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Stories, Letters & Questions |
| My family and I just had an incredibly scary experience
with Carbon Monoxide. On February 17th, 2004 around 9 pm my husband started vomiting.
I thought it was just maybe a stomach virus. Around 11 pm I was getting ready
to go to bed. As I went to lay down I became very nauseus and lightheaded. As
I got up I felt as though my heart was beating funny and I got a cold feeling
throughout my body. I immediately got out of bed and went online to check what
the symptoms are for Carbon Monoxide poisoning. It turned out we had exactly what
the symptoms were. So I got my 2 year old son out of bed and told my husband to
get the dogs and to get out of that house. We arrived at my mom's house and I
called 911. The fire department went to my home and told us they do not know how
we survived. They said there is supposed to be 28% oxygen in your home, we had
3.2%. I don't know what made me think that it was Carbon Monoxide poisoning that
we were experiencing but I am so glad we got out of the house. Today is the first
day that we are back in. We got a new furnace and the chimney has been completely
fixed. We also have a Carbon Monoxide detector as well. What I want to know is,
I have been experiencing severe panic attacks. I just want to know if they will
go away as I am more comfortable with being in my home or is this possibly a long
term effect of being in the Carbon Monoxide? Thank you so much. Please everyone
get a Carbon Monoxide detector. They will save your life.
- The Chambers Family From PA This past week my young family of 5 was poisoned from Carbon Monoxide. We were lucky to make it out of the house alive. My youngest son awoke around 12:00 a.m. screaming. I asked him what was wrong,
but being autistic, he could not tell me. I brought him into the bathroom and
he hesitated before urinating therefore I assumed he might be starting a urinary
infection. He awoke me another 2 times, same screaming, same procedure. I was
concerned but he went right back to sleep. We were lucky as the readings upstairs were so high we were told we should not even have been able to stand. The senior firefighter told me that this was the highest reading they had ever seen in our city! Where was our Carbon Monoxide detector, you ask? It was put away in a closet because my autistic son was always playing with it! What a stupid thing to do. Please, if you have natural gas in your home, install a Carbon Monoxide detector
immediately. It could mean the difference between life and death! We were very lucky and are forever grateful to God above for having spared us. Thank-you. |
IT
WAS OCTOBER 11,2000 I WAS LYING IN BED WITH MY 3 1/2 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER MADYSON
AND I RECEIVED THE MOST HORRIBLE PHONE CALL OF MY LIFE. MY DAUGHTERS GRANDMOTHER
(HER DADS MOTHER) HAD CALLED US FROM DETROIT MICHIGAN WE LIVE IN GRAND RAPIDS,
TO TELL US SHE JUST FOUND JOEY (MADYSONS DAD) IN HIS HOUSE DEAD. HE WENT TO BED
THAT NIGHT WITH PROBABLY WHAT HE THOUGHT THE FLU AND NEVER WOKE UP AGAIN. HE WAS
27 YEARS OLD AND THERE ISNT A DAY THAT GOES BY THAT WE DONT THINK ABOUT HIM AND
HOW MUCH OUR DAUGHTER IS MISSING OUT BY NOT BEING TO SEE HIM. Today
I received the dreaded phone call from our son's school. He apparently had passed
out in class. When my husband and i reached the school, the paramedics had already
performed their necessary tests and said that our son seemed fine. Still panic-stricken,
we decided he should be seen by a doctor because this episode was just totally
out of character. Our son has always been generally healthy. I
suffered from Carbon Monoxide poisoning from April to late July last year after
moving into my new flat. I eventually 'crashed' suffering from panic attacks
and severe anxiety and went home to live with my parents. I have never experienced
such feelings before and was extremely content with my life when this happened.
I was so bewildered
I PRAY THEY DO
AS THE INSURANCE COMPANY My children and I made it out of a house that was leaking co @17ppm for some time.The doctor said it will be fine now,we still feel sick and it has been 6 weeks. My daughter is on a nebulizer and other breathing medications;although she never had asthma.I am thankfull we got out.I cannot stress how important a CO detector is. Is it possible to have CO leak inside your car. I seem to be getting the symptoms of dizzyness and nause whenever I go to and from work. I have a 1 hour commute and I drive with the air conditioner on most of the time. Will a CO detector work in the car? My sister died 12 yrs. ago. Her husband said it must have been suicide. She was drunk, returned from buying cigarettes (driving) late at night (1 block away)and pulled into the garage. They had been arguing earlier at a party. Her husband said he fell asleep on the sofa while she drove to the store (drunk) and he and the 7 pound dog were asleep in the lower level of the split level home. The police theorized that she returned home in approx. 15 minutes - as the neighbors reported - pulled in - closed the garage door and fell asleep! How is it possible that this attatched garage did not have any Carbon Monoxide seep into the home. He said the car was still running when he woke up 3 hours later. Neither he or the tiny dog were affected! Again, they were located in the house down 1/2 level just feet from the door that lead into the garage. He turned off the car and called (1) his attorney and (2) the police. Interesting he called his attorney first. When we got there at 6:00 a.m. the house of course, smelled of car fumes - even with all the windows opened. My sister and I have wondered for all these years - how was it that he nor the dog affected? Each year you hear of people warming their cars in the garage and Carbon Monoxide comes into their homes and kills them. Why was he left untouched? How does the poison travel? UP OR DOWN? Thanks for your opinion. My
name is ******* , I am a 35 year old female with children. I had a CO
I have had a problem with dizziness, which I notice when I go out, for several
years. It is relatively mild but I am concerned and wonder if it could be from
exhaust fumes from the freeway, which runs past the My husband drives a 1979 Chevy truck that has a bad exhaust system and has recently been suffering several of the symptoms of CO poisoning, He put a CO monitor in the truck and it went off because of the CO in there. He is stubborn and will not get rid of the truck. I am worried that one day I will get a phone call saying it's too late. He runs a snow plow busness with that truck and the last time he went out he was out for 3 hours and came home when he began vommiting. He refused to go to the hospital so I watched him all night long. He knows two men who died in similar situations and still refuses to get rid of the truck. I just want to know what to look for so that I can try to prevent anything.When he is in the truck for more than 5 minutes he begins to feel the dizziness and nausea. What can I do to change his mind? What are some of the possible side effects that we should look for as serious ones and how much exposure can he take before it is fatal? Please respond soon. Thank You for this website it was very helpful. It was really interesting to find your web site on Carbon Monoxide poisoning. I was poisoned at work in 1994. I still have health problems from the poisoning. I have been told that there is not enough research done on Carbon Monoxide poisoning to say whether there are long lasting health problems. I knew that there were, because I am proof. I would like to help in any that I can to find out more about this problem. I was not compensated at all from where I work because the doctors where I am from (a small town) that know anything about Carbon Monoxide poisoning. I would appreciate your input on my condition. Also, I would like to provide any assistance that I can to your research by giving my history of the poisoning. On
Wednesday and Thursday (jan 30&31 2002) Southeast Michigan experienced a
Hi
there, just after some advice. I live in a 6 bedroom student We
recently installed a ventless gas heater in our basement. My husband spent a few
hours in the basement one evening with the heater running. The next morning he
awoke feeling dizzy and somewhat nauseous. He stayed home from work, ate and napped
throughout the day. The next two days he went to work but now on the fourth day
is complaining of lightheadedness and a queasy feeling. We have not run the heater
since the first night. No one else in the house has been affected. I
just found your website today, but did not get through it all. It was great
and the best site on CO I've seen. What I was searching for were answers
to the questions below. We had a Carbon Monoxide detector go off two evenings ago. We called the gas company, and they sent someone out. They checked the furnace, water heater, and tested a heater vent, all were o.k. They then tested my oven, and it made their tester go off. It did not go off when the oven was off, but when the oven was on. I have always understood that Carbon Monoxide is an odorless, tasteless gas. The gas company employee told me that the smell that I smell when I turn on the oven, is actually Carbon Monoxide? Is that true, or is it odorless? I always remember that smell with all the gas ovens I've used, and thought it was just a gas smell. Anyhow, I asked her if I needed a new stove, and she said I could replace it, but that she and the other employee that was with her both have new stoves, and still bake with a window wide open. She suggested that I leave a window or even two open whenever I bake. I don't know if that is correct, or if I should replace it, or what. Also, would it be good to have our blood levels tested? We've had the detector ever since we've lived here, and it's never gone off before. Any suggestions you might offer would be appreciated. I have been researching as much as I can on your site. Thank you. Sheree Myself, son and
husband has been experiencing many symptoms.
A few years ago now we found what seemed to be the ideal country cottage to rent - a conversion of two old cottages and a lean-to kitchen/diner extension that offered views of two Severn bridges and lots of green Welsh farmland. I was working from home a lot, and boasted freely about our ability to have lunch on a patio next to a paddock that housed two retired horses. The cottage was heated by a fan-assisted gravity solid-fuel boiler in the kitchen which ran hot water and central heating, and a big wood burner front room heater which effectively backed on to the kitchen hearth. (The house was shaped like a 'U' with two long rooms joined at one end by a sort of utility area that I used for a study. The heaters were at the open end back-to-back through the dividing wall.) We had some careful instructions from the landlord about how to operate the boiler - emptying ashes and clearing out the flues at the back. "Otherwise it'll smell", he said. In our first year there the boiler started to smell, and we asked the landlord to investigate. He said the chimney probably needed sweeping, and we were a little surprised when he came around to do it himself, but thought he was just saving pennies. The chimney was swept and the smell went away. That pattern repeated the next year - smell / swept / gone. Janet (my wife) was complaining about headaches from time to time, but I argued it couldn't be the heating - the smells had gone. Toward the next Christmas the boiler seemed to go wrong. A fan should cut in from time to time to keep the boiler in, then go out when it had warmed up the coals. It seemed that the fan took a long time to come on, then would not cut out until the brass flue in the kitchen was so hot you couldn't stand near it - I touched it with a sheet of paper (fingers would have been suicidal) which charred immediately. We advised / complained to the landlord, who told us to pay special attention to the flue cleaning - "obviously" the flues were clogged up and the boiler couldn't regulate itself properly. We nagged until he came around to clean the boiler himself, and told us to try it again. During the time of the super-hot flue we got used to a variety of combustion smells - by this time I was out more during the day, but Janet stayed in the house - she doesn't drive and in Winter there's no great incentive to open windows or spend time outside. She got more headaches, increasingly depressed (or at least 'subdued'), and over late 1999 early 2000 began to have problems keeping meals down. We have a dog and cat who both sleep downstairs, and coincidentally the cat also started being very sick - sometimes so suddenly she would just wake up and throw up in place. About this time I also started getting headaches. -Told like this, it seems astonishing that we didn't put clues together, but we were both feeling like low-grade flue sufferers; tired, depressed, always under pressure, unable to get any energy or coherence together to do anything constructive. I'd also started feeling unhappy with food. We were both suffering more or less in silence, both assuming the other must be ill, but feeling somehow different symptoms. I also had private fears about heart problems - a few times walking around during the day I'd got to 'normal' flights of steps and after a few paces suddenly had major doubts about ever making it to the top. I was getting very out of breath, weak and forgetful. Being often busy and preoccupied I was used to forgetting something and then having a mental light go on when I was reminded. The 'so that's where I left the keys' reaction. But now I was being reminded of things I had absolutely no memory of doing. I rang someone to ask if I could drop in on him while I was in London, and was told I'd written the previous week to make an appointment. No light went on at all. I kept any fears to myself - it was only imagination and I didn't want to worry Janet. I finally got it together enough to insist that we had to go to the doctor when she started complaining of chest pains. I volunteered to go with her mainly for moral support in case of bad news. We made a joint appointment, and I was surprised when everything that Janet described applied exactly to me. I made some comment about the coincidence and 'even the cat gets sick'. Fortunately we had a doctor who saw a connection. His advice was 'shut down the heating NOW, and get an expert in to advise you.' He asked us to come back a day or so later to have a blood test done. We switched the boiler off and (in a cold February) tried to ventilate the house as much as possible. With a half load of coal the boiler took a good 12-18 hours to cool down, and despite everything we couldn't somehow believe that going home could kill us. We went for a blood test a day or so later, but did not get the results for a week. These eventually showed an elevated COH level, but (by that time) one that was out of any critical range. I'd done some research by the time the results arrived, and to have got to the nausea/ chest pains level it seemed that the only thing we had to look forward to was not waking up . We also did not know how long we'd been exposed - it seemed a safe bet that the boiler had been leaking CO whilst it was obviously faulty, but perhaps it had always been faulty.. (Back to the chronology) We had an expert in to look at the boiler, very reluctantly arranged by the landlord. He spent 10 minutes checking the flues in the kitchen and main room and slapped 'do not use' stickers on both. He commented "I'm surprised you're not dead" and seemed to mean it. After a very great deal of aggravation we found that the boiler in the kitchen had *not* been installed following the manufacturer's specifications. Apart from anything else it shared the previous (unlined) cottage chimney with the flue from the front room heater. And both heater flues stopped just inside the chimney space after going through a plate at ground floor ceiling level. By an unhappy coincidence the tops of both flues were level with our bedroom floor. There were all sorts of gaps between our room and the kitchen boiler area. We'd lived in a gas oven for 3+ years. Our GP mentioned while we were doing follow up visits that he'd sat next to a heating engineer at a local dinner. He was told a 'you wouldn't believe how bad it was' story that was us. We gathered that the effects of CO poisoning could take several months to appear, so spent the rest of last year waiting for the other shoe to drop. We're both in our 50's, and Janet is having sleeping, weight and depression problems. She had a slightly higher COH reading, and have had more exposure and is about half my body weight. I'm having similar problems, and trouble with words. I'm sort of a writer and talker by original trade - a financial services consultant and media relations type. In my copious free time I also help run a self-help group for bank and insurance customers. Yet I seem to have problems remembering some standard financial words and phrases. I had to use a spell-check to get 'Wednesday' right a little while ago. The feeling is like walking along a familiar pathway and coming to a large hole where you used to walk. We've got balance problems - Janet fell in the bath the other day and cracked a rib. I can sit on a chair and feel it swerve. I've also got some numbness and skin problems. We're at 12 months or thereabouts from our last CO exposure and still waiting. We fell out rather grandly with our landlord - reported him to our local environmental health agency and withheld rent for a while since he didn't bother to repair the boiler for several weeks. He served us with a 30 day repossession because he wanted to 'reoccupy' the premises. This is apparently a sure-fire repossession. We moved anyway to find a home with heat. |
| Family in carbon monoxide horror A SHOCKED family and their 15-month-old baby narrowly escaped death when they were poisoned with a killer gas while on holiday. |
Calling all Lawyers! |
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Updated: 25rd April 2007