CO Gas Safety

CO-Gas thinks it’s outrageous that recommendations made by the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) in 2000 have not been implemented, particularly:-

A modest levy on the gas suppliers (we would prefer the who fuel industry) to provide funds for publicity about the dangers of Carbon Monoxide (CO) and for research. After all most of the gas supply companies are extremely wealthy. CO-Gas Safety has sat on committees to talk about raising publicity since 1997. The problem is the lack of funds, which the wealthy industry fails to provide and the government fails to make a levy mandatory. Please note that £2 per household per year would provide over £44 million to spend on prime time TV warnings and fund research. The BBC receives £140 per household per year! Please note that British Gas made £585 million profit in the first 6 months of 2010.
See Article: British Gas Sees Profits Raise 96%
See also http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10784905
That the gas emergency service has and will use equipment to test for this invisible, silent, odourless, deadly gas, CO. This would enable people to know which appliance, if any is unsafe and how much CO they are likely to have been exposed to.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) told us in April 2005 that these recommendations will not now be implemented.

A review published in January 2007 puts all responsibility for raising awareness on CORGI or a CORGI equivalent by requiring interested bodies such as CORGI to apply for a 5 year franchise to register gas installers. See http://www.hse.gov.uk/gas/domestic/safetyreview.htm The registering body is now The Gas Safe Register run by Capita and has a ten year franchise in Great Britain and Isle of Man granted on 1 April 2009 and also a ten year franchise in Northern Ireland and Guernsey granted on 1 April 2010.

CO-Gas Safety finds it indefensible that a person who suspects they are being, or has been recently poisoned by CO has no way of obtaining an investigation of appliances in the home or workplace (which will test for CO and may help with medical treatment and/or provide evidence in civil or criminal case) other than by paying about £1,800. How can ordinary people pay for this especially one parent families and those social security? Even if they can pay, most people don’t know how to obtain such an investigation. Even such an investigation will only test appliances for CO and not for other toxins.

Furthermore, it seems there is no organisation that is tasked with looking at the problems of CO from a victim’s point of view other than CO-Gas Safety. Yet CO-Gas Safety is a a tiny charity and at the time of writing (August 2010) we only have a small grant for three years to 2013 from the Department of Health to run our schools poster competition. This grant does not cover our data collection and data base, our website, our helpline or our endless lobbying. The main full time worker, Stephanie Trotter who is a barrister (not practising law at the moment) runs the charity on a voluntary basis and has done so since 1995.

CO-Gas Safety applied for funding to continue collecting, collating and publishing our data to various bodies. We applied to the Gas Safe Charity in Autumn 2010 and were refused. We applied again in May 2011 and were told that this would be considered if a statistician could be instructed to examine our data thankfully at the Gas Safe Charity's expense. CO-Gas Safety is happy to try to co-operate but, having talked to statisticians, consider that what is probably needed is a lawyer or ex policeman, attached to a university to check a proportion of our data at source. Statisticians do not seem to check data; they seem to analyse it and compare it. CO-Gas Safety is (at July 2011) waiting to hear from the Gas Safe Charity as to how it can proceed. Meanwhile the charity is suffering from a lack of funds for the data.

CO-Gas Safety has found a statistician and the data is being validated. This work is going very well. An intermin report is in our press pack 2012 as below:-.

Dr Carolyn Craggs, an experienced independent Chartered Statistician and Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, has been commissioned to carry this out. Her work is focused on checking the validity and reliability of the raw data and the processes associated with compiling the various tables and graphs for the CO-Gas Safety website and the Statsheet. The work also includes looking at making improvements to the methods used.

This work is progressing well and in fact, improved processes for data handling and enhanced data checking for producing the Statsheet have already been implemented.

The 10% sampling of the deaths data gave generally positive results and similar sampling is presently underway for the near misses data. It is anticipated that the final report will be completed in February.

A great deal of the work of CO-Gas Safety is helping victims and this work provides valuable information that can be used to improve gas safety. This work is an important research tool. A properly funded body should be undertaking this work.

If you agree with all or any of the above or if you don't do please email us at office@co-gassafety.co.uk to let us know.