CO-Gas Safety responds to a recent interview with Baroness Finlay. 

Stephanie Trotter
February 4th 2022

CO-Gas Safety responds to a recent interview with Baroness Finlay.

Stephanie Trotter, OBE, President & Director of CO-Gas Safety responds to a recent interview that Air Quality News published with Baroness Finlay (see https://airqualitynews.com/2021/12/22/big-interview-air-quality-news-talks-to-baroness-finlay/).

Finlay mentioned a recent report published by the Clean Air Fund that found that reducing pollution to World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended levels could benefit the UK economy by £1.6bn annually by reducing premature deaths, reducing sickness absence, and improving productivity at work.

We were delighted by Finlay’s concern about air pollution damaging health. We agree, ‘There are no ‘safe levels’ of air pollution, whether that is indoors or outdoors. Air pollutants are present in every home’.
We also applaud Baroness Finlay’s concern for the indoor environment where toxins are much more concentrated yet can be prevented. Brits spend over 90% of their time indoors.

Some quick wins on raising awareness and testing for carbon monoxide could be made by testing for carbon monoxide.

At the Air Quality News conference, when questioned, Finlay expressed concern about the cost of testing the air for CO.

CO-Gas Safety understands the need to show a cost-benefit. But the known deaths and injuries from CO cost the UK taxpayer £178m a year. Most agree that the known deaths & injuries from unintentional CO are only the tip of an iceberg.

Ofgem, which licenses the gas industry has made millions available for the benefit of vulnerable customers. This means those on or eligible for the Priority Service Register, (e.g. the disabled, poor, sick, elderly, etc.). But Jonathan Brierley, CEO of Ofgem admitted to CO-Gas Safety that everyone is vulnerable to CO.

Northern Gas Networks undertook research that established testing appliances for CO only adds 5-7 minutes on to every visit by the gas emergency service.

Therefore, the funds exist and the research has been done. Also, if HSE told Ofgem that testing for CO is a safety issue (and how can it not be?), Ofgem would find any further funding required. It is surely vital to find the source of the CO.

Why are free tests of the air in homes for deadly CO not being provided at every opportunity?

Finlay’s own recommendations in 2011 advocated testing. APPCOG has, in the past, supported our call for compulsory testing as part of the landlord’s gas safety check.

Sadly, the gas emergency service which attends free and tests for a leak of unburned gas (which you can smell) is not required to test for CO (and you can’t smell CO). We’ve been lobbying since 1995 for this to be changed. We’re also lobbying for a levy on the whole fuel industry to pay for raising awareness of the dangers of CO, testing, collecting data, research, and survivor support which we, as a tiny, unfunded charity cannot provide.

Phil Burrows of Cadent, one of the four providers of the gas emergency service, has recently told us ‘Cadent launched a pilot programme for vulnerable customers in April 2021. Some of Cadent’s engineers, qualified under CMDDA, test gas appliances for CO. If the source of CO is found, action is taken to make the emitting appliance safe. This keeps the customer safe and warm in their home.’

We congratulate Phil and Cadent. But do survivors have proof of CO in writing/digitally to give their medics?

To identify the source of the CO and have proof for the medics would transform the lives of survivors and their medics, as well as save NHS funds, help raise awareness, provide data and improve safety.

Let’s hope all the emergency service providers follow Cadent’s good example because however wealthy, wise and competent a person may be, everyone is vulnerable to CO, even those in the gas industry and MPs.

Stephanie Trotter, OBE, President & Director of CO-Gas Safety, Safety Lobbyist & Barrister (not practising at the moment).

Thank you to all the courageous and generous survivors, who gave us quotes for this article and for our website. Hopefully, the MPs will read this and take action at last.

There are two versions of this article:-

1. The article as published in the House (of Commons) Magazine (PDF) and
2. The word version with footnotes (Word).

This content was paid for by the registered charity CO-Gas Safety

Proof matters: the vital importance of testing for Carbon Monoxide

No one is immune from the dangers of Carbon Monoxide (CO). Recent progress shows that positive action can be taken. We owe it to the victims and survivors of this ‘silent killer’ to do more.

We spend 92% of our time indoors¹. Pollutants are more concentrated indoors yet easy to eliminate.

Carbon Monoxide (CO) symptoms are similar to a virus, including COVID-19. Diagnosing CO in survivors is almost impossible because CO leaves breath and blood quickly; even if blood is tested, it is usually negative for CO. Continue reading →

https://www.cpsc.gov/Regulations-Laws–Standards/Voluntary-Standards/Carbon-Monoxide-Alarms

We are very grateful to Charon McNabb (info@ncoaa.us) who said that according to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, “CO alarms are life safety devices, not injury prevention devices”  Stephanie asked Charon for a reference to this and she kindly sent the above link and read the following

‘CPSC staff is currently participating in voluntary standards activities related to improving the reliability and performance of carbon monoxide (CO) alarms. CO alarms are life safety devices to warn consumers of the accumulation of potentially hazardous levels of CO in their home before their ability to react has been compromised. CO alarms are not intended to protect consumers against low-level CO exposures.’

This is very similar to what CO-Gas Safety has been saying about CO alarms to EN 50291.

Alarm thresholds for domestic alarms https://www.co-gassafety.co.uk/about-co/alarms-2/

• at 30ppm CO, the alarm must not activate (tested for at least 120 minutes)
• at 50ppm CO, the alarm must not activate before 60 minutes but must activate before 90 minutes
• at 100ppm CO, the alarm must not activate before 10 minutes but must activate before 40 minutes
• at 300ppm CO, the alarm must activate within 3 minutes

SGN have launched new learning materials aimed to teach 12–16-year-olds about the dangers of carbon monoxide (CO), and how to keep themselves and their loved ones safe from the ‘silent killer’. 

SGN are on a mission to teach everyone about how to stay safe from the highly poisonous gas. Their true crime-inspired ‘whodunnit’ game has been designed to be delivered in educational settings such as schools, youth clubs and other extracurricular groups, by a teacher or group leader. The associated materials will give you the tools to teach young people everything they need to know about carbon monoxide, including the symptoms of CO poisoning, how to spot the signs of CO, how to make sure gas or carbon-fuelled appliances are working properly, and how to stay CO safe in a fun, interactive way.

The game, which can be played either using the interactive video or offline using the roleplay script, features the story of the Plum family, who return from holiday to a nasty shock involving Grandma Plum and Poppy the dog. Young people can use the family’s witness statements and clues, revealed throughout the video, to solve the mystery of who the Silent Killer is.

On the Silent Killer website, cards and a crime board can be downloaded to make playing along more engaging, and there’s also an information leaflet that provides some key CO safety information for the young people to keep and take home to share the learning with their household.

All resources, which are now available to view and download, can be found at www.thesilentkiller.co. So if you work with young people, or know someone who does please use and share these resources to help educate as many young people as possible and keep them and their households safe from the dangers of CO.

In addition, this link to APPCOG has more resources that can be downloaded and used to promote CO Awareness Week:

Carbon Monoxide Awareness Week 2021 | Policy Connect

Finally, one of the video links was broken too. The Hindi version is: https://youtu.be/RyHgCkIYw1E

From: Paul Clements Sent: 28 October 2021 16:59
To: Stephanie Trotter
Subject: Guild of Master Chimney Sweeps – CO Liaison

Dear Stephanie and Team,

I am writing to introduce myself. Our Chair, Lawson, has asked me to take a position as CO liaison for the Guild of Master Chimney Sweeps.

The idea is to build on the sterling work already undertaken by others in our industry, by providing a focal point in and out of the Guild. This role will capitalise on relevant strategic and tactical information to the benefit of Guild members in their daily work, and to provide Guild partners with useful and relevant information that could be more cohesively represented by the Guild, for example in so called ‘Close Call CO Incidents’.

There will soon be a dedicated email address under the Guild umbrella but for now I am using my own business contact points. I am keen to develop this role, particularly at this time of year.

One question I do have is this. Do the collated statistics that I have seen on your website show us incidents by fuel type, in particular, could the stats show deaths (as collated by yourselves) caused by either solid fuel, or in more detail, defined by wood, coal or oil? This would be of particular interest if it is so reportable.

Thank you for your attention,

Paul

Paul Clements
Cleaner Chimneys Chimney Sweeps
www.cleanerchimneys.co.uk
01489 578541 or 07540 841022

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Stephanie received this request and sent some of our graphic charts but also sent on this request to our data officer Jennifer Wood and asked her to give a more detailed response.

On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 at 16:51, jenny@co-gassafety.co.uk wrote:
Hello Paul,

My name is Jennifer Wood and I handle the data side of CO-Gas Safety’s work for Stephanie Trotter – she has forwarded me your questions regarding our data and definitions used for our press pack statistical charts.

As she has already stated, we are unable to be as statistically stringent as we would like with our charts and categories, as we are reliant on information provided by the officials and institutions that document these incidents (primarily Coroner’s Offices, but they are given the details by others such as Police, Fire Services, witnesses etc). In more recent years we have been able to ask more questions of the Coroner’s Offices, by contacting them as soon as we are aware of an incident and asking them to consider specific concerns of ours, but for many of the historical cases there can be as little as a few sentences available to us.

I have tried to clarify definitions as much as possible in the notes given below some of the charts, but here are answers to your specific questions:

Room heater – this can include a variety of appliances, and may even include some gas fires that should strictly appear in the ‘gas fire’ category, but without further description from the authorities we cannot be sure of the type of room heater in all cases. It undoubtably includes a large number of Parkray and Rayburn-style solid fuel, oil and gas heaters. It would not intentionally include woodburner stoves or the type of gas heater that is portable and uses a canister in the back for fuel – they have their own categories but, again, some may have been described as just ‘room heater’ in documentation (particularly in older cases).

Solid fuel – as it suggests, this includes any fuel that is not liquid or gas (so no oil, LPG or mains gas, petrol or diesel). It can cover all sorts of combustibles such as coal, anthracite, coke, charcoal, BBQ briquettes, wood, biomass, fuel logs etc

Open fire – to answer your question as to whether a gas fire would ever be recorded as an ‘open fire’ is tricky – I can’t categorically state that it wouldn’t. I can say, however, that all the appliances we currently have in our database that are listed as ‘open fires’ are actually also categorised as ‘solid fuel’. There are 10 such cases, with 11 deaths. I know that one of them was BBQ fuel lit in a wheelbarrow within an enclosed space, which for the purposes of our database was best described as an ‘open fire’.

You are correct to note that many exposures occur where there is no ventilation in the room of the appliance, other than the appliance vent or the chimney. This applies as a risk whatever the appliance and should certainly be included in the training of appliance installers and chimney sweeps. Our most recent case of an open fire death, for example, was in 2017 – there was no combustion air vent in the room containing the open fire, the chimney had not been swept regularly enough and the carbon monoxide alarm that was present was located incorrectly and with batteries removed. Incidentally, this is the only one of our 10 open fire fatal incidents where we have confirmed details of ventilation in the room (or lack of it) other than the chimney. That level of description is unfortunately not given for any of the other older incidents but we do often hear of cases where air bricks or vents are installed and have been covered over to remove drafts, not just with open fires. When victims are trying to stay warm, they often close windows tightly and shut internal doors too (again, not often recorded at a fatal scene as these details are either lost in the panic of a victim being found and treated, or their significance not realised at the time), so air bricks are an essential precaution for ventilation.

Remember that the data we publish relates only to fatal incidents, not exposures where victims have survived. We do keep records of non-fatal cases where we can but we know we only capture a fraction of the actual incidents that occur so we do not publish statistics on these; we use them as valuable examples to learn from.

Oil-fired kitchen ranges – you are correct that these would be listed as an ‘oil’ appliance. You mention paraffin too – we have only two fatalities that we can be sure were caused by paraffin appliances and in both cases they were portable paraffin heaters (one in a shed, one in a polytunnel). These paraffin cases are separated from oil ones in our Fuel Type chart.

You are correct in stating that 30% of the unintentional carbon monoxide fatalities that we had recorded 01.09.1995 – 31.08.2020 were caused by a solid fuel source. Of these, 1% were attributed to Woodburners, 1.5% to open fires, 2.5% to BBQs, and the remaining 25% or so (our published stats are rounded to the nearest %) were distributed between the following: cookers (such as solid fuel Agas), solid fuel central heating boilers (incl back boilers), many solid fuel room heaters and one solid fuel water heater. One case was a bucket of charcoal taken into a vehicle, one was a bowl of charcoal burning in a bowl on top of a kitchen hob, one was described as a ‘coal burning stove’ but sounded very like a camping BBQ – incidents are not always easy to categorise. I would need to spend time on this to get you a breakdown if you really need the individual stats but I suspect that this information is enough for your requirements.

It is worth noting, Paul, that over 75% of our solid fuel cases were more than ten years ago. In other words, solid fuel cases have disproportionately reduced compared to other fuels – our data covers 25 years, but only around 20-22% of the solid fuel cases have been since Jan 2010. Indeed, we have only documented 7 solid fuel fatalities since Jan 2015 (one each from open fire, BBQ, central heating boiler, woodburner, and 3 deaths from 2 room heater incidents). Training must continue to be stringent, however, as we find that once a rate has reduced successfully in one particular fuel or scenario then complacency tends to evolve into a lack of awareness again and the risk returns.

In case it is of interest, since Jan 2015, over half the fatalities we have recorded have been from petrol/diesel appliances.

I hope all of the above helps but please do contact me with any further questions and I will do my best to answer them.
Best wishes,
Jennifer Wood
Data Processing Officer
jenny@co-gassafety.co.uk
Please send any posted documents directly to me at: 2 Tidwell Close, Budleigh Salterton, EX9 6SH

On behalf of Stephanie Trotter, OBE (Mrs)
President & Director of CO-Gas Safety
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There are two versions of this article:-

1. The article as published in the House (of Commons) Magazine (PDF) and
2. The word version with footnotes.

Good quality outdoor air is vital. But Brits spend around 90% of their time indoors*1. The most important avoidable contaminants of indoor air are the products of combustion, including the silent killer, carbon monoxide (CO).

What is carbon monoxide (CO)?

CO is a deadly gas that can be emitted from faulty cooking and heating appliances powered by any carbon-based fuel that burns. Fuels include wood, gas, coal, petrol and diesel.

CO cannot be sensed using human senses of smell, taste, sight or touch.

Less than 2% of CO in the air can kill or maim in between one and three minutes.*2

CO symptoms mimic those of viruses including Covid-19, so usually GPs don’t even think about CO.

If a survivor’s blood or breath is tested, the CO will usually have disappeared, so testing living people can lead to dangerous false negatives. It’s wiser to test the air the survivor was exposed to and find the source.

Over 3 million citizens are exposed to levels above 50 parts per million of CO in the UK alone.

Extrapolating from respected university research in 2006 and 2011, more than 3 million people are exposed to levels above 50 parts per million (PPM) of CO in their UK homes*3. WHO guidelines for 24 hours are 6 PPM. The known deaths and injuries cost the UK taxpayer £178 million a year *4.

CO causes brain damage including dementia.

Exposure to CO above the WHO guidelines can cause brain damage, including a 1.6 x higher risk of dementia in those exposed to CO*5.

How could CO be proved?

The gas emergency service could relight gas appliances and provide a free sweep test for CO under BS 7967. HSE has recommended testing by the gas emergency service described by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath as a ‘no brainer’, Why won’t HSE take action?

Trials have been undertaken by Northern Gas Networks*6; testing would add under 7 minutes to each visit. Ofgem has the funds to pay for it – to give survivors and their medics confirmed proof.

Why don’t MPs take action?

Because it’s a Catch 22 – to prove CO, you have to prove exposure to CO, which is invisible and cannot be sensed by human senses. Proof and therefore data are virtually impossible. Please watch our 1 minute film on our website about Sue who had carbon monoxide poisoning. Sue’s medics thought she had been taking cocaine!

Survivors say that not being able to prove exposure to CO, even to medics and family, is worse than their life changing injuries. Lack of proof leads to lack of awareness and safety improvements.

121 MPs signed EDM 1032 urging testing in 2007. A safe appliance is energy efficient.

The charity CO-Gas Safety considers that the changes it seeks on behalf of victims/survivors are blindingly obvious and have been for decades. Indoor air contaminated by CO is a worldwide problem.

Surely testing for CO is an easy win for Boris to show leadership at COP26?

References

*1 https://road.cc/content/news/217728-brits-spend-92-all-their-time-indoors

*2 http://www.hse.gov.uk/foi/internalops/hid_circs/technical_osd/spc_tech_osd_30/spctecosd30.pdf (see Para 74 table 23 page 26).

*3  https://www.co-gassafety.co.uk/about-co/numbers-affected-by-co/

*4  https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmcomloc/50/50iii132.htm

*5  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4706265/

*6  http://www.northerngasnetworks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Giving-carbon-monoxide-nowhere-to-hide.pdf

Stephanie Trotter OBE is a barrister and President/Director of the independent, registered charity, CO-Gas Safety. For more information about CO-Gas Safety please visit www.co-gassafety.co.uk or contact Stephanie via email at office@co-gassafety.co.uk

Also see PDF version here.