In total carbon monoxide poisoning was responsible for 43.9% of deaths by poisoning in that country. In South Korea, 1,950 people had been poisoned by carbon monoxide with 254 deaths from 2001 through 2003. A report from Jerusalem showed 3.53 per 100,000 people were poisoned annually from 2001 through 2006. In Hubei, China, 218 deaths from poisoning were reported over a 10-year period with 16.5% being from carbon monoxide exposure. Causes
Carbon monoxide is a product of combustion of organic matter under conditions of restricted oxygen supply, which prevents complete oxidation to carbon dioxide (CO2). Sources of carbon monoxide include cigarette smoke, house fires, faulty furnaces, heaters, wood-burning stoves, internal combustion vehicle exhaust, electrical generators, propane-fueled equipment such as portable stoves, and gasoline-powered tools such as leaf blowers, lawn mowers, high-pressure washers, concrete cutting saws, power trowels, and welders. Exposure typically occurs when equipment is used in buildings or semi-enclosed spaces.Riding in the back of pickup trucks has led to poisoning in children. Idling automobiles with the exhaust pipe blocked by snow has led to the poisoning of car occupants. Any perforation between the exhaust manifold and shroud can result in exhaust gases reaching the cabin. Generators and propulsion engines on boats, especially houseboats, has resulted in fatal carbon monoxide exposures.Poisoning may also occur following the use of a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA) due to faulty diving air compressors.In caves carbon monoxide can build up in enclosed chambers due to the presence of decomposing organic matter.
Joseph Priestley is credited with first synthesizing carbon monoxide in 1772 which he had called heavy inflammable air, and Carl Wilhelm Scheele isolated carbon monoxide from coal in 1773 suggesting it to be the toxic entity.The dose-dependent risk of carbon monoxide poisoning as hydrocarbonate was investigated in the late 1790s by Thomas Beddoes, James Watt, Tiberius Cavallo, James Lind, Humphry Davy, and many others in the context of inhalation of factitious airs, much of which occurred at the Pneumatic Institution.William Cruickshank discovered carbon monoxide as a molecule containing one carbon and one oxygen atom in 1800, thereby initiating the modern era of research exclusively focused on carbon monoxide. The mechanism for toxicity was first suggested by James Watt in 1793, followed by Adrien Chenot in 1854 and finally demonstrated by Claude Bernard after 1846 as published in 1857 and also independently published by Felix Hoppe-Seyler in the same year.The first controlled clinical trial studying the toxicity of carbon monoxide occurred in 1973. Historical detection
Carbon monoxide poisoning has plagued coal miners for many centuries. In the context of mining, carbon monoxide is widely known as whitedamp. John Scott Haldane identified carbon monoxide as the lethal constituent of afterdamp, the gas created by combustion, after examining many bodies of miners killed in pit explosions. By 1911, Haldane introduced the use of small animals for miners to detect dangerous levels of carbon monoxide underground, either white mice or canaries which have little tolerance for carbon monoxide thereby offering an early warning, i.e. Canary in a coal mine.