Carbon Monoxide
Dozens of families die every year from needless carbon monoxide poisoning.
Don’t let this happen to you!
The two major - and avoidable - reasons are:
1) A major combustion appliance such as the furnace was not properly vented
2) They did not have a CO detector
Take Action! If you do not have one install a Carbon Monoxide Detector Today.
Installing a CO detector in your house is the most important step you can take to protect yourself from this poisonous gas. There is very little excuse for not doing so. They are relatively inexpensive (well below $100), available at hardware stores, and easy to install (just put in batteries and plug into wall outlet).
There is no other way to tell whether you have poisonous CO gas building up in your home. Most of us accept the need for smoke detectors. CO detectors should be considered in the same light.
Do you have the following in your home?
OIL or GAS FURNACE- Your oil-buring or natural gas furnace is the most likely cause of CO2 buildup in your home. Approximately 75% of CO poisonings involve a faulty furnace. The way they vent gases from your home (CO) from your house can change over time and lead to a backup in your basement. This can be prevented with an annual inspection in the fall - prior to the heating season.
Call your gas company or fuel distributor. This should be a routine part of your yearly preparation for the winter season. Your fuel company has trained staff ready to inspect your furnace.
BACK-UP GENERATOR - Many people have a back-up generator so that they will continue to have electricity in the event of an electrical outage. Back-up generators tend to be used most when power goes out from a damaging wind or ice storm. People have been killed from improperly using these generators. This may be easy to do when your power is out and your home is damaged from a storm. You may not think straight and make a fatal mistake involving CO.
The mistake is running the generator indoors, such as in an attached garage, basement or enclosed porch. These generators run on gasoline and produce plenty of CO. They cannot be used indoors safely. It is fine to store them inside, butonce operating they need to be outdoors.
KEROSENE HEATER - some people use space heaters that burn kerosene to warm up a particular room. These devices have caused fires in the past and there are still concerns today over fire safety. Aside from that, they can put CO into your home’s air. They have no built in ventilation system so the waste gas can build up in the room where it is used.
IF you run a kerosene heater, do so with caution! To cut down on your CO exposure, always run a kerosene heater with the room door open and the window cracked open to bring in fresh air. While not ideal, this is the safest way to operate these heating appliances.
UNVENTED GAS LOGS - In recent years a gas appliance has been marketed that looks like wood logs. The “logs” don’t get consumed, only the natural gas that makes the flame. The appliance in the home is hooked up to either a propane tank located outside or a natural gas pipeline.
This is all fine. The problem is that these devices are promoted as “unvented,” claiming that you don’t need to vent the gases that come off of them. The idea is that you keep the flue on the chimney closed and this keeps the heat in the room. They are thus promoted as a heat source as well as being decorative. Unfortunately, they can give off CO and nitrogen oxides at levels of health concern. Therefore, if you do have such a device, run it with the flue open as you would a normal fire.
In the case of free-standing ‘ventless’ fireplaces - avoid them!
GARAGE - The thing that makes your garage a CO hazared is your car. It burns gasoline and produces high levels of CO. Warming up a car in the gargage may be cozy and convenient, but it gives you a dose of CO. If the garage door is open the while time, this is not usually serious. However, forgetting toopen the garage door before turning the ignition can be fatal. It doesn’t take an idling car long to fill up the gargage with CO and poison the driver.
Warm up your car outside OR open the garage door prior to starting it up.
Click for more information on CO and related health effects.
