CO symptoms from natural gas?

[Deleted User]

A friend left an UNLIT burner on a naturual gas stove, turned on overnight. She complained of many of the same symptoms of CO exposure the next day. This was in a mobile home, so not a lot of air to dilute the gas. Can natural gas exposure make you sick?
Thanks
Dennis

andy_5

If the burner wasn't lit,it couldn't give off CO.Yes you can get sick from Natural gas

Unknown

Natural Gas is Non-toxic

however if there is a lot of gas in a confined area it can displace the oxygen and you will suffocate. It has often been reported that the smell makes people sick. The smell is from Mercapton which is added to the natural gas because it is odorless out of the ground. There is however no scientific proof that Mercapton or Natural Gas actually has any harmful affects.

Tony_8

blood gases test

The local hospital lab can check blood gases for natural gas as well as CO or O2. Yes it CAN make you sick. I've seen it up-close. A real puzzler until the gas co. put their "sniffer" to the kitchen faucet ! The gas was in her water well from gas field pressure leaking into the water table and becoming entrained. She was DRINKING IT ! The faucet would "burp" when first turned on and could be briefly lit. Had to install a "seperator" tank.

IMO, if it displaces the oxygen in your blood and suffocates you, it's pretty toxic.

Matt Undy

What you have described is inertly diplacing the oxygen in the air, making it such that there isn't enough avialable to oxygenate your blood. It is like breathing into a plastic bag, it will suffocate you but it will go away when you get to air with oxygen in it(if you have described its effects correctly). CO, cyanide, and carbon tet will bind to the part of the blood that carries oxygen and not relaease. This results in the blood being unable to carry oxygen even when oxygen is present in the air and these gases only need to be present in small quantities to cause suffocation whereas inert gases must be in sufficient quantities to displace the air.

Mark Eatherton1

Color me confused...

but isn't CO "unburned molecules of carbon"? So, following that thought, isn't natural gas "unburned molecules of carbon and other constituents"?

Bad enough she exposed herself to death by fire and explosion, but I'd think she also would be suffering the same symptoms as CO poisoning, or am I not seeing the forest for the trees...

A blood test would be the only way to see for sure.

ME

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Matt Undy

> but isn't CO "unburned molecules of carbon"? So,


It is incompletely burned carbon, but that isn't what makes is deadly. It has a chemical structure that binds it to the part of hemoglobin in your blood where oxygen would normally bind, and unlike oxygen, it isn't unbound at some point, so it makes the part of your blood that transports oxygen unable to transport oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your body. Once you remove your CO exposure you still can't pick up oxygen until the hemogloben is replaced by your body which takes much more time than you can survive without oxygen.

Natural gas is mainly methane, CH4. It has all its binding sites filled with hydrogen so it isn't all that reactive(relatively speaking, if you got a similar dispersion of flour or paper dust in the air it would be jsut as explosive as methane). CO has an open binding site for the second oxygen and is less stable. I'm not sure of the exact reaction that takes place between CO and hemogloben, but it is CO's ability to bind to and disable hemogloben that makes it deadly, not that it is unburned carbon(though you might make an arguemnt that its higher energy state than methane causes it to much more dangerous but being in a higher energy state in itself doesn't make it more dangerous).

You'd have to research methane, but it is possible it may be capable of causing chemical burns in your lungs and cause susteained suffocation in that manner.

> following that thought, isn't natural gas

> "unburned molecules of carbon and other

> constituents"?

>

> Bad enough she exposed herself

> to death by fire and explosion, but I'd think she

> also would be suffering the same symptoms as CO

> poisoning, or am I not seeing the forest for the

> trees...

>

> A blood test would be the only way to

> see for sure.

>

> ME

>

> _A

> HREF="http://www.heatinghelp.com/getListed.cfm?id=

> 88&Step=30"_To Learn More About This

> Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in

> "Find A Professional"_/A_

Matt Undy

It dispalces the air in the room contianing oxygen. It may be detectable in your blood, but its mechanisim isn't the same as CO. Here is the MSDS. It is non-toxic.

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/ssel/MSDS/Methane.pdf

Mark Eatherton

Thanks Matt..

I'm still trying to absorb it... Your post, not CO:-)

ME

Constantin

Hyperbaric chambers

One of the treatments for CO poisoning is putting folks in Hyperbaric chambers that contain 100% oxygen. By increasing the pressure inside the chamber, you can accelerate the rate at which CO is driven out of the hemoglobin and hence blood. However, hyperbaric chambers aren't that common.

For less severe smoke and CO inhalation, a mask with pure Oxygen will do. However, under low-pressure conditions, it takes a long time to drive off CO since its affinity for the Iron in hemoglobin is 250x higher than that of Oxygen. (!!!) That affinity disparity makes getting rid of CO so difficult, hence high-pressure chambers are used to accelerate the process by squeezing the CO out of your blood.

AFAIK, Methane by itself is not toxic. However, any confined space where a gas displaces oxygen is going to be dangerous. For example, it is perfectly possible to be killed by someting as inert as Nitrogen, if a sufficient amount of the stuff is released indoors.

Matt Undy

That's what I was trying to say. The only question I have is how small amounts of methane in the drinking water system were making somone sick. I didn't think it was particularly soulable in water. Perhaps the seperater is also removing something more harmful such as hydrogen sulfide? I say small amounts of methan becuase the concentration to cause suffocation would be over the LEL and the volume needed to cause this concentration would be quite noticable flowing from the faucet(maybe it was seeping past the seals in the faucets and toilets so that most of it was escaping unnoticed?).

Matt

Roger Litman

what about the possibility of explosion

Everyone has not mentioned the possibility of an explosion if the concentration got high enough in the mobile home and the refrigerator went on with a spark or some lit a cigarette, She was LUCKY!

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Tony_8

must be somewhat soluble

She wasn't breathing the gas in, she was swallowing it, absorbing it and breathing it out. Not fast enough to not have any effect on her. The seperator tank had it's inlet on top with large washed stones in the bottom to diffuse the air or other gaseous components from the water and a float type vent on top. The level of water was regulated by the float and the discharge of the tank came off the bottom. It worked quite well. The gas must have been entrained somewhat as there was a vent on her well also. I believe many substances can be absorbed into the body and have an effect on health. Not everyone reacts the same to various substances, regardless of lab studies. Personally, if I get gasoline, solder flux, kerosene on my skin I can taste it for quite a while after and often get a headache. Maybe environment has an effect on how sensitive the human body is to stimuli. Cities usually stuff up my upper respiratory tracts for hours.

Also, contrary to popular belief, natural gas does have an odor of it's own. It is not strong, or recognizable if you don't know that's what you're smelling, but there is one. At least the gas in the wells in my area.