Tuesday 10 August 2010

Carbon monoxide poisoning


Are you off to university this year, or leaving home and escaping from your parents?
Are you planning to move into rented accommodation?
Well, it might be a good idea to invest in a carbon monoxide detector, especially if you think you have a dodgy landlord.
I had a fascinating discussion with a British Gas engineer who told me all about unscrupulous landlords who fit shiny new gas appliances in a property in order to pass the safety inspection. Then they take out the ‘new’ appliances after the inspection has been successfully passed and install old, nasty appliances in their place. The ‘new’ appliances are then re- used in the next property that is due for inspection and so the process of substituting old for new is repeated.

There are about fifty deaths a year in the UK from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Carbon monoxide is a silent killer. All you may notice is general ill health to start with, such as headache, nausea, dizziness - vague flu-like symptoms, but without the temperature.
Left undetected it can lead to death.

2 comments:

Ewarwoowar said...

Oh Sue, this is so so true.

About 2 years ago whenever we sat in the lounge we began to get some of the symptoms you have listed above. After a while we twigged that there might be a problem with the gas fire, so we called someone out to look at it.

The man said it was in incredibly bad condition and if we had just left it, there was a good chance one of us would have died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Makes you think.

Nowadays we have a piece of card next to it which will detect if there's ever a problem again. Well worth investing in one, y'all!

Sue's Blog said...

Ewar – that is really scary. It is a good job that you realized what the problem was and were all OK.