I thought the same thing as I viewed it—If one is doing a risk asses sment in a residential setting, particularly with target persons who are ver y young or elderly, an exposure time of 24 hr/d  would be very plausibl e, not 8 hr/d.   For these people, there might be no “recupe ration time.”  Thus one would think that the home monitor should have an alarm point that is substantially lower than that in industry.

All I can think of is to educate everyone in the family re the symptoms of CO poisoning, so they can watch one another.  As  with hypothermia : “Believe the symptoms, not the victim.”

    One saving factor in the residential exposure is th at the CO is not the pure compound from a cylinder, and is accompanied by ot her products of combustion that can be smelled.  Forced hot air heating systems can be especially vulnerable to this kind of problem.  I have detected cracked heat exchangers in more than one home by simply smelling th e combustion gas mixture.  So another piece of advice might be to educa te anyone (like your college-aged kids or just-out-of-college kids, parents, et al.) who is or might be living in quarters that might have an older [> ;10years?] heating system [especially hot air] to be on the alert for any &# 8220;smoky” smell, and to follow up immediately with a professional fu rnace inspection, monitoring, and appropriate repairs.  Wood stoves and combustion-based space heaters could also be suspect.

Steve Stepenuck

--
Stephen J. Stepenuck, Ph.D.
Professor of chemistry emeritus
Keene State College
Keene NH 03435-2001
sstepenuck**At_Symbol_Here**ne.rr.com
603.352.7540

Ernie Lippert wrote:

< SPAN STYLE='font-size:12pt'>An interesting presentation. It brings up the qu estion of whether residential CO detectors belong in the home! Does anyone h ave some good advice?
Regards,
Ernie Lippert

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Demer, Frank R - (demer) <demer**At_Symbol_Here**email.arizona.edu> wrote:

< SPAN STYLE='font-size:12pt'>We produced a low budget video on Why Residentia l Carbon Monoxide Monitors Don't Belong in the Workplace? (Windows Media < ;http://services.ltc.arizona.edu/mediaservices/demer/co_monitors.wvx&g t; , Quicktime <http://services.ltc.arizona.edu/MediaServices/demer/co_ monitors.mov>  formats) to try and dispel some of the misconcept ions researchers have about the devices.=A0 Maybe you all might find it useful .
=A0
Frank R. Demer, MS, CIH, CSP
Health Safety Officer
University of Arizona
Department of Risk Management & Safety
=A0
Phone:=A0 520.621.3585
Fax:=A0 520.621.3706
Email:=A0 demer**At_Symbol_Here**email .arizona.edu <mailto: demer**At_Symbol_Here**email.arizona.edu>
Mailing Address:=A0 P.O. Box 210300, Tucson, AZ=A0 85721-0300
Street Address:=A0 220 W. 6th St., Tucson, AZ 85701
Web Address:=A0 risk.arizona.edu <http: //risk.arizona.edu/>  
=A0
=A0
=A0
=A0

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