People who die of CO poisoning

How do they die exactly? And how is it painless?

I study chemistry but I already said I know nothing about chemistry. This is why I couldn't graduate from university for 9 years. But I am trusting Corona on graduating from University. There are far distance exams, at our homes where we can do cheating.

Back to my question,

We all know that dying of not breathing is one of the most painful ways to go.

But when it comes to CO poisoning, people say it is to be painless. So... are you able to breathe when you are having CO poisoning, otherwise it makes no sense for it to be a painless way to go.

How is death from CO poisoning a lot different than death from not being able to breathe?

 

Grandeur,


They die a frightening, awful death like any other - ominous, foreboding, and decidedly permanent. There is nothing more awful, and though we all must die, we should not aspire to die before our time, leaving our proverbial mark on those who love us.

Do not allow yourself to romanticize dying... It's tempting (probably especially so when we're younger, like you) to think that somehow life is worth ending. I remember a time when my drug-addled brain thought that it would be beautiful to die, and that I had already lived enough anyway.

Then, I found I could not breathe. I had taken something - heroin, and then GHB and alcohol, or something like that. And my breathing slowed... and slowed... and finally, I had to instruct my body to take each breath. And I asked to be taken to the hospital where they gave me oxygen.

My tox-screen, by some miracle, came back negative/didn't show any of those substances. But I know what I did... But my parents never found out.




At any rate, I realized slowly, 1) drugs kill. and 2) that I didn't want to die.


You may insist that your circumstances are different; and in that I may agree. But you don't deserve to die. You shouldn't die, Grandeur. Learn the walk of life that suits you. Make it your daily routine. And then, celebrate. Live life to its fullest and know that you & you alone pulled yourself through the darkness.

 

Oh my. That is scary.
I have alarms in my house.

 

Carbon Monoxide has a molecular weight of 20, while Carbon Dioxide has a molecular weight of 28 and molecular Oxygen (O2) is 16.

During respiration, the lungs adsorb oxygen (16) and expel carbon dioxide (28)

When carbon monoxide is present, the lungs cannot differentiate the 20 from 16, so it is absorbed in error. Being a lot lighter than 28, it's expulsion is extremely slow. Up to 21 days for complete expulsion.

Carbon Monoxide is NOT a poison as such. As it replaces the oxygen, the brain is simply starved of oxygen leading to loss of conscience and ultimately death. It is exactly the same process as drowning.

Treatment is by replacing the air (20% oxygen) with 70% oxygen via a non rebreathing mask. In severe cases a blood transfusion is required.

One serious problem is that the small life support machines in ambulances use pulse oximetry, so they show the patients oxygen level as normal. Unless paramedics are aware of carbon monoxide exposure, the condition can be missed until it is too late.

 

CO poisoning happens every year around these parts usually in the winter after a big snowstorm or after an ice storm.

Invariably when the power goes out some idiot will use his gas oven as a source of heat, or locate his gas powered generator inside the house, rather of outside as recommended.

 

You getting ready to do this shit?

 

Nasty stuff. In high school in an advanced biology class we used a CO generator to bubble thru blood to show that CO turns blood to a light pink because the blood picks up the CO instead of O2. When done we put the tube from the CO generator out the window till the reaction was over. Unfortunately a janitor came by the next hour closed the window and left the CO generator merrily bubbling away inside the classroom!
Fortunately I came the next period to work on a project and saw the closed window. Gave both the teacher and I a scare.

 

A coworker of mine's brother in law was slowly being poisoned by an exhaust leak in his work truck. She said he would come home and pass out on her couch, which was really out of character for him, and he would wake up after awhile, really confused, and then just decide to go somewhere random and leave. The next time they saw him, they asked about the trip he took to a nearby town on his motorcycle and he had no idea what they were talking about. Days later, he was found unresponsive on the side of the road in his work truck and someone stopped to check on him and it took a lot of tries but they finally got him to wake up. So he told them he was fine and ended up calling his brother and his brother urged him to go to the hospital, so he agreed to, and then called again awhile later, telling them he was in another nearby town and had no idea how he got there, Somehow he ended up at the hospital and they admitted him and treated him for CO poisoning, It doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me.

 

First step: Rent a car
Second step: Find a small garage?

Well, I am living as person who is outside of the soceity. For the time being, it will keep going. But I definetely don't wanna live more than the age of 40. That is for sure.

Drugs may seem like a good opinion but I saw people who did bad drugs but still kept living. They did not die using bad drugs for years. Dying of drugs is not really as easy as some people think it is. You can wear yourself out by harming yourself but you still keep living.

 

Please reconsider. The death will not be a quick one. You'll feel yourself suffocating, and spend the last moments of your life hacking and coughing your lungs out. It takes long enough that somebody might find you and pull you out. Try explaining yourself then. And you'll risk brain damage!

 

Suffocating? Then how is CO poisoning less painful way than other deaths when suffocating is the second most painful way to die after death by burning?

 

That’s just not a good idea...

 

This story is totally unrelated since it was Carbon Dioxide gas rather than Carbon Monoxide but it’s still interesting.

In 1986 2,000 people died from the a lethal eruption of CO2 gas emanating from an Lake Nyos in Cameroon. Some people tried to run away from the cloud;
they were later found dead on the paths leading away from town. A woman and child were the only two survivors of Lower Nyos.

 

They died by suffocating? If so, then terrible. I try to hold my breathe, and it is too much pain. That would be worse than terrible. I could never make it more than 2 minutes and 15 seconds. It is a pain which I am far from being able to stand.

 

What you have said is typical of almost all carbon monoxide poisoning both in the house and motor vehicles.
Here in the UK, all boilers now vent to the outside and modern motor vehicles produce only minute quantities of CO, making carbon monoxide poisoning extremely rare.

 

The saddest part of that case was that the path away from the village ran downhill and since carbon dioxide is heavier than air, it followed them. Had they have climbed a few meters to higher ground, they would have been safe. The 2 survivors simply stayed in their upstairs room.
Due to the pressure, water at the bottom of a lake has its oxygen purged out, leaving it rich in carbon dioxide. In this accident, called lake overturn, thousands or tons of land slid into the lake, causing a stirring motion. As the deep cold water rose, the drop in pressure released the dissolved carbon dioxide. This caused the water to evaporate leading to both the water and the carbon dioxide freezing. The gas is invisible, so the clouds seen were particles of dry ice. Some of the victims received external burns from the cloud, but in almost all of the deaths the victims had inhaled dry ice particles into their lungs. This caused burning which in turn causes swelling that closed the air supply off.

It took investigators months to work all this out and at one stage a military attack was blamed.
The carbon dioxide freezing is the same as what you see from a CO2 fire extinguisher and the theory was investigated following an industrial accident in the UK that killed 2 workers. Without that input, the cause of the deaths could possibly have never been discovered.

 

It is rare to find someone who actually understands the process. I had to explain it all to a group of nurses a few years ago and they had absolutely no idea.
Did you read my post explaining it at a molecular level (#5 on this thread) ?

 

Sure did....good biochemistry at work!

 

I originally read about this case in scientific american magazine and it stuck with me after all these years
thinking of just how fragile life can be for us mere mortals.