Jodie Santarossa had recently graduated from veterinary school and was working long hours as an intern in surgical care for horses. Her diet consisted primarily of coffee and doughnuts, and she was only getting six hours of sleep a night. When she started to feel melancholy and fatigued, she chalked it up to her stressful life as an intern and figured it would soon pass. But her symptoms worsened; she started to feel lightheaded and lost her usual enthusiasm for life.
“I thought I was hypoglycemic or I had low blood pressure,” she recalls. “It was subtle, the nagging tug of disease. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what it was.”
Santarossa was living in a townhouse with a roommate who was also working in the veterinary clinic and feeling unwell, and a dog who would periodically vomit. One busy long weekend, Santarossa and her roommate were on call at the clinic and didn’t sleep at home. “I should have felt like I had been hit by a train, but I felt good,” she says. That’s when she realized that it could be her home that was making her sick. She called ATCO and a technician discovered that carbon monoxide (CO) was slowly leaking from the furnace.
“I can’t help but think if we hadn’t had a chaotic weekend at work and instead had three days to sleep in until 10 o’clock in the morning, maybe we wouldn’t have woken up that third day,” she says.
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Every year, people in Canada die from preventable carbon monoxide poisoning. According to Statistics Canada, there were 380 accidental deaths caused by the odourless, colourless, tasteless gas between 2000 and 2009. At low levels of exposure, CO can cause flu-like symptoms, such as muscle weakness, tiredness and headaches. Prolonged exposure, or exposure to higher levels, can lead to chest pains, confusion, dizziness and vision problems. At very high levels, it can be deadly.
“While serious cases of CO poisoning are very rare, we do respond to approximately 3,000 carbon monoxide related incidents in Alberta annually,” says Jared Anderst, a customer service supervisor with ATCO. “If people call us, we will come out as soon as we possibly can to check the air for carbon monoxide. That’s what our people are trained to do.”
Carbon monoxide can come from natural gas appliances, such as furnaces, hot water heaters and ranges that aren’t working properly, and from exhaust from vehicles and wood-burning fireplaces. “Natural gas appliances are designed to be safe,” Anderst says. “But sometimes, if there hasn’t been enough preventative maintenance, problems can occur.”
This is why Anderst and his colleagues at ATCO urge Albertans to equip their homes with a carbon monoxide alarm on every floor, but most importantly on the bedroom floors. There are a number of different models available at most hardware stores, and it’s important to test the alarm and check the batteries regularly.
With the cold weather coming, Anderst also cautions people to not warm up their cars in the garage, even if it’s not attached to the home or the door is open. Sometimes, the breeze can blow toxic fumes inside. “Getting into a warm vehicle in a warm garage is a luxury that’s not worth jeopardizing the safety of the people in your home,” he says.
ATCO has produced a CO checklist to help people prevent exposure. The list, which is available in a several languages, includes having your fuel-burning appliances serviced regularly by a qualified technician, cleaning your furnace filters and checking the flames of your natural gas appliances to ensure they’re blue.
“If people follow the simple steps on the checklist and do a bit of self-education, they can prevent most carbon monoxide incidents, and keep themselves and their loves one safe,” Anderst says. “That’s the good news story: CO exposure really can be prevented.”