Carbon Monoxide - silent killer

Carbon monoxide (CO), a toxic gas, is considered a silent killer. In the United States alone, COs kill about 5,000 people a year. For every 5 people, 3 people die from poisonous gas from the car, a person who suffers from a CO inhalation accident due to a wood stove or a charcoal stove, and one of 5 people died of CO but no cause.

In China and Vietnam, cases of CO poisoning due to the use of coal stove for cooking and heating are also not rare.

What is CO poison?

This is an odorless gas, not released from fuels such as charcoal, propane, methane, or petroleum oil halfway.

Motorcycle cars emit a lot of CO.

When the body breathes in this gas, it goes into the lungs and into the bloodstream, where CO gets into the red blood pigment (hemoglobin), relieves the oxygen.

CO combined with pigment in red blood cells produces carbonxyhemoglobin (HbCO). CO is 200 times more powerful when competing with oxygen clinging to red blood cells. When the red blood cells are completely out of oxygen, the body also depletes oxygen. In addition, CO gas can also combine with myoglobin (muscle pigment) to damage cells and give rise to metabolic acidosis.

Symptoms of CO poisoning

In smokers, the amount of Co in red blood cells (HbCO) accounts for 3-8%. Normal people only have 0-3%. But when the amount of HbCO gas increases, such as 10-20%, it causes headache, vomiting and difficulty breathing. When the amount of HbCO is 30-40% high, the headache will become more intense, the heart will beat up and may cause unconsciousness. And when the amount of CO increased even more than 40%, the breath would be overwhelming, the pulmonary congestion could no longer work. At that time, the patient will experience seizures, unconsciousness, permanent brain damage, cardiac arrest and death.

We know that high levels of HbCO in the blood are fatal. Scientific tests show that even small amounts of HbCO, only 0.05% in blood but inhaling CO for longer than 30 minutes can also kill people.

In general, inhalation of CO poison will have vague symptoms such as dizziness, headache, and sometimes patients mistakenly think of a common cold without even knowing they have been infected with CO poisoning.

Emergency treatment for poisoning CO

If you suspect CO poisoning, the first thing to do is to give the patient immediate breathing. After that, the patient must be taken to the emergency hospital immediately. There the doctor will conduct a blood test (AGB, CBG, Lytes, CPK, Lactate and HbCO) and urine. Doctors will take patients to specialized centers to breathe in very high oxygen pressure environments.

Precautions, first priority

If you want to turn on your car and motorbike to heat up, especially in the winter, you must take your car out of the garage immediately, even if the garage is still open, you must not leave the engine in the garage for CO gas. Rising can spill from garage into the house causing suffocation for many others. The air in the house must be airy.

Cooking appliances such as heaters, gas stoves, boilers, wood stoves, or even mobile gas stoves must be checked annually. Be careful to see if the exhaust pipe in the house is blocked, open or cracked. And of course have to fix it in time.

If you use a wood-burning heater, make sure the air is moved out of the house through the chimney. A fan must be used to remove smoke and toxic air. Absolutely not use indoor charcoal oven for cooking and heating. If you want to use it, you must bring it to a well-ventilated place like a garden terrace .