Effects of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
Carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless gas that is often a co-product of many industrial and kitchen gadgets. As you cannot see it or taste it or smell it, you won’t know when you ingest it in large quantities. Unless you fall sick or show symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, you wouldn’t realize you are inhaling that gas. It is also called the silent killer as it is gas that is produced by burning carbon, which could even be your fire place.
When you inhale carbon monoxide, it reduces the oxygen in your blood therefore inhibiting the oxygen supply to the brain. The hemoglobin usually transports the oxygen to the brain. The oxygen in the carbon monoxide combines with the hemoglobin, creating carboxyhemoglobin which then cannot transport the oxygen. In pregnant women, for instance, even a 30 per cent concentration of carboxyhemoglobin can be very dangerous.
How badly you will be affected by the carbon monoxide poisoning depends on how much you have inhaled. It is calculated at airborne concentration level s and the duration for inhaling it. For instance if you inhale 35 PPM for 8 hours, you would get a mild headache at the end of those 8 hours but if you inhaled 12,000 PPM for even 1 – 2 minutes, you would die. Carbon monoxide poisoning has many symptoms. The main carbon monoxide poisoning symptoms are dizziness, flu-like fatigue, nausea, chest pain, confusion, depression, hallucination, vomiting, agitation, abdominal pain and drowsiness. But the fever, unlike in flu, is not a carbon monoxide poisoning symptom so if you have fever with the other symptoms it is not carbon monoxide poisoning. Severe carbon monoxide poisoning symptoms include seizures and loss of consciousness. Prolonged exposure to carbon monoxide can lead to death.
Sometimes, in case of prolonged exposure, a change in behavior is not attributed carbon monoxide poisoning. You notice irritability, forgetfulness, irascibility and many such negative traits but rarely attribute it to carbon monoxide poisoning. There can be many long term effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, especially in children. You develop problems with your memory, affect cognitive development and memories and even impair behavioral traits. The hippocampus or that part of the brain that forms new memories is especially to susceptible carbon monoxide poisoning. Constant long term carbon monoxide poisoning can also cause problems with the heart and other systems like respiratory and endocrine systems of the body. There is no carbon monoxide treatment that can be administered at home. Seeing the symptoms, you can decide what the intensity of the carbon monoxide poisoning will be.
There are many steps that can be taken for the prevention of carbon monoxide poisoning by controlling the carbon monoxide poisoning causes. Your house, especially the room that houses the appliances, should be properly ventilated with fans and windows. This is a necessary carbon monoxide poisoning prevention method. Some of the common gadgets that you need to be aware of are lawn mowers, gas stoves, gas dryers, automobiles, fuel-filed furnaces, gas water heaters and charcoal grills. There could also be an alarm available to track the levels of carbon monoxide in the air. There should be a good alarm system and once the alarm goes off, you should vacate the premise and wait till other precautionary steps are taken. Precautionary steps include calling the fire department and the local poison department. This alarm works very much like a smoke alarm. When carbon monoxide is inhaled in really confined spaces like drain pipes and narrow, the danger considerably increases. Some more precautionary steps are cleaning and maintaining proper ventilation, using healthy alternatives like gas fires instead of charcoal fires, keeping yourself aware of all the things you can do once you encounter carbon monoxide.
