The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1911-01-12
FLUELESS GAS STOVE is DEADLY
Experts and Health authorities Warn
Against Fatal Practices.

against dIdL fEaCt1CeS.
If you burn gas for heating purposes
in your home and have no outlet for the
fumes of combustion, connect your
stove with flue at once-the fumes are
poisoning you and your family.
There is one way to be safe with a
hose connection-throw the hose away,
send for a plumber, and while he is
making a gas connection have him make
a connection with the chimney to carry
off the fumes.
One ordinary gas jet consumes as
much oxygen in room as SIX people
and stove consumes many times this
amount. Individuals breathe out car
bonic acid gas and the product of gas
combustion is carbonic acid gas-both
poisonous.
The foregoing is the advice of health
authorities of Pittsburg, according to
the Pittsburg Dispatch, and experts on
gas combustion speaking on matter of
crucial Importance to the people of this
community. The question developed
from the many deaths recently, which
were directly the result of carelessness
or ignorance in the use of natural gas.
Some of these deaths may be traced
to the hose connection used on stoves
others resulted from the fumes of burn
ing gas, which in a room without venti-
lation, are as deadly as the gas itself.
Coroner Jamison advocates strict
municipal regulation OF the use of gas,
with inspection of all apparatus by
plumbing inspectors, thus guarding
against explosion Of escaping gas, as
phyxiation from the same cause and
poisoning by the escape of gas fumes.
The tolerance of gas fumes IN resi-
dences is said by competent authorities
to be responsible for 50 per cent of the
illness prevalent in gas burning districts
during the winter. When gas is lighted
it Immediately begins to consume
oxygen in greater quantities than 10
DCODlS. IL llGLC ID llOI attachment W q
fue or chimney the products of combus-
ton pour into the room. In the case of
perfect combustion, the product is car
bonic acid gas. If combustion is poor,
the product is carbonic oxide, a deadly
poison. Carbonic oxide was responsible
= for at least four deaths in Pittsburg
during the winter.
The danger is not confined to eXplo-
sion and asphyxiation from escaping
gas. The most far-reaching menace is
to health. While the Red Cross Asso-
citation and the municipality are fighting
the spread of tuberculosis, and while
the Board of Health is enforcing strict
rules of sanitation the good results are
much handicapped by heating practices
in residences whicha are ruinous to health.
Breathing carbonic acid gas fumes from
burning gas stoves weaKens the tissues
of the lungs and poisons the entire sys-
TEN. People become sick and try to
regain health, all the time submitting
to the dangerous influence which caused
their sickness. Women work all day in
kitchens where water tanks are heated
with fueless apparatus, and then Won
der why they suffer splitting" head
aches.
Unless fumes from combustion are
carried out of the room, sickness will
result as certainly as sickness would
follow the administration of slow poi
sen, r'and according to competent au-
thorities, there can be absolutely no
combustion without the dangerous
product of carbonic acid gas.