Pete C. 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.

Used to be we had pilot lights. Pilot lights came equipped with
thermometer that kept the gas off unless the pilot was on. Point of
use failure causing death was then attributable to a thermometer failure
that allowed gas to flow with out a pilot. This was the design in
place 30 years ago, I do not know what preceeded it. I had gas valves
fail, but then it just got cold, no excess gas flowed. I had a
termometer fail, but again it just got cold, no excess gas flowed

Now we have hot surface igniters, much like gas ovens do. No pilot,
but the hot surface MUST reach a proscribed temperature, measured by a
thermometer before the gas will flow. I had an igniter fail in a
stove. Stove stayed cold, no excess gas flowed. Replace the igniter
and all works well.

Natural gas has been safely piped to millions of homes nationwide for
decades. The risk of injury or death due to natural gas incidents is
far far lower than the risks you take every day to drive your car, ride
in an airplane, eat out at a fast food restaurant........

Note that what you just mentioned pilots and igniters relates to gas
explosions (and possible resulting deaths), not CO.

CO deaths are a result of poor combustion adjustment combined with flue
leakage, both of which have a higher probability with a gas furnace due
to:

1) People believing that a gas furnace does not require annual
inspections / service. This creates a greater probability of the furnace
falling into disrepair and the poor adjustment and leakage forming.

2) The fact that while CO has no small and is therefore not detectable
by humans, the other combustion byproducts produced by a burner
sufficiently out of adjustment that it produces significant CO are much
more human detectable with oil than with nat. gas.

People can and do die from CO poisoning from both gas and oil
appliances, but gas is a greater risk both from it's characteristics and
from the larger number of potential appliances (ever hear of an oil
stove or dryer?).

When you look at deaths due to non CO cause i.e. fires and explosions,
gas is by far the greater risk as there is essentially no such thing as
an oil explosion and oil spills rarely find a suitable ignition source
unlike gas leaks.


I'd like to see the data that shows that home nat gas heating systems
actually cause far greater fires than oil heating systems. Does the
insurance company charge higher rates for gas furnaces based on payout
on fires and explosions? Again, you are making wild assumptions,
without any supporting data.

Sure there is a small additional risk from nat gas due to the
possibility of an explosion that you do not have with oil. But you
blow all this way out of proportion to the real risk. How many
people die each year in auto accidents compared to furnace systems of
any kind? It's 2 orders of magnitude or more higher. There are 40K
people killed every year in US auto accidents. 17K die in falls.
Only 3K die from ALL sources of building fire/explosion. While I
couldn't find actual data on accidental nat gas fire deaths, by the
time you seperate those out of the 3K, you will surely be down around
the level of deaths due to lightning or commercial aviation. So, who
besides you cares?