The New Law of the Land

You have to have a carbon monoxide detector in your house now. The bill was passed last November but the law came into effect this week. And manufacturers are ready with scads of them to choose from. You can have a warning light, a warning alarm, and probably one that sprays confetti if that’s what you want. 

Last weekend, a colleague at Blackburn News heard the unfamiliar wail of the CO alarm in his home. Some people are skeptical when the thing goes off, I’m told, because CO is odorless and colourless, but Mike knew better and ushered his wife and daughter out and to a neighbour’s house before calling 911. Sure enough, there was a problem with his gas furnace and CO was leaking.

Our detector was probably fine but it looked like it might have been the prototype for the original design. In other words, it was ancient. So we used the news of the law coming in to prompt us to buy a new one.  Opinions vary on where it should be placed but we went with the wisdom that says CO is heavier than air, so the detector should be near the potential leaks, in our case, the dryer and the furnace. By the time our house filled up with CO and reached a main floor detector, we’d be toast.

My hope for you and for us is that the thing never has to go off. The CO law is named the Hawkins-Gignac Act after Woodstock OPP officer Laurie Hawkins-Gignac and her husband and their two kids who did not have a detector and simply didn’t wake up one day after they had a CO leak in their gas fireplace.  Woodstock-area MPP Ernie Hardeman took up the cause and I have to give him credit for seeing it through. Private members’ bills don’t have the greatest chance to begin with. Hardeman introduced the bill a week after the family perished and then watched it languish three times because of parliamentary goings-on. Finally, on the fifth anniversary of the family’s deaths, it passed. In that time, 60 people have died from CO poisoning. Let’s not let it happen to any more.

3 thoughts on “The New Law of the Land”

  1. I bought my parents a digital CO detector years ago. One day my mother called me because it was going off, the hitch is that she was in the house calling me. I lived 10 miles away and took off after telling her to get both of them out to a neighbor and to call the gas company from the neighbor’s phone. I got to the house about the same time as the rep from the gas company. His detector went off with a fairly high reading as well, but we never found the source of the CO. Now the house has a natural gas detector as well as CO monitors and two types of smoke detectors. Covering as many bases as possible makes sense to me, a few bucks to maybe save the life of someone you love is really cheap insurance.
    BTW, I put a sign on the wall near each detector which reads, “If this detector goes off, grab yourselves and get OUT!, call the appropriate company from a neighbor’s house.”

  2. Actually the law specifies where your CO2 detectors are required such as outside all sleeping areas in your home. To play it safe, everyone should take the same approach as a smoke detector, have one on each floor of your home and since you can easily buy dual purpose units, this shouldn’t be a problem. I purchased dual purpose units with speech output for $54 at Home Depoe several weeks ago.

  3. Oh and by the way. Smoke/CO2 detectors have a 10 year life span because the detection element deteriorates over time becoming less effective. If you read the instructions on the package your detector comes in, you will find in the small print information as to when your detector will need replaced or its warrantee period But who ever reads the packaging?

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