According to snopes, it's accurate. http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/dustoff.asp.

*****
First, I'm going to tell you a little about me and my family. My name is Jeff. I
am a Police Officer for a city which is known nationwide for its crime rate. We
have a lot of gangs and drugs. At one point we were # 2 in the nation in
homicides per capita. I also have a police K-9 named Thor. He was
certified in drugs and general duty. He retired at 3 years old because he was
shot in the line of duty. He lives with us now and I still train with him
because he likes it. I always liked the fact that there was no way to bring
drugs into my house. Thor wouldn't allow it. He would tell on you. The reason I
say this is so you understand that I know about drugs.

I have taught in schools about drugs. My wife asks all our kids at least once a
week if they used any drugs.  

I like building computers occasionally and started building a new one in
February 2005. I also was working on some of my older computers. They were full
of dust so on one of my trips to the computer store I bought a 3 pack of DUST
OFF. Dust Off is a can of compressed air to blow dust off a computer. A few
weeks later when I went to use one of them they were all used. I talked to my
kids and my two sons both said they had used them on their computer and messing
around with them. I yelled at them for wasting the 10 dollars I paid for them.

On February 28th I went back to the computer store. They didn't have the 3 pack
which I had bought on sale so I bought a single jumbo can of Dust Off. I went
home and set it down beside my computer.

On March 1st, I left for work at 10 PM. Just before midnight my wife went down
and kissed Kyle goodnight. At 5:30 am the next morning Kathy went downstairs to
wake Kyle up for school, before she left for work. He was propped up in bed with
his legs crossed and his head leaning over. She called to him a few times to get
up. He didn't move. He would sometimes tease her like this and pretend he fell
back asleep. He was never easy to get up. She went in and shook his arm. He fell
over. He was pale white and had the straw from the Dust Off can coming out of
his mouth. He had the new can of Dust Off in his hands. Kyle was dead.

I am a police officer and I had never heard of this. My wife is a nurse and she
had never heard of this. We later found out from the coroner, after the autopsy,
that only the propellant from the can of Dust off was in his system. No other
drugs. Kyle had died between midnight and 1 AM.

I found out that using Dust Off is being done mostly by kid's ages 9 through 15.
They even have a name for it. It's called dusting, a take off from the Dust Off
name. It gives them a slight high for about 10 seconds. It makes them dizzy. A
boy who lives down the street from us showed Kyle how to do this about a month
before. Kyle showed his best friend. Told him it was cool and it couldn't hurt
you. It's just compressed air. It can't hurt you. His best friend said so.

Kyle was wrong. It's not just compressed air. It also contains a propellant
called R2. It's a refrigerant like what is used in your refrigerator. It is a
heavy gas, heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps
the good air, with oxygen, out. That's why you feel dizzy, buzzed. It decreases
the oxygen to your brain, to your heart. IT KILLS YOU.

The horrible part about this is there is no warning. There is no level that
kills you. It's not cumulative or an overdose; it can just go randomly, terribly
wrong.   IT'S NOT AN OVERDOSE. You don't die later. Or not feel good and say
I've had too much. You usually die as you're breathing it in, if not, you die
within 2 seconds of finishing 'the hit.' That's why the straw was still in
Kyle's mouth when he died. Why his eyes were still open. The experts want to
call this huffing. The kids don't believe its huffing. And that's why it's more
accepted. There is no chemical reaction, no strong odor. It doesn't follow the
huffing signals. Kyle complained a few days before he died of his tongue
hurting. It probably did. The propellant causes frostbite, if I had only known.

It's easy to say hey, it's my life and I'll do what I want. But it isn't. Others
are always affected. This has forever changed our family's life. I have a hole
in my heart and soul that can never be fixed. The pain is so immense I can't
describe it. There's nowhere to run from it. I cry all the time and I don't ever
cry. I do what I'm supposed to do but I don't really care. My kids are messed
up. One won't talk about it. The other will only sleep in our room at night. And
my wife, I can't even describe how bad she is taking this. I thought we were
safe because of Thor. I thought we were safe because we knew about drugs and
talked to our kids about them.

After Kyle died another story came out. A probation Officer went to the school
system next to ours to speak with a student. While there he found a student
using Dust Off in the bathroom. This student told him about another student who
also had some in his locker. This is a rather affluent school system. They will
tell you they don't have a drug problem there. They don't even have a dare or
plus program there. So rather than tell everyone about this 'new' way of getting
high they found, they hid it. The probation officer told the media after Kyle's
death and they, the school, then admitted to it. I know that if they would have
told the media and I had heard, it wouldn't h ave been in my house.

We need to get this out of our homes and school computer labs. Using Dust Off
isn't new and some 'professionals' do know about it. It just isn't talked about
much, except by the kids. They all seem to know about it. April 2 nd was 1 month
since Kyle died, April 5th would have been his 15th birthday. And every weekday
I catch myself sitting on the living room couch at 2:30 in the afternoon and
waiting to see him get off the bus. I know Kyle is in heaven, but I can't help
but wonder if I died and went to Hell.

Jeff