Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine March 2024

HVACR NewsMagazine March 2024

Tech News

The World Health Organization says 9-10 PPM for no more than 8 hours, 23-35 PPM no more than 1 hour and 90-100 PPM no more than 15 minutes. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends no higher than 35 PPM over an 8 hour period. OSHA on the other hand set a limit of 50 PPM over an 8 hour period. These organizations may set limits on the CO PPM amount while sleeping, while active, and while working and you can read up on their recommended limits directly from them. However, for the sake of this article, we are just focusing on the fact that we need a method to accurately measure and notify us if CO is present. So what does a CO Alarm sound off at? In the USA, CO alarms are UL rated (UL 2034/CSA 6.19) and will usually NOT sound off below 30 PPM! They may have a mandatory response of 70 PPM within 60 240 minutes, 150PPM within 10-50 Minutes, and 400 PPM within 4-15 minutes. By the time a CO alarm sounds off at those very high levels, it is an emergency! The first CO alarms where first introduced in 1992. In 1994 a strong weather inversion occurred in Chicago that trapped CO and other air pollutants at ground level and the Fire department responded to over 2000 emergency calls with 30 people in the ER. We knew a lot less about CO back then, but we knew the fire department was overrun with more calls than they could handle. This lead to the regulations of higher limits before an alarm would sound as an emergency. Carbon Monoxide Alarm

Carbon Monoxide Alarm vs Low Level CO Monitor Ty Branaman for AC Service Tech HVACR Training Today most people are aware of the invisible, odorless, poisonous gas of Carbon Monoxide or CO for short. Now we know that even low levels of CO can have long term health effects depending on exposure time, the health and age of the exposed person. Carbon Monoxide binds with the hemoglobin in the blood 300 times more than Oxygen. It is believed that Florence Nightingale's ailments may have stemmed from CO poisoning from her coal heater in Russia. Some haunted houses were actually from CO poisoning and its effects on the brain. It turns out the HVAC professional can be more effective than the exorcist! While the flu and cold is more prevalent in the winter, sometimes it is actually CO poisoning with similar symptoms. We need to be more aware!

What are Safe Levels For Carbon Monoxide? What are safe levels for CO? It depends on who you ask, but I think we can all agree the less poisonous gas we breathe the better. It will be measured in How Many Parts of CO Per Million Parts of Air. This is referred to as PPM (Parts Per Million).

Carbon Monoxide Monitor

What is a better solution than a high level alarm? Installing a low level CO monitor is a solution that will notify the occupants