Why carry portable carbon monoxide alarms at all times?

FAQ Why carry portable carbon monoxide alarms at all times?

Short Answer: Because the majority of places you go doing the day and most hotels, do not have carbon monoxide alarms.

Why carry portable carbon monoxide alarms at all times? Because it is your only guarantee that you will be warned about carbon monoxide leaks. This detector, made by Forensics is available on Amazon.

Griff Winthrop: Because all of us, from time to time, probably have to stay in a hotel. Hotels, across all of the big hotel chains, are notoriously bad about having functioning carbon monoxide alarms in their hotel rooms, in their lobbies, in their fitness centers, in their hallways. Hotels are also notoriously bad about conducting maintenance on their gas fired appliances, as we’ve come to find out. So I don’t go anywhere without my portable carbon monoxide alarm. Ever.

Gordon Johnson: Do you have your portable carbon monoxide alarm in your office?

Griff Winthrop: I have one on my wall and my portable one is in my suitcase, and I have another portable one by my bedside when I don’t have any gas fired appliances in my home. I live in Florida.

Gordon Johnson: What is the county are you in in Florida?

Griff Winthrop: I’m in Gilchrist County.

Gordon Johnson: What percentage of the offices in Gilchrist County have carbon monoxide alarms in them.

Griff Winthrop: I would guess less than 10%.

Gordon Johnson: So I live in Green Lake County, Wisconsin, adjacent to Winnebago County, Wisconsin. I’m guessing that less than 10% of the offices within a 50 mile radius of where I’m sitting have carbon monoxide alarms.

Griff Winthrop: Which is amazing because in Wisconsin most offices are serviced by gas fired furnaces.

Gordon Johnson: [00:41:11] And within a 75 mile radius of where I sit, we have had two severe poisonings. One at an office in Appleton, Wisconsin, where we recovered $13 million to compensate the number of people who worked in that office who got poisoned. The other was 75 miles in other direction, where  a theater full of people who got poisoned.

If you intend to spend hours in a place, you ought to know whether or not there’s any carbon monoxide in that air. We subscribe to the theory that indoor air quality is like a product, which the owner of that space has a duty to keep free of toxins. But unfortunately, landlords and property owners of non-residential properties, do not embrace that duty.

One of the ironies, every time I go into court in one of these cases, is that there is no CO detector in the room that we are sitting in.

It is a truly an extraordinary fact that the overwhelming majority of our indoor spaces, except places where we sleep, don’t have CO detectors.

Ask your boss to install CO alarms where you work. Always carry your own detector when you travel. And please, lobby your legislators, your code compliance officers to make sure than CO alarms are required everywhere people breath indoor air.