Anyone know about Carbon Monoxide and its effects?

[vex]

Employee complaining of CO poisoning despite the fact that most of her symptoms appear at home and we now have 3 CO detectors here and none of them trigger an alarm.

Anyone here I can talk to off line to discuss further?

Thanks

Chris

[SuperlightR]

Do you have any gas appliances/heaters/ at work?

If so, it would be worth having them inspected for gas safety. We deal with residential homes and have to have a landlords gas safety cetificate each year by law.

She needs to call a corgi engineer TODAY/NOW if she thinks its at her home.
You need to call a corgi engineer TODAY/NOW to inspect your work to place protect your back.

symptoms as I understand.

sickness, tiredness, appears drunk, headaches, unconsiousness, death. all or some and no particular order.

Its vital if its at her home to get someone there to inspect today and before she goes to bed. Ventalate the property.

Edited by SuperlightR on Friday 12th January 14:01

Edited by SuperlightR on Friday 12th January 14:03

[billsnemesis]

I will check with Mrs Bills as this is right up her street but one point I am aware of is that CO monitors should be low in the room. They are the opposite of smoke detectors which go on the ceiling

We supply a CO monitor for our tenants and tell them to put it on the floor as CO is heavier than air and sinks

If you have yours high up they will not pick anything up until the room is full, by which time rigor mortis will have set in

[puggit]

CO monitors on the floor are only useful when a high dose builds up during a fire - with a light concentration the CO will be spread evenly across the room (CO is actually lighter than air).

I think the smoke from a fire pushes the CO to the ground as the smoke/hot air rises.

[HiRich]

SuperlightR said:

She needs to call a corgi engineer TODAY/NOW if she thinks its at her home.
You need to call a corgi engineer TODAY/NOW to inspect your work to place protect your back.

symptoms as I understand.

sickness, tiredness, appears drunk, headaches, unconsiousness, death. all or some and no particular order.

100parts per million leads to headaches within ten hours.
300ppm leads to headaches within the hour, coma overnight
600ppm is needed for death.
light symptoms clear pretty quickly in fresh air (e.g. the trip to work)

Like Superlight says, the Corgi inspector should be at your place NOW, just in case. If her symptoms appear outside work, you should demand she has the Corgi man in immediately, and send her home to wait (standing outside, of course...)

[vex]

Thanks for the comments,

Heating is was serviced by Corgi engineer immediately after Chrismas and given a clean bill of health (although waiting for the certificate)

From the research I have done you do not get symptoms once you are out of the environment. So headaches and general flu type feelings at home are generated by the home (IMO). Also, from what I have read int eh interweb (i need to re-find it) CO has a half life of between 4 and 6 hours, now correct me if I am wrong, but if she went to the doctors to be tested between Christmas and New Year but had not been in the office since the Friday before Christmas there is no way the high level reading are from the office.

Proving difficult to convince her that it could be her house, but I'll keep the presure on.

Could it be the cheap little 107 she is running around in?

Edited by vex on Saturday 13th January 22:24

[JonRB]

I studied this in Chemistry at school (ie. 20-odd years ago, so forgive me if I have misremembered). It's quite fscinating - the haemoglobin in your blood has a higher afinity for carbon monoxide (CO) than oxygen, so instead of binding to oxygen molecules and forming oxy-haemobglobin and carrying them round your body like its meant to it forms carboxy-haemoglobin which doesn't. So you essentially asphyxiate but without all the unpleasant gasping for breath oh-my-god-I'm-going-to-die stuff.

The reason that you need a certain level to kill is that your body detects that not enough oxygen is being carried around and starts manufacturing new haemoglobin like crazy. Up to a point it can cope, but beyond that it will kill you as it can't respond quick enough.

But enough of that, as others have said she needs to have her gas appliances checked at home and you should have yours checked too just to cover your arse.

Edit: Ah, I see you have done the latter. Well, she needs to do the former then.

You can get cheap CO detectors. Tell her to buy a load and stick them next to every appliance and also one in the car.
You can also get more expensive ones that are standalone or integrated into smoke alarms. If she is concerned about CO she should buy some of those too. And get her boiler serviced, of course.

Edited by JonRB on Sunday 14th January 10:20

[superlightr]

so has she died yet?

[aceparts_com]

Boots sell a pack of 2 CO detectors for £3. They change colour if the've detected an CO.

[vex]

nope.

Signed off for 2 weeks by doctor so now I have to pay sick pay for the priviledge!

Oh and still no CO alarm triggers here and her house has now also been tested.

Edited by vex on Tuesday 16th January 13:56

[superlightr]

vex said:

nope.

Signed off for 2 weeks by doctor so now I have to pay sick pay for the priviledge!

Oh and still no CO alarm triggers here and her house has now also been tested.

Edited by vex on Tuesday 16th January 13:56

bloody staff - they could at least kick the bucket after they moan so much.


What did the doc put on the cert?
Did she get her house tested?
Did you get your work place tested?

[GreenV8S]

As far as I can remember, the effect of CO exposure is cumulative and persistent over the short term, as it effectively neutralizes red blood cells. It can take days to recover from the immediate effects and weeks to fully recover. (This is second hand from somebody who spent too long in an engine test bay during the war, it could be rubbish but it's what he was told.)

[vex]

The three alarms we have here have never gone off.

Her house checks out as well.

I have not seen the sick note yet and need to confirm the volume (parts per million) of CO she had.

I hate this.

[JonRB]

GreenV8S said:

As far as I can remember, the effect of CO exposure is cumulative and persistent over the short term, as it effectively neutralizes red blood cells.

Blimey, Pete, is there an echo in here or something?

[BigAlinEmbra]

Is she a smoker? They've usually got a higher level of CO in their blood already.
Might be that something that's ok for non-smokers tips a smoker into suffering symptoms?

That said, it's usually cold/flu like symptoms, so she might just have some man-flu.


Personally I just reckon she's at it.