Carbon monoxide and alarms
Utah's medical and public safety community has been educating the public about carbon monoxide for years, but I never heard any concern about the alarms designed to safeguard people.
That changed in early August when I heard about a notice concerning the same kind of alarms found aboard a houseboat in which eight people were poisoned. The alarms' manufacturer had issued a notice saying the devices may not sound for low concentrations of carbon monoxide.
Then I learned about a Coast Guard study finding problems with alarms. I got curious.
With support from my editors, I started digging into carbon monoxide alarms. Here's the other documents I used to investigate:
— A preliminary report from the National Park Service. Rangers investigating the June poisoning at Lake Powell discovered there had been a notice concerning the alarms.
— Consumer Product Safety Commission's Website. Type a product name into site's search engine and you can find related documents.
— Consumer Product Safety Commission database. This is a database of consumer complaints, documented problems and deaths and injuries caused by products. The data is maintained by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.
— Assorted studies. The investigating agency or firm was usually nice enough to provide me a free copy.
I also have Freedom of Information requests pending to a few federal agencies. Follow-up stories might be coming.
— NC
Labels: FOIA
2 Comments:
We have been aware of this for 13 years and developed a calibrated test kit called Detectagas to test CO alarms in 1996.
We are glad that people are starting to realise that CO alarms need testing and they only last around five years although devastated that is is taking deaths to raise this issue. Our past attempts to work with Legislators and Alarm manufacturers have failed.
100 million detectors in the USA and 10 million in the UK. Half of these are probably not working but if you press the test button which only sounds the buzzer they will appear to be working OK.
Write to your Senator and insist that the legislation is changed to include mandatory sensor inclusive testing of CO alarms with calibrated test gas. The NFPA have already said that this is the ONLY way to test CO Alarms.
UL need to amand the Standard (UL2034)for CO Alarms and QUICK.
An "end of life" facility on an alarm which they have proposed as the answer to this issue could be just that !
More info on www.detectagas.com
As a security system dealer, I've always tried to educate my customers on the lifespan of life safety devices. Carbon Monoxide(CO) detectors have a limited lifespan, usually not reliable after 5 years. That's pretty scary when you consider John's 100 million detector statistic.
I am able to offer annual smoke detector testing with canned smoke products; however, there hasn't been anything available for the CO detectors. I believe the test button on the front of these detectors does nothing but test the sounder of the detector.
I'm glad to see there is finally a product available that can ensure the functionality of CO Detectors.
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