Holidays common time for
CO poisoning

Middletown (WTNH) - With the holidays here, many of us are thinking about food, family and shopping. Cleaning your furnace is probably the last thing on your mind. The holiday season is also a common time for carbon monoxide poisoning.

"Everybody has buttoned up their house for the winter but they haven't had their furnace checked or cleaned," Chief Robert Kronenberger, of the Middletown Fire Department, said. "That's why December into January has the highest number of cases."

From Thanksgiving until just after Christmas, carbon monoxide kills more people than any other time of year. You can't smell it like natural gas, or see it like smoke. It is an invisible gas that builds up in your house and can cause you to pass out and even die.

Firefighters say carbon monoxide comes from incomplete burning and must be vented into your chimney. The furnace is the number one cause of carbon monoxide poisoning.

"The cause of a lot of it is the vent," Chief Kronenberger said. "It has holes in them. They are rusted out and have big holes in them."

"One of the most common things is the venting of the furnace doesn't function properly and admits carbon monoxide into the basement and into up the chimney," Deputy Fire Marshal Al Santostefano, of the Middletown Fire Department, said.

The best thing to do to protect yourself from the poising, firefighters say, is to install carbon monoxide alarms. They recommend having one on each level of your house; that way if it goes off you have a chance to find the problem and get out of the house. It gives you a head start, which firefighters say could be the difference between life or death.

"Flu-like symptoms, headache, vomiting, nausea," Deputy Fire Marshal Santostefano said of the poisoning symptoms. "When you leave your home, the symptoms could go away and come back when you come back. It is a silent killer."

So, the Middletown Fire Department wants to remind you to get your furnace and chimney cleaned and inspected, as well as install detectors, because without them you don't know you are being poisoned until it's too late.