In the wake of a tragic accident that took the lives of six individuals earlier this month in Nassau County, including the life of a 2 year old girl, Nassau County Executive Thomas S. Gulotta today announced that he is recommending that the Nassau County Board of Health add a new article to the Nassau County Public Health Ordinance requiring that the installation of carbon monoxide detectors be required in newly constructed homes and in all hotels and motels. I am recommending that carbon monoxide detectors be required in all newly constructed one family, two family and multiple dwellings, and in all new and existing motels and hotels, and that the alarms be required to be directly connected to the electrical system of the dwelling with no intervening wall switch in order to avoid tampering and also in order to avoid the necessity of replacing batteries. The County Executive has directed the Health Department to act immediately. Each year, unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning is estimated to cause approximately 2,100 death in the United States, according to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Carbon monoxide is colorless, odorless, non-irritating, tasteless and slightly lighter than air.
Common sources of carbon monoxide poisoning exist in gas or wood burning fireplaces, household gas kitchens and household ranges or cooktops. Other sources of carbon monoxide include gas clothes dryers, portable heaters often used in homes, automobile exhaust fumes from an attached garage, through the use of a barbecue grill in an enclosed area such as a garage, a leaking chimney pipe or flue, a cracked heat exchange, within corroded or disconnected water heater vent pipes, or within a clogged chimney or a blocked chimney opening. According to an ongoing investigation by Nassau County's Homicide Squad into the May 7 accident in Roslyn Heights, a clogged central air conditioning filter forced the air conditioning unit's fan to pull the carbon monoxide exhaust from the chimney used to vent a nearby heating system. The central air conditioning unit then circulated the carbon monoxide throughout the home. Both the heating system and the air conditioning unit were operating simultaneously, according to police.