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Is Your Family Safe from Carbon Monoxide Poisoning?

Have you tested your carbon monoxide detector lately?

Do you even have one?

If you don’t, please, please, please go buy one RIGHT NOW. It could save your life.

This is the time of year when reports of carbon monoxide poisoning increase dramatically. People are indoors, houses are closed up tight against winter drafts. Furnaces, wood stoves and fireplaces are going full tilt. According to the CPSC (Consumer Products Safety Commission) around 200 people die accidentally and thousands more are injured from carbon monoxide poisoning each year. It is caused by defective functioning of gas furnaces, water heaters and fireplaces, or by using gas grills, snowblowers, generators or other fuel burning machines in an enclosed area. And it is exacerbated by new weatherization programs that seal houses against heat loss but , as a result,  also increase carbon monoxide concentration.

Carbon monoxide is created from the combustion (burning) of fuel. It is a colorless and odorless gas, which makes it especially dangerous, because you can be poisoned without knowing it. Symptoms like headache, dizziness and nausea can be a tip-off, but not if you’re sleeping, which is when most deaths occur.

To protect your family against carbon monoxide poisoning, you need to do two things:

1. Have your furnace, water heater and other gas burning appliances checked yearly by a qualified technician to make sure they are functioning properly.
2. Buy and install a carbon monoxide detector on each floor of the house as well as in the area where the furnace and water heater are, for early detection of a CO leak. You can buy them at any hardware store for $25-45 apiece.

Here’s a one-page fact sheet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about carbon monoxide poisoning.

Tags: carbon monoxide detectors, CO poisoning