Fargo Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Causes 9-Year-Old to Go to Hospital

At least eleven people, including a 9-year-old girl sent to the hospital, were sickened by the Fargo carbon monoxide poisoning. The incident occurred at a swimming pool at the La Quinta Inn.

A Fargo carbon monoxide poisoning sent one 9-year-old girl to the hospital Monday morning. At least 10 other people fell ill from the carbon monoxide poisoning at a hotel pool in Fargo, North Dakota. The carbon monoxide levels reached 300 parts per million nearby the pool. Some of the carbon monoxide leaked into the hallways. However, no one was in the nearby rooms at the time of the poisoning. To deal with the poisoning, they closed the gas appliances and vented the pool.

Levels of 300 parts per million are very high. To put it in perspective, this is three times the level at which firefighters put on their masks. If people were sleeping in the adjacent rooms, there would be a higher danger. Since carbon monoxide is colorless, odorless, and tasteless, it can be hard to detect without an alarm. Sleeping people are at particular danger, because they can succumb to the gas in their sleep.

Another risk factor for carbon monoxide poisoning is age. Young children are at a higher risk of succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning because they have smaller bodies. They feel the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, headaches, nausea, confusion, quicker. Pets are also at a greater risk of succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning quicker. They also have smaller bodies and can be affected more quickly. In addition, sometimes pets can serve as carbon monoxide alarms themselves. There have been several cases where animals sense something strange and alert their owners to something amiss.

Carbon monoxide detectors are essential to preventing fatal poisonings. Since it is colorless, tasteless, and odorless, it can be a ghostly poison. As the fireman said, carbon monoxide detectors are cheap insurance against incidents like this. They even sell portable carbon monoxide detectors, which you can bring to hotels with you to be safe. In some states, hotels are required to have carbon monoxide detectors, but it may be smart to bring a detector just in case, even if the hotel is supposed to have an alarm. North Dakota’s law requires carbon monoxide detectors in private dwellings.

Carbon monoxide poisoning can cause neurological symptoms in the days and weeks following the poisoning. This is called delayed neurological sequelae. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy actually reduces the risk of neurological sequelae. Memory and balance problems can be some of the symptoms of brain damage caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. Carbon monoxide causes anoxia, lack of oxygen. It also causes excess of a neuron-killing neurotransmitter. The most affected parts of the brain are located deep on the brain’s oxygen route, in parts of the brain such as the hippocampus and the corpus callosum. Oxygen is normally carried by hemoglobin, but when there is excess carbon monoxide, this does not happen effectively. Carbon monoxide binds to the protein hemoglobin with 200 times the affinity of oxygen.

As children are more affected by carbon monoxide, it is our hope that she received hyperbaric oxygen therapy to hopefully reduce the neurological sequelae that can crop up in the 2 to 40 days following the acute poisoning.