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Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 6, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 17.

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Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

By Daniel H. Kress

D. H. KRESS, M. D.
VERY little is said about poisoning from carbon monoxide, yet it is not at all uncommon, especially in regions where natural gas is employed for heating purposes. Carbon monoxide differs from carbon dioxide and many other poisons in that it tends to accumulate in the blood. It enters into a chemical or fixed combination with the coloring matter, or hemoglobin, of the red blood corpuscles. At the end of one hour an animal surrounded with an atmosphere containing mere traces of this gas has been found to have over one hundred and fifty times the amount in the blood that is found in the atmosphere. It disables and ultimately destroys the red blood cells.
There are many who are suffering from a chronic form of carbon monoxide poisoning, but are unconscious of the cause of their headaches, nervousness, and other symptoms associated with it. There are living and sleeping rooms which have no outlet to the fumes formed by the burning of natural gas. In some instances even churches and schoolrooms are heated in this manner. It is dangerous and wrong to make necessary such exposure. The following clipping from a Pittsburgh paper, emphasizes the dangers to which persons are exposed who are confined to rooms heated with natural gas:
“HUNTINGTON, W. VA., February 8.—Exhaustion of the oxygen in a school-room in Chesapeake, Ohio, just oppositeHuntington, caused by the consumption of large quantities of natural gas in two stoves not provided with pipes for waste fumes, caused a hundred children to be overcome today. Four girls were so seriously affected that death is feared. . . . — — — — fainted at her desk just as the grade was being dismissed for recess, and the other children, realizing that they were stifling, broke for the fire escape. Many of them fainted when they reached the ground. None of the boys fainted, but all suffered from severe headaches.”