My Gosh, 

It worked!  Great.  Here is a bit of info about my husband (the CO doc) and me:

I'm Lynne Thom.  I have two nearly-grown kids, both away in college.  I have a Ph.D. in Genetics, so I understand some of science of CO poisoning, but it's really my husband who has put all the pieces together.

He's Steve Thom.  He's an MD/PhD Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.  He has spent his career trying to understand how CO does its damage, and he's also the guy who treats the severe CO cases with Hyperbaric Oxygen.  (Yes, the same therapy that is being touted as a treatment for autism; I can talk about that later.)

But right now, we're talking about CO.  The ONLY known therapy for CO poisoning is hyperbaric oxygen (HBO), and it doesn't always work.  People have to be treated right away-- within 24 hours of the CO exposure-- and if they have lost consciousness from the CO, they're probably going to have some lifelong issues to deal with.  A single exposure to CO can cause permanent brain damage.  CO can also cause heart attacks in otherwise healthy people.

The best way to prevent damage from CO is to get out of the environment!  And you can't do that if you don't know you're being exposed.  That's why we teamed up with the folks at KWJ to get monitors into people's hands, in a way that they will actually be useful.

NoCO Gear, Inc. offers backpacks, tote bags, computer totes, carry-on luggage, and diaper bags with the CO300 monitor/alarm built in.  That means that you don't have to think about CO; you just take your bag with you wherever you go.  And more importantly, your child travels everywhere with a monitor, without having to think about it.

Let's face it:  even if you give your child a monitor, it's going to end up in the bottom of a bag, covered up by his IPod, her wallet, his textbooks, her makeup kit.  That's like saying you have a car, when it's up on concrete blocks in your front yard!  The monitor can only do its job if you let it-- by keeping the vents open to the air.

This monitor is just great.  The higher the level of CO, the more frequently it beeps.  And it's LOUD.  You're not going to ignore it.  And because of the way it's placed in the bag, you're not going to try to fiddle with it to turn it off.  It is REALLY hard to get the monitor out of the bag's protective pocket, because we don't want people playing with it, and we don't want you to take the battery out because your camera is dead.  

In the photo of the diaper bag above, you can hardly see the monitor, but it's there, on the right-hand side.  This illustrates how unobtrusive the monitor is.  

In my next post, I'm going to cite some recent examples of people being poisoned by CO in places they assumed were safe.  It's sad stuff, but it's all true.

Lynne