October 17, 2002
YOUR HEALTH
More States Force Homeowners
To Install Deadly-Gas Detectors
By ANDREA PETERSEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
A growing number of states and cities are requiring homes to install a device that detects the presence of carbon monoxide, a dangerous gas that kills 2,000 people a year and sickens many times that number.
Surprising to most homeowners, carbon monoxide is the leading cause of accidental poisoning in the U.S. Detectors have been available for almost a decade, to alert people to the gases -- odorless and colorless -- spewed out by faulty furnaces, stoves and even barbecue grills. However, fewer than one-third of American homes have these inexpensive devices, according to industry surveys.
Just as laws requiring smoke alarms spurred nearly every household to install them during the past 20 years or so, legislators and doctors are hopeful that the new carbon-monoxide detector requirements will have the same effect.
Starting next month, most homes sold in New York state -- new or resale -- must have a carbon-monoxide monitor. Similar laws have already passed in Rhode Island, New Jersey and West Virginia. A number of other states are contemplating legislation. Action is being taken at the local level too: Cities such as Chicago and St. Louis have ordinances requiring detectors.
"A detector can save families from something they can not control," says Stephen Gladstone, vice president of the American Society of Home Inspectors. "If somebody doesn't have a carbon-monoxide alarm and their heating system malfunctions, they might just not wake up." Nearly a decade ago, tennis star Vitas Gerulaitis died of carbon-monoxide poisoning from a faulty heater.
Legislation seems to have life-saving effects: Cities with ordinances that require carbon-monoxide detectors have much lower death rates from exposure to the gas than those that don't, according to a study published last year in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. In Chicago, for example, which does require carbon-monoxide detectors, 0.4% of those exposed to the substance during the time of the study died. In Los Angeles, 15% of those exposed died.
While fires and automobiles are the top producers of carbon monoxide, a typical family home has myriad possible culprits. Furnaces, kitchen stoves, water heaters, fireplaces, generators, camping stoves and charcoal barbecues -- anything that burns fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel fuel, wood and kerosene -- can produce dangerous levels of the gas.
Sidebar: DETECTING DEADLY GAS
Here are a few of the many carbon monoxide alarms on the market.
Detector Contact Price
First Alert Maximum Protection 800-323-9005 BRK Brands, Inc., Aurora, Ill. About $50
Kidde's Nighthawk Combo Alarm 800-654-9677, Kidde PLC, London Generally retails for $40 to $50
Senco Model One 800-858-0158, Senco Sensors, Inc., Vancouver, B.C. $49.95
<End of sidebar>
One June day three years ago, Thad Dohrn turned on the air conditioner in his three-bedroom house in Ames, Iowa, for the first time that summer. The next morning his wife, Stephanie, complained of a headache. As he walked to the bathroom to check on her, he passed out. He came to, but then Stephanie passed out. "She came to and we walked outside. I was crying on the phone to our neighbors and was all confused," says Mr. Dohrn, now an associate athletic director at Columbia University in New York.
Mr. and Mrs. Dohrn were taken to the hospital and diagnosed with carbon-monoxide poisoning. The cause: A mechanical malfunction caused the air conditioner and the heat to be on simultaneously. The system didn't have proper ventilation either. And the Dohrns didn't have a carbon-monoxide monitor.
Carbon monoxide is produced when these fossil fuels don't burn completely. Incomplete or "dirty" burning can occur if rust or grime falls into a furnace burner, if equipment cracks or rusts, if gas pressure is out of adjustment or if there isn't proper ventilation for these devices. Health officials have seen carbon-monoxide poisoning occur after people warm up their cars in their garages, even for a few minutes.
"It can be produced so easily and it can spill into a home so easily," says Tom Greiner, an Iowa human-housing engineer who is pressing for a law in his state to require detectors.
Today's carbon-monoxide detectors don't go off anytime they sense the gas. Earlier versions of the device (those made before 1998) did that and were tripped off so easily -- a car pulling into the garage could cause it to go off -- that many consumers saw them as an annoyance and were inclined to ignore them. New models go off when they sense a certain level of gas over a period of time. The detectors measure how many molecules of carbon monoxide are present in one million molecules of air (parts per million). Government regulations state that 50 parts per million is the maximum concentration a healthy adult should sustain over an eight-hour period. (A concentration of 400 parts per million can be life-threatening within three hours.)
Consumers can choose from inexpensive no-frills monitors that simply beep and cost around $15 to fancier $50 devices that have digital displays and flash the concentration detected. There are also combination smoke and carbon-monoxide alarms. Safety experts recommend that an alarm be placed outside bedrooms and on each floor of the house. Some also suggest putting a detector near carbon-monoxide-producing devices such as furnaces. Manufacturers suggest that people replace their alarms every seven years since sensors can degrade and electronics can fail. Companies that sell detectors include U.K.-based Kidde PLC (www.kiddesafety.com1) and BRK Electronics' First Alert (www.firstalert.com2).
Symptoms of carbon-monoxide poisoning vary depending on the concentration of gas in the air. Mild carbon-monoxide exposure often mimics the flu or food poisoning -- with headaches, nausea, vomiting and fatigue -- and is thus commonly misdiagnosed. Higher concentrations of carbon monoxide can cause almost immediate dizziness and nausea and can lead to convulsions, coma and death within a few hours, or even minutes at extremely high concentrations. Small children and those with heart and respiratory conditions are most at risk. And some patients complain of neurological symptoms months and even years after exposure.
Carbon monoxide suffocates the cells of the body: It enters the bloodstream and prevents the release of oxygen to the tissue. The only treatment for carbon-monoxide poisoning is to immediately leave the source of the gas and to administer oxygen. Some patients with severe exposure are placed in hyperbaric oxygen chambers (the same treatment for scuba divers with the "bends").
Write to Andrea Petersen at andrea.petersen@wsj.com3
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