Worries as carbon monoxide calls drop 40% in Bucks
Many homes don't have an alarm.
Calls about carbon monoxide alarms have dropped by 43 per-cent in Buckinghamshire this year - but that's not being seen as a reason to celebrate.
One company say only 29% of us have a working carbon monoxide alarm and 38% are getting annual services on our gas appliances.
Cadent say this could lead to more people dying because they don't know the lethal gas is in their homes.
Calls to the National Gas Emergency Service number about carbon monoxide (CO) have dropped significantly in 2020, according to Cadent who run the service.
With comprehensive fresh research today from the company revealing that 46% of homeowners in Great Britain aren't now getting their boiler serviced annually, despite CO poisoning being caused by faulty gas appliances, Cadent are asking whether fear of Coronavirus is holding people back from allowing even a fully Covid-compliant, registered engineer into their home to service their boiler.
They say that, if true, the consequences could be severe.
Carbon monoxide is known as 'the silent killer in the home' as you can't hear, smell, see or taste it.
Exposure to it for too long results in loss of consciousness, brain damage and, sadly, death for around 40 people in England and Wales every year, with about 4,000 more needing hospital treatment.
With seven times as many people working from home compared to last year and with boilers now on for long hours to heat homes as winter temperatures drop, Cadent is urging people to get their boilers serviced and buy an audible CO alarm.
They are calling on people to act now, after their research of 8000 households in Great Britain also revealed:
- 60% of people don't have a working audible CO alarm in their home
- The correct symptoms of CO poisoning are not recognised by the following number of people: dizziness (42%), headaches (44%), light headedness (52%), nausea (52%), shortage of breath (63%) and collapsing (66%)
- There's significant lack of understanding about what indicates a faulty gas appliance.
- Something that is not an indicator of a faulty appliance - a boiler giving off an odour - was cited - wrongly - as by far and away the biggest indicator of a potential CO leak by 39%.
One family's near-miss
A Warwickshire family who almost lost their lives to carbon monoxide poisoning tell the story of their terrifying ordeal today in the hope it educates people to beware the ‘silent killer’.
Nicola Savory, her partner Lee Tonks and their two young sons (pictured) were said to be just an hour from tragedy when an emergency gas engineer called at their home in Bedworth.
They didn’t release their home was filled with carbon monoxide (CO), a deadly gas you cannot see, hear, smell or taste. It was leaking from a snapped boiler flue and they didn’t have a CO alarm.
Mo Dawood, an engineer from gas emergency service Cadent, knocked at the property after being called to a neighbour’s house, where a CO alarm was picking up low readings.
Following procedure, as he waited for someone to answer, he placed his detection reader through the letterbox. “The CO reading I got right then was so massive I couldn’t believe it,” said Mo.
The reading was nearly 600 parts per million (PPM) CO, which is deadly if exposure continues for just a few hours.
Mo said:
“No-one was answering so I gave the door a real bang and a lady Nicola eventually came to the door.
“I could see straight away she had big red circles around her eyes, so I ordered her and everyone in the house to get out as quickly as possible.
“The dad Lee came to the door but didn’t look right. He said he’d been in bed because he had been out on a rugby do the night before and had had a few beers. He started wobbling and collapsed.”
Paramedics whisked the entire family to Coventry’s University hospital where they were treated for the effects of carbon monoxide inhalation.
Mo said:
“When I think back, I remember that I’d finished my previous job earlier than expected, which meant I arrived on site sooner – that turned out to be so vital in this case.
"If I’d have got there any later, we might have been dealing with a different situation altogether.”
Today, Nicola urged people to follow Cadent’s safety advice – in particular, to make sure they get their boiler serviced every year and to buy audible, working CO alarms.
Nicola said:
“Someone was looking down on us that day.
“I think about it a lot, when I look at my children James, 5, and Harry, 2 and Lee.
“When we came back from hospital, and the children were finally asleep, both of us were crying.
“We realise how unbelievably lucky we were.
“It boggles my mind that we never had a carbon monoxide alarm in the first place.
“We had not long had a new boiler fitted and it probably fell off the radar.
“Until it affects you personally, you just think ‘it would never happen to me’.
“But it very nearly did and I would just ask everyone to learn from this, buy an alarm, or a few of them, and make sure you get that annual safety check on your appliances.”
Lee, 40, added:
“If Mo hadn’t knocked on our door that morning we wouldn’t be here now, so we owe him everything.
“I’d been out the night before and thought I just had a bad hangover. I felt nauseous and light-headed, and as soon as I went outside I just collapsed.
“The shops must have quickly sold out of carbon monoxide alarms shortly after because my friends and family will have bought all of them! At a cost of just £10 to save your family’s life, it’s worth every penny.”