Are carbon monoxide monitors useful?
Carbon monoxide monitors are useful, though I would not use them as a substitute for preventive actions listed above. Carbon monoxide monitors operate cumulatively; if they go off you don’t know if you are being exposed to a long-term, moderate, non-lethal level or a situation immediately dangerous to life. So when they go off, you get out of the house immediately. Also – carbon monoxide is scary, because it’s colorless and odorless – a “silent killer” so to speak. But realize that fatalities are rare; there are only a couple hundred deaths per year from carbon monoxide in the U.S. To put things in perspective, that makes riding a bicycle far more of a hazard.
Carbon monoxide monitors are useful, though I would not use them as a substitute for preventive actions listed above. They have been a problem due to the tendency of them to go off on bad smog days. The standard for these is just now changing (October 1995) to prevent this. Carbon monoxide monitors operate cumulatively; if they go off you don’t know if you are being exposed to a long-term, moderate, non-lethal level or a situation immediately dangerous to life. So when they go off, you get out of the house immediately. See 4.4 above. Also – carbon monoxide is scary, because it’s colorless and odorless – a “silent killer” so to speak. But realize that fatalities are rare; there are only a couple hundred deaths per year from carbon monoxide in the U.S. To put things in perspective, that makes riding a bicycle far more of a hazard.
