Carbon Monoxide- Dangerous Indoors and Out

Recently, six people were killed in a New York home when an air conditioning unit pulled carbon monoxide polluted air from a neighboring furnace and pumped it throughout the house while they slept. The alarm that could have detected the poisonous gas has been turned off.

Carbon monoxide can be deadly outside your home as well. It forms when carbon-based fuels burn incompletely. When you inhale the gas, it replaces the oxygen in your bloodstream. Since your body cannot use carbon monoxide and lacks the essential oxygen it needs to survive, your body will literally starve to death.

The symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning mimic other conditions, so you may not even realize that you have been affected. The symptoms include headache, fever, skin rashes, dizziness, weakness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, chest pain and confusion. If enough carbon monoxide gets into your system, you could lose consciousness and even die.

Dr. R. Blaine Easley, resident physician in anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland states that there have been scattered reports of outdoor carbon monoxide poisoning. "There is not a lot of research done on machines that have to run outside and open-air exposure needs to be more looked into and studied."

"What people should be aware of," Easley advises, "is whether a number of people are having the same kind of symptom. In boating, the symptoms are like seasickness, and most people wouldn't clue into the fact that they might have been exposed." If you think that you may have been exposed, get emergency medical treatment.