Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Kills More Than 100 in China This Year<br />12, 2018<br />BEIJING — A rash of gas poisonings in a region of southern China has left at least 104 people dead<br />and hundreds more hospitalized so far this year, according to government offices quoted in the state-run news media, which blamed poorly ventilated or faulty water heaters and cooking stoves for the deaths.<br />In most cases, the deaths appeared to be caused by natural gas-fired heaters or stoves<br />that were either shoddily built or improperly installed, allowing carbon monoxide to accumulate inside rooms to the point that it overwhelmed the occupants, news reports from Guangxi suggested.<br />"It’s often the case that by the time medical workers break into the door, it’s already too late," Yang Shixiong,<br />the director of an emergency medical center in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi, told China National Radio.<br />In the city of Liuzhou, ambulance workers found a family of three on Wednesday<br />that had apparently killed by the gas — the mother in the bathroom, the father in a bedroom doorway and their daughter on a bed, the official Guangxi news service reported.<br />But some medical experts in Guangxi suggested that the carbon monoxide deaths reflected growing use of<br />poorly installed gas heaters, as well as an unusually long and sharp cold spell across the region.<br />The government of the region, Guangxi, announced a safety crackdown after the deaths from exposure<br />to carbon monoxide, a byproduct of burning natural gas, coal and other fossil fuels.
