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Jan 1, 2007 11:49 pm US/Central
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Target Of New Minn. Law
by Bridgette Bornstein
(WCCO)
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Ninety people were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning at Hennepin County Medical Center in 2006. (File)
It's a potential killer that you can't see, but it's threatened the lives of an alarming number of Minnesotans last year.
Ninety people were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning at Hennepin County Medical Center in 2006, 19 of them in just the past month.
"The alarm went off and I woke up about 5 o'clock in the morning. I noticed when I woke up there was a funny odor," said carbon monoxide poisoning victim Mary Mikkalson, who is just starting to realize how close to death she came. "I started feeling a little woozy, a little dizzy, pounding of my heart then just shaky, unsteady I could still walk but my balance was off."
Turns out the furnace heat exchanger had cracked, and the home filled with carbon monoxide.
Mikkalson was treated at Hennepin County Medical Center's hyperbaric chamber. Doctors told her husband that, had she been exposed to the CO just 20 minutes more, she wouldn't have made it.
Now there's a brand new furnace and a CO detector in the home.
After her close call, Mikkalson's spreading the word. In the annual holiday letter, Mary and her husband urge all family and friends to get co detectors of their own.
"The message, everybody with any kind of gas appliance -- furnace, hot water heater, fireplace, even a wood burning fireplace -- needs carbon monoxide detectors in their homes. I never realized how many people I knew, how many people cared about me, how big a message this was," said Mikkalson.
A new law just took effect, requiring CO detectors in all new construction homes in the state.
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