Earlier this year, ACC board member Rick Barth had a scary experience. Rick, who has devoted years to helping Ashland residents transition away from methane (“natural” gas), discovered that one of his last remaining gas appliances, his gas water heater, was leaking deadly amounts of carbon monoxide into their garage. That discovery led him to suspect that exposure to low levels of the toxic substance had caused years of mysterious health problems — and reinforced for him the importance of ditching “natural” gas. Rick details his experience in the following account.
Earlier this year, I made a terrifying discovery: I’d been breathing toxic levels of carbon monoxide — possibly for many years.
One chilly winter evening, as I entered the back door of our house, I was greeted by a blaring alarm: the carbon monoxide detector. The noise was a surprise. Twenty-four years ago, my wife and I had begun the process of electrifying our old Victorian home — getting rid of natural gas appliances as part of our commitment to reducing our contribution to climate change. The only gas-powered appliances left in our house were the old dryer and our fireplaces, neither of which were running. Carbon monoxide is produced by burning fuel — including gas and wood — but our home wasn’t burning anything, I thought. It had to be a false alarm — at least, that’s what I assured the firefighters sent over by the monitoring firm.
Sure enough, the firefighters didn’t detect any carbon monoxide in our house. But over the next day, the detector kept going off. At first, I was irritated — then it clicked for me. There was another appliance burning fossil fuels that I hadn’t thought of: the water heater in our detached garage, right below my home office where I spend a good deal of my time.
I called a contractor the next day. As soon as he walked into the garage, his monitor went nuts, alarms blaring and light flashing. The carbon monoxide levels were off the charts — enough to kill you within minutes. In my office, they were lower, but still hovered on the brink of what the World Health Organization deems unsafe for even one hour of exposure.
The problem – a poorly installed, cracked exhaust pipe – was easily fixable. The health effects: not so easy. Years of mysterious ailments suddenly had a cause. And, my long standing concerns about the dangers of using fossil fuels at home suddenly took on a new sense of urgency.
It turned out that the culprit for the deadly carbon monoxide levels was a poorly-installed exhaust pipe on Barth’s gas water heater.
Carbon monoxide poisons the body in two ways. It binds to hemoglobin, the protein that transports oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body; at high concentrations, carbon monoxide can suffocate you. Carbon monoxide can also build up in your bloodstream over time. When those concentrations get high enough, it starts to flush into the cells throughout your body, from your brain to your digestive organs, damaging them from the inside. Carbon monoxide concentrations of four hundred parts per million (ppm) are fatal within hours, and concentrations of 3,000 ppm are fatal within minutes, according to the CDC. But chronic carbon monoxide can be dangerous at much lower levels — the EPA’s maximum safe limit for eight hours of exposure is 9 ppm (parts per million), and it’s not recommended to hit this limit more than once per year.
When we found the cracked pipe, carbon monoxide concentrations in my office were 20 ppm. They had likely been that way for weeks. As I lay on the couch, recovering from the acute exposure, it dawned on me what had happened. A month prior, around Christmas, our heat pump — an efficient, all-electric heating and cooling system — had gone out. It was the coldest part of the year, so we opted to rely on our gas water heater, which heated our home through pipes that run under the ground, as backup. That water heater had gone from heating a modern, relatively well insulated 700 square feet of office & shop to heating a nearly-5,000 square foot drafty Victorian. It was working overtime.
For two days, I dozed in and out of sleep. Over weeks, I slowly felt better. Between trips to an Ashland clinic where I received hyperbaric oxygen therapy, a treatment that pumps your body full of oxygen, I reflected on the experience and began to wonder: what if it wasn’t just short-term carbon monoxide poisoning? What if I’d been exposed to low levels of carbon monoxide for much longer?
For years, I hadn’t been feeling quite right. It seemed like I was constantly sick with a cold or the flu. I had gastrointestinal problems, age spots, and disabling fatigue. On hikes and backpacking trips, I lagged behind, even though these activities had been no trouble for me in the past. At one point my white blood cell count was so low that my primary care provider sent me straight to an oncologist to get checked for bone cancer. (Fortunately, the rest of my tests came back normal.) I initially chalked up all of these symptoms to getting older. But after we discovered the broken pipe, I realized that it had likely been broken for years — the water heater just hadn’t spewed noticeable amounts of carbon monoxide until we were forced to rely on it as our primary source of heat.
But why didn’t those alarms go off earlier? The answer is pretty simple. A generic carbon monoxide detector will sound an alarm at concentrations of 70 ppm or higher — high enough to cause acute poisoning. But these devices, designed to avoid false alarms, don’t detect lower concentrations that may cause damage over days, weeks, months, or years. In other words, if concentrations hadn’t suddenly skyrocketed thanks to our broken heat pump, we might never have caught the problem.
When carbon monoxide exposure stops, internal carbon monoxide levels drop rapidly, especially if the victim is immediately placed in a hyperbaric chamber with 100% oxygen. However, the damage can take months or longer for the body to repair. Some damage can be permanent. I currently feel better than I have in years: my skin continues to improve, the months of itchy spots as the toxins left my body seem to be over, the age spots are fading and disappearing, and my skin is even tightening (I’ve had multiple people tell me how young I look now!). Whether there will be long term effects such as dementia only time will tell. Since carbon monoxide poisoning causes symptoms that can be attributed to other sources it is impossible to say for sure what the cause and effect relationships are.
I’m aware that my experience is ironic given the work that I do. While I was spending much of my time trying to help residents of Ashland to get gas out of their homes, the gas in my own home was on the frugal plan; as equipment reached its end of life, we would upgrade to high-efficiency all-electric models. No longer! Now I’m getting rid of it as fast as possible. But this process will still take months, so in the meantime, I religiously use my carbon monoxide meter almost every day to make sure it stays at zero.
This whole experience has reinforced the importance of the work we do at the Ashland Climate Collaborative to reduce our use of fossil fuels. ACC’s Electrify Ashland Now! (EAN) team educates people on the harms of using “natural” gas in our homes, and gives them the tools to ditch gas-burning appliances. Natural gas isn’t just bad for the planet, it’s toxic to us. And leaks can be insidious. To protect your family, be sure to have fuel- burning appliances checked for proper operation at least annually. Sensitive alarms are available to alert you of concentrations 25 ppm or higher.
These safeguards may save you from catastrophe, but the bottom line is this: It’s past time to get these fuel-burning appliances, including gas stoves and wood fireplaces, out of our homes. ACC and EAN! are here to help.