Early detection of CO poisoning during stop smoking clinics
Smoking cessation clinics provide opportunities for early detection of carbon monoxide poisoning from faulty household appliances, the Health Protection Agency has advised.
Chronic exposure to carbon monoxide can harm health, even if it is not
sufficient to produce immediately recognisable adverse effects, the HPA
says. If higher than expected levels of carbon monoxide are found in
a breath sample, patients should be advised that raised carbon monoxide
levels may be due to faulty or badly ventilated devices that burn fossil
fuels, such as cookers, fires, boilers and water heaters.
Anyone with symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning should be referred
to accident and emergency. Those without symptoms should have appliances
assessed urgently. The advice follows an incident at a smoking cessation
clinic in Surrey. After giving up smoking a patient attending the clinic
continued to have high levels of carbon monoxide. Further investigation
revealed that a faulty gas appliance was causing exposure to carbon monoxide.
“If a patient has given up smoking, but still has high levels of
carbon monoxide in exhaled breath, carbon monoxide exposure should be
considered
as a possible cause,” the HPA says. “This new opportunity
to detect carbon monoxide exposure in patients trying to give up smoking
could prevent illness or even death.”
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