How Do You Detect Carbon Monoxide?

Description: You can’t see it, smell it or taste it. And in abundance, it can kill within minutes. Carbon monoxide, sometimes called the invisible killer, is a gaseous byproduct of incomplete combustion that can seep from broken or misused heating systems at hazardous levels. Faulty stoves or furnaces and vehicles or portable generators operated indoors are all potential culprits of carbon monoxide poisoning, which kills hundreds of people and hospitalizes tens of thousands every year in the U.S. Fortunately, we have carbon monoxide detectors to warn us before we’re in danger. Carbon monoxide flies under the radar of human senses, but carbon monoxide detectors take advantage of how the chemical alters the color or the electrical resistance of certain materials or fosters electrochemical reactions to measure how much of the gas is in the air.