One sufferer I’ve spoken to has had to change her career entirely, as she could no longer cope with the demands of running her own, previously very successful, business. This is something that is evident from my ongoing research, which centres on collecting the accounts of those who have been affected by carbon monoxide poisoning. What also often remains unsaid but is crucial to consider is the emotional toll of poisoning. Cruelly, such symptoms may occur weeks after initial poisoning symptoms have abated, and for some people they will be permanent. People who have been poisoned may therefore suffer from neurological or cognitive deficits, psychological effects and cardiovascular issues. The brain and the heart seem most susceptible to damage. Carbon monoxide, however, also binds to proteins other than haemoglobin, and it is a toxin which is known to affect cellular respiration and causes an inflammatory response.
Hypoxia undoubtedly plays a significant role, as does what is known as reperfusion injury, which is further damage caused when oxygen returns to tissues that have been previously starved. But mechanisms of poisoning are more complicated. This line of thinking means that the assumption that once the person is away from the carbon monoxide, recovery will commence, is easily made. Not enough houses are fitted with carbon monoxide alarms. A person is essentially slowly suffocated. Oxygen cannot, therefore, be transported in to or out of the body’s organs and tissues. This is in line with the popular view of how we are poisoned, which is that the damage carbon monoxide causes results from oxygen starvation (hypoxia), as carbon monoxide binds with haemoglobin to form carboxyhaemoglobin. Carbon monoxide is understood to leave the blood quickly once the person is away from the source of poisoning. Fine – or deadĪnother aspect of the lack of knowledge about carbon monoxide concerns the aftermath of poisoning. These symptoms vary widely from person to person, for reasons as yet not fully understood, but are not necessarily connected to the amount of carbon monoxide to which they have been exposed. People report fatigue, flu-like symptoms, memory issues, musculoskeletal pain, motor disorders and emotional (affective) disorders, where they may be irritable, moody or depressed. Those of chronic poisoning, meanwhile are variable, somewhat vague, and nonspecific. These are the cases that are more likely to be reported by the media. The symptoms of acute poisoning may include headache, stomach upsets, dizziness, drowsiness, confusion, and seizure, leading to coma and death. They may well have engaged with healthcare professionals, and had their symptoms investigated, but the nature of such symptoms do not lend themselves to a straightforward diagnosis once obvious physiological causes have been discounted. Such people suffer nonspecific but significant symptoms.
But what we don’t know as much about are the effects of poisoning at lower levels, where people are exposed to smaller amounts of carbon monoxide, sometimes over a lengthy period, that do not trigger their carbon monoxide alarm. We know the most about acute poisoning we have some understanding of the wide range of symptoms and after effects that people who are poisoned in a single episode to a large amount of carbon monoxide suffer. There is, however, a general lack of knowledge about the dangers of carbon monoxide among both the general public and the scientific community. While this may not seem like a huge amount, deaths from carbon monoxide are largely preventable. In 2015 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), 53 people in the UK died from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. But unlike many gases, small amounts are extremely harmful to us. Carbon monoxide (CO), like many gases, cannot be detected by our human senses.
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