out."

Asked for some citations for this remarkable claim, DelGaudio referred to the work of an author and chiropractor named Kurt Donsbach, whose many brushes with the law include pleading guilty to practicing medicine without a license and allegations of fraud by the New York attorney general. So, just to be on the safe side, we decided to run all this by Martin Feuer, a physician and the former chairman of the pulmonary medicine department of Beth Israel Medical Center. He listened to a description of Instant Oxygen and then let out a somewhat contemptuous sigh.

"There just aren't any physiological benefits to breathing oxygen," he said. "If you don't have enough oxygen in your brain for even a minute, you're in bad trouble. So the body has an amazingly efficient system to keep the flow of oxygen going."

Doctors are dismissive, to put it mildly, of canned oxygen. Some will say it can help athletes catch their breath, which is why you'll see football players on the sidelines breathing oxygen. And oxygen is used to treat such illnesses as asthma and emphysema. But if you're healthy and not trying to recuperate from a sprint or two, breathing oxygen for recreational purposes, for a few minutes, won't have any effect, good or bad.

"Your blood is 96 percent saturated with oxygen," says Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association. "If you breathe a couple minutes of pure oxygen, maybe you'll get that to 97 percent, 98 percent, but it's not a difference you'll notice."

Edelman thinks it's unlikely anyone will get hurt sniffing four minutes of oxygen. He just thinks it's pointless.

"It's all placebo," he says. "People are just wasting their money."

DelGaudio has heard from the skeptics, but they don't convince him. He thinks doctors are simply uninformed when it comes to the benefits of oxygen, noting that few spend any significant time on the subject in medical school. But more important -- and he underscores this a few times -- he isn't making any health claims about his product.

Actually, it might be more accurate to say that he'll kind of hint that Instant Oxygen is good for you, then he'll immediately disavow that idea. Then he'll re-hint and re-disavow. There's a practical reason for this cha-cha, since a health claim would invite the scrutiny of the Food and Drug Administration, which would then vet and regulate the product. Instant Oxygen is "not for medical use," as it says right on the can.

But does it even "refresh," as it promises on the label? There is only one way to find out, so this reporter purchased a can of Instant Oxygen from a Duane Reade. The spray has a mildly bad-breathy scent -- from the aerosol spray, one hopes -- and after a minute or two of inhaling and breath-holding, there was a mild sensation of lightheadedness. Which is what you get when you inhale and hold your breath, right?

"Some people aren't going to have any reaction to this product," DelGuadio warns. "Other people will tell me, 'I just ran three miles, and I never have run more than two.' "

Still others will feel like that creepy Dennis Hopper character in "Blue Velvet," who gets high from a tank of gas and carries on like a lunatic. Instant Oxygen makes you feel like you're doing something faintly illicit, something inappropriate, but there's no payoff. Not for this consumer anyway -- unless you count the giggle-inducing thought that someone in The Washington Post's accounting department will soon get a $16 receipt for a rather insubstantial meal.