In the annals of “What Not To Do” we have the following story from the NY Times. Now, we had a lot of similar (but luckily none fatal) episodes related to the recent early heavy snowstorm that hit the Northeast US this past weekend. Namely, people using space heaters (non-electric, usually fired by kerosene) or generators inside their homes because they were cold and had no electric power. In fact, there are still entire towns without power! And it’s only the first week in Nov! Anyway, these people all failed to realize the dangers of carbon monoxide. Luckily, everyone I saw was just suffering from mild exposure (fatigue, headache, etc) but this guy in the Bronx accidentally offed himself in the back of the landscaping truck by starting up the lawnmower inside! I mean, come on. I am always shocked about how often this happens and how ignorant people are about it. It seems they think the only way to get CO poisoning is from automobile exhaust!
We had a batch of CO poisoning incidents during a extended power outage in Western Washington a couple of years ago. Most of the patients/victims were from immigrant communities and subsequently warning fliers about CO were produced in a couple dozen languages. Take a look at http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/preparedness/disaster/carbon-monoxide.aspx and see if somebody in your community can replicate this effort in your non-english speaking populations.
Darwinism in it’s purest form