"A 23-year-old man has become the first casualty of Cyclone Yasi after he suffocated from using a generator inside a closed room as the storm cut power supplies, Premier Anna Bligh said."
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"The coroner wanted me to make people understand that if you are using a generator for power, doing it in a closed room without any ventilation means you are at risk from asphyxiation from diesel fumes."
People assume they'll smell it and be able to turn it off before it gets them, but CO is an odorless poison, and once you've inhaled enough, breathing fresh air doesn't make you recover - it takes weeks. The poisoned haemoglobin cannot carry oxygen, but the blood cells don't die. It takes 2-4 weeks to make a full complement of new red blood cells.
Nice in theory, but this situation and above theory doesn't work in practice. This guy either had a faulty sense of smell and was deaf and was stupid, or he smelt the exhaust and heard the racket and ignored both.
Generators are relatively "dirty" and release a smellier combination of gasses, so not only will you get carbon monoxide, you'll get a whole variety of gasses and smoke in the mix too. And far as the noise goes, with the smaller ones you're looking at
50-60dB, you simply can't be in the same room as these little things and just "not notice".
Cars are the "cleanest" of the lot and you can STILL smell them. Rotten eggs anyone? If it's diluted enough, you might not smell it, because the CO will still have an effect even if it is diluted enough not to smell the sulphur.
But we're not talking about a car, nor are we talking about holes in the floorboards combined with faulty exhaust pipes creating the leaking CO. We're talking about a frigging noisy, smelly, smoky generator positioned INDOORS.
If that ain't a clue, then he obviously didn't have one.
yeah , but , ya NOT breathing carbon monoxide in is pure form which is oudorless....
IF YA BREATHING IT FROM A I.C ENGINE , WITH ALL THE CHEMICALS IN IT THATS WHY IT STINKS... I MEAN , WHO CAN BE IN A SHED WITH A IC ENGINE RUNNING ???? YOU GOTTA BE NUTS BREATHING THAT IN FOR SO LONG.... PUT YA NOSE NEXT TO A EXHAUST PIPE AND TELL ME HOW LONG YOU CAN BREATH THAT IN FOR ??????
I have just acquired a generator, and started it up for the first time. Outside of course. Merely being in its general vicinity has made me feel a bit queasy from its fumes (admittedly, I'm quite sensitive to such things). I can't imagine how anyone would want it running inside a building even if it were thought to be completely harmless.
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