Comments on: How NOT to Heat Your Home This Winter

By: Joe Lamy

Joe Lamy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:58:27 +0000

Portland, Oregon, Dec. 10 fifteen years ago, a lady made the news for getting gassed at home. Six different docs in series had misdiagnosed the CO poisoning, given her pills and sent her home. A furnace guy w/ meters figured out that leaky ducts combined with furnace fan had DEpressurized the house and pulled air DOWN the chimney and blended and delivered this toxin into the living spaces.

Several problems: 1)zero for six is shameful; 2) I wrote a bill and Kate Brown, President of the Senate, introduced it, to require a health and safety check in the name of full disclosure at real estate transactions that would have yielded the healthiest housing stock in the nation because it called for an off-the-shelf Department of Energy standard test known as the worst case depressurization test to be done at real estate transfer just to eliminate the possibility of this sick house getting anybody. It takes about ten minutes to accurately perform this reliable test performed thousands of times each week on all homes weatherized under DOE standards across the US. Real estate lobbyists and gas company lined up against it. And then the killer! Real estate inspectors association wrote and PASSED a statute holding them harmless for any INVISIBLE toxin such as CO, radon, friable asbestos, etc. Poof! So a buyer pays to be told the house is fine; they move in, turn it on and it kills them and it’s LEGAL! 3) when patients show CO poisoning, is there a process to follow-up diagnosis of poisoning to trace the source BEFORE the patients are returned to their normal environment? I don’t think so, and I wonder whether this is just about as short-sighted (self-blinding) as believing an oxymeter that says O2 is 98% on a patient puking, complaining of throbbing headache and suffering from carboxyhemoglobin level of 35. Not following up is just as deadly as not looking.

By: firemedic

firemedic — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:39:43 +0000

Get thee to a hyperbaric chamber, code 3.

By: keepbreathing

keepbreathing — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:32:10 +0000

I play a little game with my ABGs at work. I look at the COHb and try to guess how many packs a day the patient smokes.

My favorites, though, are the people who tell me they’re quitting (I dun’ smoke no more!) but who somehow have CO levels in the double digits.

By: SumDood

SumDood — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:13:01 +0000

“Want to save yourself a visit to the emergency department and possibly keep yourself from waking up dead?”

I can’t believe no one else posted this:

By: Strong One

Strong One — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 03:35:03 +0000

OH MY GOD.
I still can’t believe what some-dude (or dudette) considers to be normal behavior. Is common sense really that rare?
And thanks for the stats. I know enough about Carbon Monoxide poisoning that it is nothing to mess with.
CO monitors all through my house.

By: The Happy Hospitalist

The Happy Hospitalist — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:36:44 +0000

Right you are, doc. Those are some impressive stats you posted. By the way, I have to be the first to ask. Do you allow coitus and a post coitus cigarette in your call room? Hey - What kind of show do you think I'm running here? What do you think this is ... my hospital? With Harold? Or Dick?