TexasCHLforum.com

jimlongley wrote:

WildBill wrote:

tomtexan wrote:Does the oven have pilot lights or electronic igniters? Would a pilot light emit enough fumes to cause illness?

I didn't think that gas appliances/ovens had pilot lights anymore.

I have one sitting in my showroom at Home Depot right now.

A malfunctioning pilot light could cause a problem, which is why they were supposed to be designed to be fail safe, which often didn't happen.

Mine, and I suppose any in the last dozen years or so, have a thermal couple that cuts off gas when the pilot light goes out. @jimlongley - I had a similar one where the family used Sterno and old oil lamps. 3 DRT, one critical that died later and one survivor. CO is nothing to mess with, it is oft called the "silent killer".

Interesting the ER found your PSO2 a "little" off. CO has a higher affinity for hemoglobin than oxygen and binds several times faster and with a stronger bond than oxygen to your blood and can show a normal count in blood or non-invasive PSO2 monitoring. In the field you treat based on symptoms and environmental findings and basically ignore the monitor. Fresh air helps but will not completely flush the blood for several days so if another problem occurs the effects may be cumulative. Standard treatment should've been an hour on 100% oxygen. If I had picked you up you would have been on a non-rebreather mask at 12 lpm O2 minimum. Severe cases require hyperbaric oxygenation.

He mentioned the oven burner needed to be adjusted to allow for the proper mix of Oxygen to Gas, and that the ratio was previously off and was letting too much gas and not enough air in.

This is where the problem lies. The gas leak itself would be a hazard but you didn't detect the odor, so either you had been smelling it long enough to deaden the sensitivity to mercaptin or your one in the minority of the population who can't smell it. The real problem is the leak in combination with the air/fuel mixture creates an incomplete combustion (FWIW dirt on burners in water heaters and furnaces can do the same thing) and incomplete combustion is where the CO is generated.

Your PEL (Prolonged Exposure Limit) is 50ppm, Toxic (Headache in 2-3 hours) is around 200 ppm and 400 ppm will give you the headache in about an hour. 35 ppm is considered "safe". I would bet a Coke that you cleared the air significantly when you evacuated and the gas man did take over an hour to get to you. Methane on the other hand, if it was concentrated enough to be toxic it would have been well into its LEL of 50000 ppm or 5% concentration. Then you may have well remodeled the place when you threw a light switch. So I'm betting on CO.

God forbid this should happen again. If it does please, please, call 911. They will get there in minutes and they have gas sensors which will tell them what gases are present and in what concentration AND they can treat you if you're sick (not to mention being able to mitigate the impromptu remodel).

One last word on the Methane exposure, if it was that that caused your symptoms then it is common for people to be cleared medically by ER personnel, but that happens regularly with CO poisoning as well.

Glad you are okay.