John wrote:
"Pete C." wrote:
wrote:
Robert Gammon wrote:
Carbon monoxide deaths related to natural gas furnaces at 28 per year, I
wonder what the break down is with age of the furnace.
And it's 28 CO deaths per year for gas heating SYSTEMS. I'm sure if
you look at the incidents in more depth you would see that most of them
have nothing to do with the furnace. For example, a very common CO
situation is a blocked chimney. That would be counted as an incident
with gas heat, even though the furnace wasn't the real problem. We
had a family here in NJ where people died a couple years ago because a
contractor had temporarily put something in the chimney opening during
work in warm weather to block it, then forgot to remove it. Come
heating season, the CO killed them.
Again the fact that oil combustion products other than CO are far more
human detectable than those of gas means that that incident may not have
resulted in deaths had it been an oil furnace.
In other words the oil furnace burns dirtier and pollutes more.
False. Modern oil and gas furnaces produce comparable amounts of
emissions. The exact composition is different, but the overall pollution
is the same (the EPA and DOE have studies that confirm this if you want
to look).
Different emission components have different levels of human
detectability and oil emissions are more detectable than gas emissions.
In the case of both oil and gas, they don't produce a lot of CO unless
the combustion adjustments are quite a bit off. When the adjustments are
off the oil becomes even more detectable than the gas when the
adjustments are off.
The nasty building fumes
would have very likely driven the occupants out before a lethal CO
exposure could occur.
Cite?
None handy, just personal experience with the exhaust of both under both
proper combustion and improper combustion conditions. Neither is very
detectable under proper combustion, but neither produces much CO then
either. Under improper combustion the oil exhaust is far more noticeable
as it produces both fine particulates (soot) and vaporized hydrocarbons.
You *DO* have carbon monoxide detectors, don't you?
I did, before I moved. I do not at present because I have no combustion
appliances at present (electric).
Pete C.