[Tommy plumber]

Story I heard from an inspector, somewhere out west a lower rough was on air test and some dropped a hammer and the pipe exploded.
Pieces of PVC cut them and he died as a result, the family tried to sue pipe manufacture and was told air test is not an approved testing method.

On Charlotte website it says a ballon plug blew out and killed someone.

We are primarily a service company, we do some remodels and I have one that needs inspected next week and want to avoid a water test.

We've had this discussion here in the past. High pressure air in a DWV system is very dangerous. For the reasons that you've stated. The pieces of plastic are like shrapnel from a hand grenade when they explode.

Since I've been in this trade, we've always tested the sanitary with water. One contractor that I worked for years ago, had a trailer with water jugs on it specifically for us to test our new construction ground-roughs and second roughs. The jobsites didn't always have water readily available for us to use for our tests.

Now with water piping, particularly copper, we would sometimes use air. It was much easier repairing a leaky copper joint when all you had in the pipe was air. One time my journeyman {I was still an apprentice} tested 2" copper water piping in the ceiling with air. It was for a Circuit City store. He had a leak up in the ceiling in the 2" copper. A whole lot easier to repair as opposed to water in that line.

 

[Tommy plumber]

He also said I could test with air But I read about that not being allowed any more in Philadelphia. ( I could be wrong about that though)

Smart move on your part not testing the plastic with air. We just had a recent thread on that very topic.