From the archives: Weather trips carbon-monoxide detectors

This story was originally published in Newsday on February 8, 1996.

All five Fabians were snug in bed at their New Hyde Park home at about 12:30 yesterday morning when a piercing shriek from the carbon-monoxide detector sent them scrambling to call LILCO, call the fire department, and to find a way to shut the thing off.

"My husband finally took it to the basement and got the battery out," said Janet Fabian. Then, in quick order, the fire department came; Fabian, her husband, Robert, and three small children fled the house; LILCO came; the family went to the hospital where Fabian and her 3-year-old son, Douglas, had tests for carbon monoxide poisoning, which were negative. Only after all of that did they discover what had set their alarm blaring.

A fickle twist of weather.

Utility service crews and fire departments worked at a hectic pace yesterday as an inversion - an uncommon layering of hot and cold air that kept the colorless, odorless, often deadly gas near the ground - triggered an outbreak of carbon-monoxide detector alerts that in most cases turned out to be more alarming than dangerous.

"We're all fine," she said yesterday afternoon of the family that also includes two daughters, ages 6 and 8. "But it was pretty frightening."

The rash of alarms, which resulted in several hundred emergency calls, also raised questions about carbon-monoxide detectors - not because they don't work, but because some are too sensitive and may end up being ignored by frustrated homeowners. Similar carbon-monoxide scares related to inversions have occurred in Chicago, Arizona and Los Angeles in recent years, raising concerns among some safety experts that people will lose confidence in the lifesaving devices that have been installed in increasing numbers during the past several years.

The carbon-monoxide buildup, which began Tuesday evening and peaked around midnight, dissipated by around noon yesterday as weather patterns began shifting, environmental officials said. There were no reports of serious health problems relating directly to the inversion, although up to a dozen people were evacuated from a Bay Shore apartment complex after some fell ill due to carbon monoxide blamed on a faulty boiler.

"It's areawide," said Chief Peter Meade of Nassau County Fire Rescue Communications in Mineola, who by yesterday morning had logged more than 100 calls related to carbon monoxide, adding that the detectors, which have a very low tolerance for carbon monoxide, were operating correctly.

The Long Island Lighting Co. reported 287 calls between midnight and noon yesterday about carbon monoxide, compared to between five and 20 on an average day, said spokeswoman Andrea Staub.

Con Edison and Brooklyn Union Gas also reported a sharp increase in carbon monoxide calls yesterday. BUG received more than 150 calls yesterday, while Con Ed got 100 calls - including 50 calls in Queens, which is 10 times the usual number in the borough, according to spokesmen for the companies.

Still, the utilities, along with heating oil companies, advised homeowners to heed the warning devices and have their homes checked whenever alarms sound. There should be particular concern, they added, when the warning signs of carbon monoxide poisoning occur - such as nausea, headaches and dizziness.

The inversion was caused when a layer of warm air plopped itself on top of the frigid air that had put the region into a deep freeze for the past several days. That upended the normal air circulation in which warmer air near the ground rises into colder regions aloft. Light winds also prevented the normal mixing of air in the atmosphere.

"It just trapped everything underneath it," said George Klein, a National Weather Service meteorologist. A system moving in from the west, expected to bring rain to the region today, broke up the inversion, Klein said.

The rash of alarms was apparently precipitated by a number of factors relating to the inversion, which caused the levels of carbon monoxide in the outside air at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow - where the state has a monitoring device - to rise from a roughly normal background level of 0.9 parts per million at 4 p.m. Tuesday to a peak of 6.6 parts per million at midnight that night. Those levels are below the federal air quality standard of an average of 9.5 parts per million over an eight hour period.

However, in some homes the carbon monoxide levels apparently exceeded the 15 parts per million over an eight-hour period needed to set off the most sensitive types of home carbon-monoxide detectors. Once homes are ventilated, the carbon monoxide levels generally drop.

The growing incidence of what are termed "nuisance alarms" from carbon-monoxide detectors has already prompted a revision of standards that went into effect last Oct. 1. New models of alarms are now less sensitive than older models and contain a switch that allows owners to reset the sirens, said Joe Feurey, a spokesman for BRK Industries Inc. in Chicago, maker of the First Alert brand of carbon-monoxide detectors. Once reset, the newer model will sound an alarm again if the levels don't drop.

The federal Consumer Products Safety Commission is planning on holding hearings later this month to review technical standards for the detectors, weighing the cost of unneeded alarms against the safety aspects of the devices.

An Inversion Explainer

An increase in temperature as the altitude increases is defined as inversion. This weather condition, which often develops on clear, cool nights when wind is light and when a warm-air mass moves through, can trap pollutants near the surface causing carbon monoxide detectors to go off.

Air in contact with the cold ground stays cold.

Temperature a few hundred feet above the ground increases with height. Warmer air higher up traps pollutants near the surface.

If the Alarm Sounds

Carbon monoxide detectors alerts you to the presence of the poisonous gas, which is colorless and odorless. If the detector sounds an alarm, take the following actions.

1. Open windows and ventilate the area.

2. If you have symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoining such as tightness across the forehead, headaches, throbbing temples, dizziness, dimness of vision, nausea, vomiting, and increased pulse or breathing rates, leaves the premises immediately and get medical attention.

3. Contact your utility or oil dealer to have heating systems checked. Among possible problems are systems that are improperly vented to the outside or chimneys blocked with animal nests or debris.

SOURCE: Weather Almanac; Long Island Lighting Co.