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Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Hospitalizes Eight

By Jane Akre

p align="center"img title="Carbon monoxide almost poisons a famioy of eight in California." alt="Carbon monoxide almost poisons a famioy of eight in California." src="http://www.injuryboard.com/uploadedImages/InjuryBoardcom_Content/Blogs/News_Blog/News/CO molecule 500.jpg" border="0" //p table width="200" align="right" tbody tr tdp align="center"stronguLEARN MORE/u/strong/p ul liEPA on a href="http://www.epa.gov/iaq/co.html"font color="#800080"Carbon Monoxide/font/a /li lia href="http://www.epa.gov/air/criteria.html"font color="#800080"National Ambient Air Quality Standards/font/a -sets standards for indoor air/li lia href="http://cfpub2.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordisplay.cfm?deid=65766"font color="#800080"Carbon Monoxide and the Nervous System/font/a/li liCPSC on a href="http://www.cpsc.gov/generator.html"font color="#800080"Generator Danger/font/a/li liCPSC on a href="http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml07/07075.html"font color="#800080"CO Monitors/font/a /li liInjuryboard Help on a title="Carbon monoxide" href="/topic/carbon-monoxide-poisoning.aspx"Carbon monoxide/a /li /ul p align="center"IMAGE SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons/ carbon monoxide molecule / author: a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon-monoxide-elpot.png"font color="#800080"Benjah-bmm27/font/a/p p align="center" /p /td /tr /tbody /table pIt is a common occurrence this time of year,  families poisoned by carbon monoxide from a generator. /p pWednesday, three adults and five children were hospitalized with a title="carbon monoxide poisoning" href="http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11255536?source=most_viewed"carbon monoxide poisoning/a in unincorporated San Mateo County, California. When firefighters arrived, three of the children were unconscious. They were quickly revived with oxygen./p pIn this case, the adults started a 4,000-watt portable generator after their power was turned off for nonpayment. They used extension cords to carry the power into, not only their home, but also into a detached garage that was home to several others./p pThe adults knew there was a problem when one of the children, fell ill and was unresponsive. Firefighters found that the levels of the odorless and colorless gas in the home were at their highest reading./p pMenlo Park Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman said the home will be declared uninhabitable, but the family is lucky to be alive./p p"It wouldn't have taken very much longer," Schapelhouman said to a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_11260760"font color="#800080"the San Jose Mercury News/font/a. "Another 10 minutes and we would have begun to see fatalities."/p pAccording to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), hundreds of people die each year from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, and the death toll from carbon monoxide (CO) associated with generators has been steadily rising in recent years./p pThough the gas is odorless, symptoms of poisoning include severe headache, dizziness and nausea. The symptoms are not unlike the flu, a href="http://www.epa.gov/iaq/co.html"font color="#800080"according to the EPA./font/a Often people go to sleep and a href="http://cfpub2.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordisplay.cfm?deid=65766"font color="#800080"do not wake up./font/a /p p64 people reportedly died in 2005 from generator-related CO poisoning, and at least 32 in 2006, reports the a href="http://www.cpsc.gov/generator.html"font color="#800080"Consumer Product Safety Commission/font/a. /p pCarbon monoxide comes from unvented kerosene and gas space heaters; leaking chimneys and furnaces; back-drafting from furnaces; gas water heaters and gas stoves; generators and other gasoline powered equipment.  Automobile exhaust unvented in a garage is a source of carbon monoxide./p p /p pbConsumer Tips/b/p ul liA $30 detector is worth the investment./li liNever sleep in a room with an unvented gas or kerosene space heater./li liNever use portable generators inside homes or garages, even if doors and windows are open. Use generators outside only, far away from the home./li liHave your fuel appliances checked once a year by a professional./li liKeep CO alarms in the house, especially the rooms where you sleep./li liRunning an automobile or a barbecue in the garage is dangerous/li liMake sure the car and truck tail pipes are not clogged with snow or debris./li lispan lang="EN"Consider purchasing a vented space heater when replacing an unvented one./span/li lispan lang="EN"Use proper fuel in kerosene space heaters./span/li lispan lang="EN"Install and use an exhaust fan vented to outdoors over gas stoves./span/li lispan lang="EN"Open flues when fireplaces are in use./span/li lispan lang="EN"Choose properly sized wood stoves that are certified to meet EPA emission standards. Make certain that doors on all wood stoves fit tightly./span/li lispan lang="EN"Have a trained professional inspect, clean, and tune-up central heating system (furnaces, flues, and chimneys) annually. Repair any leaks promptly./span/li lispan lang="EN"Do not idle the car inside garage./span/li lispan lang="EN"C/spanheck your gas stove output. /li /ul pAverage levels in home without gas stoves is 0.5 to 5 parts per million (ppm).  With gas stoves they can reach 30 ppm or higher. While no standard for CO has been agreed upon for indoor air, the a href="http://www.epa.gov/air/criteria.html"font color="#800080"National Ambient Air Quality Standard/font/a for outdoor air are 9 ppm for 8 hours and 35 ppm for one hour. #/pa href="http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/carbon-monoxide-poisoning-hospitalizes-eight.aspx?googleid=253586"Originally posted/a at a href="http://www.InjuryBoard.com"InjuryBoard/a by a href="http://www.injuryboard.com/member-profiles/Jane-Akre"Jane Akre/adiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.injuryboard.com/~f/IBnationalnews?a=kwMVO"img src="http://feeds.injuryboard.com/~f/IBnationalnews?i=kwMVO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.injuryboard.com/~f/IBnationalnews?a=FiRRO"img src="http://feeds.injuryboard.com/~f/IBnationalnews?i=FiRRO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.injuryboard.com/~f/IBnationalnews?a=qeReO"img src="http://feeds.injuryboard.com/~f/IBnationalnews?i=qeReO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.injuryboard.com/~r/IBnationalnews/~4/488909916" height="1" width="1"/

Full post as published by InjuryBoard on December 18, 2008 (boomark / email).