Energy Bill [HL]

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I am sure that the Bill’s potential health benefits are obvious. However, I want to address one area where this Bill provides a unique opportunity to avoid a harm occurring, and that relates to carbon monoxide. I express an interest as patron of CO-Awareness, an organisation founded by Lynn Griffiths, who herself was subject to chronic poisoning, and ask the Government to address the installation of audible carbon monoxide alarms as part of the improvements in consumer protection made under the Green Deal.

I should like to tell your Lordships about a woman who came to this country as part of the Kindertransport. She lost all her relatives in the gas chambers, but as a young woman she fell in love, married and had two wonderful sons. She was very proud of these sons and put a great deal into their upbringing. The first went off to university. Shortly afterwards, his younger brother also obtained a place at the same university, and these two brothers, being close, decided to share a flat. As the winter got colder, they left the heating on overnight. They never woke up. She lost, with her husband, all that they had loved and cherished, this time to another gas, carbon monoxide.

What is the size of the problem? It has been estimated that there are 2,500 poisonings from carbon monoxide every year. That estimate comes from the West Midlands fire service. Levels of carbon monoxide in the air of over 60 parts per million can be dangerous. So if you come home in this cold weather, sit by your nice gas fire and think that you are safe, just remember that if you do not have a carbon monoxide alarm and the fire is not properly installed and gas is leaking, you might never wake up.

Classically, the reported groups affected are the young and the very old, who sit by the heating and possibly do not have maintenance. I reviewed the data from the Gas Safety Council for the past 13 years, from 1995 to 2008, covering 503 deaths, and plotted them out. The deaths occurred among people of all ages at a horribly steady rate. Lots of young people die from this cause every year. For 2009-10, there were 59 official incident investigations, involving nine fatalities and 117 casualties from carbon monoxide poisoning. In Wales in the same period, there were seven incidents with two fatalities and 10 casualties. However, if we add in media reports for that year, we see that there were 72 incidents with seven fatalities and 138 casualties. That might seem small, and given that in the previous year there were 56 incidents and 17 fatalities, one might think that the situation was improving, probably because of the use of carbon monoxide alarms. But it is just the tip of the iceberg.

The London Ambulance Trust last year equipped just five crews with carbon monoxide detectors and identified and treated 83 cases of unsuspected poisoning. It means that the headline data may mask a much larger underlying problem, which is that boilers over 20 years old are 20 times more likely to be involved in carbon monoxide leaks and incidents than boilers that are less than 10 years old. Indeed, a review of more than 1,000 adults taken to emergency departments showed that more than 1 per cent had raised levels of carbon monoxide. There was no correlation with heart rate, respiratory rate, mean arterial pressure or oxygen saturation. If it was not looked for, it was not detected.

Hackney Council, undertaking a survey of its properties, found widespread sources of carbon monoxide contamination not only from faulty gas appliances but from faulty wood-burning appliances. In addition, the way in which some groups, particularly ethnic minority groups, cook on gas cookers, whereby they put tin foil over the gas burner so that it does not burn properly and cook directly on it, leads to very high levels of carbon monoxide in their homes. The problem with making those places more energy-efficient and decreasing ventilation is that the levels of carbon monoxide will rise.

Halton Housing Trust, in the Liverpool area, has installed alarms and found that, in most of the cases where the alarm has gone off, it has been because there has been undetected carbon monoxide poisoning, particularly where improvements have gone in alongside the alarms.

GPs do not detect chronic carbon monoxide poisoning because it looks just like all the kinds of winter illness that people have; for example, flu-like symptoms, chest infections, headaches, difficulty concentrating, not sleeping, excessive fatigue, depression, nausea and vomiting and so on. The problem with chronic carbon monoxide poisoning is that people go on to undergo brain changes. They lose a coating over the nerve cells called myelin and get chronic neuropsychiatric symptoms. They do not even know that they have been poisoned, but end up coming into the chronic psychiatric group and exhibiting signs that resemble dementia. Chronic carbon monoxide poisoning is associated also with strokes and heart attacks because it thickens the blood, so that it sludges up in one’s blood vessels.

When carbon monoxide kills, it does so quickly, because it disturbs the motor in the cell’s mitochondria, leading to death from carbon monoxide poisoning within two or three minutes. Sometimes people become drowsy and die so quickly that it seems that they have not had time even to open a window or door. Administration of oxygen can help, but they die so fast that you cannot do anything.

Which? magazine has estimated that there are 125,000 Gas Safe-accredited gas engineers, but that nearly twice as many non-accredited fitters are carrying out repairs. The main cause of carbon monoxide poisoning is faulty repairs, lack of maintenance and faulty fitting. That is why the Gas Safety Trust is asking for it to be ensured that carbon monoxide alarms are included in the code of practice for improvements being made under the Green Deal in Clause 3(4) and (5) and Clause 7 of the Bill. The decreased ventilation that will go along with reducing energy consumption risks accumulation of carbon monoxide. The older housing stock has old appliances. Their alarms should be hardwired so that there is no problem of batteries running out or of people taking the batteries out to use on other things, such as the kids’ games, when there is no spare sitting around.

I ask the Government to take this unique opportunity to improve safety, and not to risk an unintended consequence of energy efficiency. The cost is estimated at £50 for the alarm and its installation, which can be offset in instalments paid over time through energy bills. But the offset of the cost to the NHS and the societal cost of young people dying from carbon monoxide poisoning represents a potential major cost-saving to the nation overall. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that this has been taken seriously.