Builder Health And Safety Offences Leads To Carbon Monoxide Tragedy

Many times injuries and deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning could be avoided if we were to take action and install a carbon monoxide sensing device. However, there are times when our fate is not in our hands but those of professionals. Unfortunately in the article below, the professional in question took actions that resulted in the death of a man. In this instance, recognising the symptoms fast enough may help but sometimes the worst happens all too fast.

A builder in his 60s has been given a suspended prison sentence after building work resulted in the death of a business owner in Wandsworth Road.

Muhammad Javid Butt, 63, was found slumped against the wall of Taniya Dry Cleaners on October 5 2013.

Officers were called to the scene, where they noticed a strong smell of gas inside.

They left the drycleaners and Mr Butt, of Wensleydale Avenue, Ilford, to retrieve gas masks from their vehicle.

London Fire Brigade crews were called to help move Mr Butt outside before paramedics attempted to resuscitate him.

A post-mortem examination gave cause of death as carbon monoxide poisoning.

Tests of the property showed that the carbon monoxide levels were 10 times greater than the minimum level required to be toxic to humans.

Enquiries revealed the boiler’s external flume, used to ventilate fumes, had been cut back to about 5ft above the ceiling during building works undertaken by 6699 Limited.

Builder with the firm Keith ‘Bruno’ Morris’, 66, of Ackland House, Beckenham, admitted to cutting the the pipe to make it safer for the builders to work around.

The 66-year-old pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey on Friday, April 29 and was sentenced on Tuesday May 31 to eight months imprisonment, suspended for two years.

He must carry out 200 hours of unpaid community work and pay £1,000 in costs.

The company pleaded guilty to failure to plan, manage and monitor works, contrary to regulation 13(2) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 207 and section 33(1)© of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

Sentencing for 6699 Limited will take place at the Old Bailey on Thursday, July 28.

Read the original post here…

Further news stories about carbon monoxide can be found at this feed.

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Firefighters And Carbon Monoxide

Carbon monoxide does not just come from faulty fuel burning appliances, it can be generated in a number of different ways and can target various people just there to do their jobs. The following article reviews how firefighters can be exposed to carbon monoxide poisoning, more articles available here.

How carbon monoxide kills firefighters
Understanding how carbon monoxide attacks the body is the first step in protecting against it

While looking for an SOP on a large metropolitan fire department’s website, I stumbled across something unrelated that caught my eye. This SOP was from a fire department I highly respect as leaders in safety and employee health.

To my surprise I noticed an SOP allowing for firefighters to remove their SCBA if the carbon monoxide level is less than 50 ppm in the sampling. It is commendable that a fire agency is addressing the exposure of CO and following OSHA’s permissible exposure limit of 50 parts per million over an 8-hour time frame.
Operational SOPs really need to look at the science and at the long-term and chronic exposure issues involving CO.

There has been excellent work done to identify the risk associated with CO from a knock down or acute illness standpoint. Yet some of the finer details are often missed in the attempt to get the message across.

This is due to a lack of surveillance on exposures and patient outcomes by federal agencies. It’s especially true when it comes to firefighters, as only a handful of NIOSH and NIST investigators really understand the fire service’s challenges with exposures to chemicals and suppression activities.

Many of these findings don’t make it into rehab policies. Therefore, the two insidious effects of exposure to carbon monoxide often go unrecognized in the fire service.

Hemoglobin geometry

The first of these relates to molecular change. Somewhere in EMT training you learned that CO has an affinity for hemoglobin 150 to 200 times higher than oxygen depending on the source.

What escapes a lot of educational programs on this is that when CO binds to hemoglobin, it also changes the geometry of the hemoglobin molecule.

The normal geometry of the hemoglobin molecule carrying oxygen and carbon dioxide is designed to travel swiftly and unobstructed through our blood vessels and capillary beds, even passing around the changes in arteries and veins as they become embedded with plaque.

The geometrical change in hemoglobin caused by carbon monoxide makes it harder to pass swiftly through the blood vessels and lends itself to clumping together, resulting often in a clot or obstruction. And the geometry change tends to make it sticky.

Couple this with someone with underlying heart disease and the other fire gases that can stop cellular activity and trigger low blood pressure, and you have a line of duty death categorized as cardiac when in fact it maybe toxicology related.

There is suspicion the extended time CO stays in the blood stream maybe be a causal factor in day-later deaths.

A radical CO

A second carbon monoxide lurking on the fire scene is known as CO in the radical form. If you have taken a fire chemistry course, one of the principle concepts is the formation of compounds or elements that are called free radicals.

Free radicals are atoms or groups of atoms with an odd (unpaired) number of electrons and can form when oxygen interacts with certain molecules. Fire often provides the environment that uses oxygen to create these free radicals.

Once formed, these highly reactive radicals can start a chain reaction damaging cells, tissue and organs. Free radicals like carbon monoxide like to attack tissue and cells.

A favorite target for the radical CO is the myelin sheath of a nerve cell.

A myelin sheath is like the insulation on a wire; it ensures the electricity or nerve impulse gets to site of where it is used. When a wire’s insulation has a hole in it, the electrical signal is interrupted or delayed, often going somewhere it should not.

The full article can be read here…

Most of us only learn of carbon monoxide when we are exposed to it in our homes but it is often the fire brigade that is a port of call when these situations are triggered. Below, residents had lucky escape thanks to firefighters discovered elevated carbon monoxide levels in these homes.

Carbon-monoxide levels spike; residents ‘lucky’ they were out

Leominster Fire Department Lt. Jay Leblanc measures the airflow around the door of a home on 23 Fairmont St. that was found to have dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide leaking from a broken exhaust pipe on a heating unit. SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE / SCOTT LAPRADE

LEOMINSTER – When firefighters responded to a call of elevated carbonmonoxide levels at a three-family home Wednesday morning, they were relieved to find no one home after detecting extremely high levels of the deadly gas.

“They were lucky,” Deputy Fire Chief Scott Cordio about residents of the triple-decker at 23 Fairmont St. “If anyone was in the home, the situation could have been very dangerous.”

Carbon-monoxide levels in the home were measured by responding firefighters at 500 parts per million, he said. The state considers levels below 9 parts per million to be safe.

Cordio said the department was alerted to the problem when the homeowners went to check on the unoccupied first-floor unit after hearing the carbon- monoxide detectors going off.

Read the full article on this page
We cannot always rely on the fire service to be there for us or to find carbon monoxide leaks in time. It is on ourselves to look after our households and work places to ensure everyone in our surroundings is safe from CO poisoning and to test our carbon monoxide alarms

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Estate agent recommends installing the warning devices as the safety of tenants should be ‘utmost priority’

The following article is about having carbon monoxide devices installed in rented properties. It has been the law since the beginning of October 2015 to have an alarm fitted in a rented property by the landlord if it contains a solid fuel burning appliance. There is a belief that a room sealed boiler gas boiler cannot cause harm by carbon monoxide poisoning but this is false. Even room sealed boilers can leak carbon monoxide if there is a fault. Read the following carbon monoxide articles to find out more.
Estate agent recommends installing the warning devices as the safety of tenants should be ‘utmost priority’

Dawn says if you have a gas boiler, as well as having it regularly checked, you should fit a carbon monoxide alarm

I want to raise awareness of the need for landlords to fit carbon monoxide alarms in their properties if they have a gas boiler or appliances fitted. Private sector landlords have been required by law since October 1, 2015, to have an alarm in any room containing a solid fuel burning appliance – that could be a coal fire or a wood burning stove.

Given most apartments in Canary Wharf with gas do not have such appliances, the need for the CO sensors has not been seen as a must, rather as a personal choice.

While some of my more cautious and responsible landlords have fitted them as standard, others have chosen to save their pennies, given it’s not a requirement.

However, following a recent incident I would urge any landlord that has gas and does not have one to have one fitted to do so as soon as possible.

Responding to an emergency call-out late one evening my contractor attended one of my managed properties that had a CO alarm fitted as it had gone off.

On arrival there was a strong smell of gas and it was apparent the boiler was leaking.

The contractor shut this down immediately and refused to turn it back on. The landlord was notified and a new boiler was fitted the next day.

The point of sharing this story with you is there were no solid fuel burner at this property so, had there been no CO alarm, the results could have been tragic.

Being a landlord brings with it a huge responsibility and the safety of your tenants has to be the utmost priority.

Source of article and further reading here.

An interested article that should give a wake up call to landlords to always install a carbon monoxide detector. However, as we can see from the news story below, just having an alarm isn’t always enough. They also should be checked on a regular basis. The article below is one of a tragedy that could have been avoided.
The young girl hospitalized last week from carbon monoxide exposure in her home, which had killed her brother, is recovering and responding to treatment, according to the girl’s mother who spoke at a vigil held for her son Saturday evening.
Crowd gathers at vigil for third-grader killed by carbon monoxide fumes At St. Mark’s Park on Essex Avenue, in Linden, on Saturday, May 7, 2016, roughly 250 people gathered at a vigil for Oshiobugie Asekomhe, the 9-year-old boy who was killed by carbon monoxide exposure in his home earlier in the week. (Spencer Kent |…

At St. Mark’s Park on Essex Avenue, roughly 250 people gathered at the vigil for Oshiobugie Asekomhe, the 9-year-old boy who was killed from carbon monoxide exposure in his home on Tuesday.

His mother, Sepiatu Abu, 45, said her daughter, 11-year-old Emike Asekomhe, was still in the hospital, but was responding to treatment.

Abu, who was with her two sisters, arrived toward the end of the vigil, and with tears running down her face, she thanked everyone for their support.

“Right now my daughter is doing very good … compared to when the incident happened, said Sepiatu Abu, 45, of Linden. “She’s doing much better.”

She added, “She’s responding good to treatment.”

During the vigil, the crowd stood in a semi-circle on the basketball court at the park, and while holding lit candles, they prayed, and then collectively sang Amazing Grace.

The crowd included local officials, including the mayor, along with police officers, firefighters, school officials, members of the community, and some of Oshiobugie’s teachers and classmates at School No. 4, where teachers said he excelled.

People were crying, hugging, and trying to reconcile the shock of losing such a beloved boy in the community.

Linden will hold a vigil Saturday for the 9-year-old youth who died from carbon monoxide in his home Tuesday

“So happy to see everybody out here to support us. I really appreciate each and every one of them. Because my son, Oshiobugie, really was a good kid. He was a very loving child, intelligent, easy going, and I pray God keeps him in a better place.”

At around 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday Abu called police and said her children were unresponsive, police said in a previous report. Abu, according to officials, had tried CPR on both children. Oshiobugie was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

High levels of carbon monoxide were found in the home. Though there was a CO detector, the batteries were no longer functional, the report said. The house is uninhabitable, according to the report.

Read more by viewing the original article here.

A very sad story and one that is difficult to read. Our thoughts go out to the mother and family of the children involved and we hope that with more education, these stories become a thing of the past. Visit the CO gas resource page for further help.

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Alarms rescue families

Further carbon monoxide alerts occured in the Devon and Cornwall area of the country. Our first story happened near the town of Helston in Cornwall where a carbon monoxide alarm potentially saved the lives of a family. This should be a wake up call to use all to have any kind of CO monitor, learn more about them here.

A FAMILY gassed last night by deadly fumes said they might have died without their carbon monoxide alarms.

They said smoke and gas from a coal-fired kitchen range had seeped unto their 6-year-old daughter’s bedroom and was filling the house.
Her dad Gavin Potter said: “We would all be dead in the morning if it wasn’t for the alarms.

“I might have gone in the morning and found my youngest dead – or none of us would have woken up at all.

“It’s a frightening thought – but that’s what we’ve been thinking all morning.

“I am over the moon that we’re all okay.”

The family with four children aged between 6 and 16 went to bed last night at their mid-terrace cottage in Farms Common, a hamlet in Wendron parish near Helston.

Read more at the original source
Around the same time in Devon a carbon monoxide detector was activated, once again potentially saving the life of the elderly resident, read the story –
Elderly woman rescued after carbon monoxide leak in Devon

Firefighters had to rescue an elderly woman from a property in Devon after a carbon monoxide alarm activated late on Monday night.

Just before 11pm crews were sent to Sparkwell Lane, Staverton.

Two fire appliance from Buckfastleigh and Ashburton were sent to a report of a domestic alarm activating in a property.

Upon arrival crews confirmed it was a carbon monoxide alarm and they removed an elderly woman from the building.

First published at this source…
Both households luckily had installed a carbon monoxide alarm which alerted them to the presence of the gas. Without one installed, these reports could have been ones of tragedy than rescue.

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The Dangers Lie Everywhere

Another carbon monoxide scare happened a couple of days ago. Most reported occurances are from individuals in
residential situations, however in this instance it was a London office and its workers that were effected.

Five business people were taken to hospital after a carbon monoxide leak sparked the evacuation of a luxury Mayfair office block.

Hedge fund managers, art experts and property developers were all evacuated from the Grade II listed office at 9 Clifford Street at around 5pm yesterday after investigators found high levels of the dangerous gas emanating from a faulty boiler.

Ten people fled a basement conference room after reporting the smell before firefighters ordered a further 50 people to leave the £38million office block on the upmarket street just off Savile Row.

Other workers on the street were instructed by the Fire Brigade to stay inside their buildings or escape from any rear facing exits during the commotion.

Read more from the

All 5 people were evacuted without any problems, although getting treated for possible CO poisoning is important. It does not matter if you think you are alright, getting a medical check as a precaution will still be necessary.

Treating carbon monoxide poisoning

You will need oxygen therapy treatment in hospital if you have been exposed to a high level of carbon monoxide, or have symptoms that suggest exposure.

Oxygen therapy involves breathing in 100% oxygen through a tight-fitting mask (normal air contains about 21% oxygen). Breathing in concentrated oxygen enables your body to quickly replace carboxyhaemoglobin.

Read more about this from the …

Carbon Monoxide is impossible to detect without some kind of device that monitors levels in the air. Having a carbon monoxide alarm is the best way to warn of potential problems, about alarms. The following article describes why the gas is so dangerous and how it is produced.

You can’t see it, taste it or smell it but CO can kill quickly without warning. According to the HSE statistics every year around 7 people die from CO poisoning caused by gas appliances and flues that have not been properly installed, maintained or that are poorly ventilated. Levels that do not kill can cause serious harm to health if breathed in over a long period. In extreme cases paralysis and brain damage can be caused as a result of prolonged exposure to CO. Increasing public understanding of the risks of CO poisoning and taking sensible precautions could dramatically reduce this risk.

There are signs that you can look out for which indicate incomplete combustion is occurring and may result in the production of CO:

yellow or orange rather than blue flames (except fuel effect fires or flueless appliances which display this colour flame)
soot or yellow/brown staining around or on appliances
pilot lights that frequently blow out
increased condensation inside windows

Continue reading this …

You have to be alert and aware of potential carbon monoxide poisoning in all situations, not just in your living environment. Whether you are at work or on holiday, anywhere where this is a fuel burning appliance there is a potential issue with carbon monoxide gas. Be alert, be aware.

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Admitted To Hospital For CO Poisoning

Most of us understand the dangers that carbon monoxide can bring yet there are still instances of carbon monoxide poisoning reported in the news.

Most of these news reports are, unfortunately of tragedies that have occured but it must be noted that there are a numerous more instances of CO poisoning that do not result in death and which do not get reported in mainstream media.

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Many sufferers are treated in time and there are a few instances recently that end on a happy note.

A mother and her four-year-old son needed hospital treatment for carbon monoxide poisoning this afternoon.

Firefighters were called to a home off the Crescent, near Marlow Road, in Maidenhead at about 2pm after the carbon monoxide alarm had started sounding and the pair had begun to feel unwell.

A crew from Maidenhead evacuated the property and gave them oxygen, before paramedics arrived with a breath analyser and took them to hospital.

They have apparently both now returned home.

A carbon monoxide monitor was also sent out from Reading, which recorded carbon monoxide levels of between 40 and 80 parts per million in the house. Any level above zero is considered unsafe.

The National Grid was contacted to isolate the gas supply from the house, which was then ventilated.

To read the full new article, …

This mother and son, fortunately, had a lucky escape and are happily back home. The correct procedures have been carried out and with the property safe, they returned home. A carbon monoxide detector will have been installed and this should prevent this family going through such worry again. You can find out more about CO symptoms .

In the U.S recently there was another report of 3 people being admitted to hospital:

Three people from a residential high-rise downtown were taken to a hospital late Monday night as fire crews determined the building had a carbon monoxide leak.

The 15-story building in the 500 block of North Akard Street had to be evacuated late Monday night after residents smelled an “unknown odor.” Carbon monoxide is odorless, but there may have been other fumes in the building.

The exact location of the leak was not found, but hazardous materials crews believe it had something to do with the heating, ventilation and air conditioning for the building, Dallas Fire-Rescue spokesman Jason Evans said.

Three people suffering from breathing problems were taken to a hospital. The most common symptoms from carbon monoxide poisoning are headache, dizziness, weakness, upset stomach, vomiting, chest pain and confusion.

Read the full article from the …

Again, a lucky escape but these, happy outcomes can also, quickly turn to tragic outcomes which is why any kind of
monitor is required in every property that has or is in the viscinity of any fuel burning appliance.

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Teacher Dies From CO Poisoning

The family of a newly qualified teacher who died from carbon monoxide poisoning days after moving into a new flat on a dream gap year trip to China have urged travellers to carry gas detectors.

Francesca Dingley, 22, originally from Enfield in north London, died in Chengdu, the south-western capital of China’s Sichuan province, last February.

The Bristol graduate was in Asia to teach English for a year with plans to get a teacher’s job in the UK but was apparently killed by a faulty boiler.

As an inquest into her death started today her father Mark Dingley said the tragedy had been ‘wholly avoidable’, as he urged all travellers to carry a carbon monoxide detectors with them at all times.

 

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Knowing Your Gas Flame Video

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