Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Kills More Than 100 in China This Year
12, 2018
BEIJING — A rash of gas poisonings in a region of southern China has left at least 104 people dead
and hundreds more hospitalized so far this year, according to government offices quoted in the state-run news media, which blamed poorly ventilated or faulty water heaters and cooking stoves for the deaths.
In most cases, the deaths appeared to be caused by natural gas-fired heaters or stoves
that were either shoddily built or improperly installed, allowing carbon monoxide to accumulate inside rooms to the point that it overwhelmed the occupants, news reports from Guangxi suggested.
"It’s often the case that by the time medical workers break into the door, it’s already too late," Yang Shixiong,
the director of an emergency medical center in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi, told China National Radio.
In the city of Liuzhou, ambulance workers found a family of three on Wednesday
that had apparently killed by the gas — the mother in the bathroom, the father in a bedroom doorway and their daughter on a bed, the official Guangxi news service reported.
But some medical experts in Guangxi suggested that the carbon monoxide deaths reflected growing use of
poorly installed gas heaters, as well as an unusually long and sharp cold spell across the region.
The government of the region, Guangxi, announced a safety crackdown after the deaths from exposure
to carbon monoxide, a byproduct of burning natural gas, coal and other fossil fuels.