Thousands of People Die Each Year from Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

I used to like to live dangerously when I was younger. It's a wonder that I survived. At one period in my twenties, I lived out in the country in a mobile home that had both a fireplace and a kerosene heater. It also had a gas furnace, but the place was so drafty in the wintertime that it cost me a fortune to heat it with gas, so it was barely used.

I burned wood in the fireplace and ran the kerosene heater. They did a pretty good job of keeping the house warm. But a flimsy trailer can become fully engulfed by fire in under three minutes according to a fireman friend of mine. So I had two good sources of ignition and could have gone up in flames at any time. Back then I didn't have any smoke detectors either.

One night I decided to use a little of the kerosene from the heater to start the wood burning in the fireplace. I was using charcoal lighter, but that got to be a little expensive, so I tried the kerosene. Little did I know that kerosene is a lot more flammable than charcoal lighter fluid. I doused the wood heavily with the kerosene just like I had done in the past with the lighter fluid.

It went up in a whoosh and nearly burned my eyebrows off. Then the free-standing metal fireplace got red hot and the ceiling started to smoke from the heat. The room was so hot it was unbearable. I opened the front door and stood there, telephone in hand, waiting to call the fire department at the first sign of flame. Fortunately after a few minutes the fire died down.

But at least with the flame I could have seen what was about to kill me. But there was also a more silent danger lurking in that mobile home: carbon monoxide. It could have come from either the furnace, the fireplace, or the kerosene heater and have been just as deadly.

Carbon monoxide is an odorless gas that can come from any sort of material that is burned. It's found in car emissions and cigarette smoke, as well as emissions from heaters and furnaces that aren't working properly.

Some people commit suicide by leaving the car running and sitting inside it in a garage or other enclosed space. It's a pleasant way to go, but afterward there you are laying in your casket a bright cherry red color, and everybody is snickering at you.

The reason that you turn red is that the carbon monoxide takes the place of the oxygen in your bloodstream. As a matter of fact, one of the ways that you can tell that a person is suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning is that their face starts to turn red.

Now that the winter heating season has started, emergency rooms at local hospitals are seeing a lot more cases of carbon monoxide poisoning. According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

"'Tis not the season to be poisoned by carbon monoxide, says the American College of Emergency Physicians. Still, 400 people die and another 20,000 visit emergency rooms and 4,000 are hospitalized because of carbon monoxide primarily from malfunctioning heaters and furnaces, according to the organization."

Symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning are similar to the flu. They include headache, reddening of the skin, weakness, nausea, chest pain, and being confused.

One sure way to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning is to install a carbon monoxide detector on every level of your home. Also, it pays to have all of your heating appliances checked once a year and kept in good working order.

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/article_3b5f3e34-0872-11e0-9e39-00127992bc8b.html