Stuff You Should KnowIt might not be the sexiest topic we’ve ever covered (and by “might”, we mean “definitely”), but there are some things you just need to learn about and this deadly and undetectable gas that’s part of our everyday lives is one of them. So buck up.
Attention everyone, This is a public service announcement that you should hear.
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you Should Know. PSA edition.
Yeah, we haven't done a good old PSA in a while.
Do you remember some of our other ones? I can't bring any to mind.
Sure, don't play in the street.
Yeah, that's one.
Uh, don't jump out of a hot air balloon without a parachute.
Yeah, h celo fane bags in you?
Yeah, boy, that was a good one, sure was.
Yeah. And then this one, it's it carbon monoxide. I wonder if there's a few people out there that are searching for our cellophane bags episode.
Now, well here's the short version. Don't put them over your head.
That was it. Yep, that was our first short stuff.
Yeah. So yeah, I.
Probably shouldn't have laughed at that because that exchange wasn't funny at all. And chuck, we should not be joky at all. This is a very serious episode.
Right, carbon monoxide.
Not dioxide, manaide. It's I lesser.
Said co two when I was talking to you offline.
Yeah, and if you search for carbon monoxide or COO, carbon dioxide still comes up page one.
Yeah.
It's if I were a carbon monoxide i'd be seething with rage.
Yeah. Yeah, put COO in the limelight for a change.
The reason that this is well, that's what we're doing right now, and the reason that this is a PSA everybody, is that carbon monoxide is a deadly gas. Deadly poisoned toxic gas to humans. But you can't tell that you're being poisoned until it's potentially too late and you're either very very sick or very very dead. And the reason why this is a PSA further is because we live among carbon monoxide quite a bit or else, potential carbon monoxide sources all over the place. Our whole world is laden with them.
Yeah, man, if I can pull a little piece from later in this great article from Libya, let me spring this one on you. It's also it's a silent killer, known as the silent killer, but it's not the same thing as like a gas leak, So a gas leak is a completely different thing. They make a gas leak smell bad on purpose, so you can detect a gas leak that they don't do that with CEO because it's a smell that's produced as a result of something. So it's not like they can say, hey, let's add a farty smell to CEO so everyone knows when it's around.
Right, Because a gas leak is like the actual fuel that hasn't made it to the combustion process yet. Yeah, so they can add something, but carbon monoxide is a is one hundred percent produced by combustion, right, in particular a specific kind of a combustion, which would be incomplete combustion.
Yeah, and boy, I never knew this at all in my life. And I've heard of carbon monoxide, have carbon monoxide detectors. I knew a little bit about it here and there, but I never knew that combustion like is generally almost always inefficient. And there is apparently a perfect combustion called stoia chiometric combustion, which it's the most efficient way something can burn, releasing water, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide full stop. But apparently that's just that never happens. There's always an inefficiency, and that's where the carbon monoxide comes from.
Yeah, I saw another term for that kind of combustion is theoretical combustion. Like it just doesn't exist. Yeah, there's no such thing as perfect combustion, but I'm sure there's people out there trying to crack that egg. Sure, so with because like just about anytime we burn a fuel, it's incomplete or imperfect combustion. Those byproducts that could release with complete combustion are joined or replaced by some much less desirable ones like carbon monoxide, which again is the silly killer.
That's right, silent but deadly.
And there's a few reasons why combustion is typically incomplete, at least as far as stuff that you and I would mess around with.
Right, Yeah, I mean there may not be enough. It's got to have the right mix of air kind of like and we'll get into car into car engines a little bit later, but the mix of like air to fuel as far as a car burning lean or burning rich or a fuel burning leaner rich. The same thing with just a fire, if there's not enough air there, or the air doesn't mix with the fuel like it should, maybe if it is extinguished too quickly, or the temperature cools down before the fuel has burned up. Yeah, this is where you can get those inefficiencies.
Yeah, And like whether you have too much or too little air, it's not a good thing. So it's really really difficult to get it just perfect. Actually it's impossible, but even to get close is really really difficult. So there's always going to be some carbon monoxide, right, And we've known for quite a while that it's a real problem. At least as far back as the thirteenth century. There was a alchemist in Spain named arnolaue Villa Nova. Yeah, and he said that I don't know how he figured this out. I looked, I couldn't find it. That burning wood, in complete combustion of wood produces some poisonous gas that he didn't attempt to name, but he did identify it first.
Yeah, I mean, there you have it. Thirteenth century. Yep, they knew something was out there and could kill you. A little bit later, in sixteen forty four, there was a scientist from France named Johann Baptista von Helmont.
Very French name names used to be so much better. For sure, they had like curly cues on them.
You know, my god, it's amazing. He described dying basically, or coming close to dying, from inhaling what he called gas carbonum, which was, you know, probably a mixture of things, but carbon monoxide was definitely in there.
Right. And then jose Priestley came along, right, not Jason Joseph.
Hmm, you took the Jason right out of my mouth.
You remember him. He showed up in our nitrous oxide episode.
Okay, I knew he had heard of him before, because I knew he had made a Jason Priestley joke before.
Yes, for sure, there's no way you can't.
Yeah. So he was a chemist from England and he's the one that they point to as sort of the true discoverer of carbon monoxide, even though he had a really bad name for it too. He was doing experimentation in the seventeen seventies and he's the guy that basically said, hey, you know what, air isn't just one thing like air has a lot of gases in it, and this one thing is really important we should pay attention to it. I'm gonna call it deflogid Oh man, I had it so good earlier, deflogisticated air. Yeah, And everyone else said, eh, call it oxygen.
He said, fine, I like Miney Moore. He's got curly cues on it.
Deflogelisticated. Wow, that's a mouthful.
That's an old timey word. If that's not I've never heard an old timey word.
Yeah.
So he also found carbon monoxide, which you called heavy inflammable air, and I finally just taved and looked up why inflammable inflammable are the same? Yeah, inflammable was original, but apparently it just confused everybody so much, and because it described such a dangerous thing. They dropped the ind and just went with flammable from that point on.
Why did we talk about this before?
Oh, I don't know. It sound new to me.
No, we've talked about this before. For once, I remember something, okay in my little feeble brain.
Well what was it.
Well, I don't remember the topic, but I definitely remember us talking about this. But you know what, I don't think you had that little tidbit.
Oh okay, okay, we just wondered about it maybe.
I think so that was back in our days of just like complaining about not knowing something.
Well, here at the advent of year fifteen. Uh huh, we have finally solved that mystery. Chuck.
Oh yeah, niversary, Happy.
Anniversary, Happy anniversary too, Jerry.
She could speak through the tape your mouth.
So uh wow, Jerry just threw me off. That's why we don't let her talk, Chuck.
I know. Quiet you. And by the way, people that think we're being mean to Jerry just down.
We've had to go through that before him.
I think people thought we were genuinely mean to Jerry about this stuff. But we're family, we're siblings, so we poke fun at.
Each other exactly and we haven't for a while.
No, we don't poke. You and I don't poke fun at each other on the air generally, No, But boy, off the.
Air, Wow, it's a poking fest.
Yeah, you're always poking my belly.
You're doing mine, and I say, oh.
Man, kids did that when I was a kid to usually, Yeah, because the same thing happened to you, right.
Yeah, for sure. I was such a people pleaser. I just went along with it like it was hilarious.
Yeah. I had a little chubby belly and then I got skinny, and then I got chubby. So I'm thinking I'm gonna get skinny again.
Nice.
That's the cycle in that.
Way, Yeah, the circle of life.
Yeah, we should get back to it though. Eh.
Yeah, So you might say why Okay, guys, I get it. Carbon monoxide the silent killer, and you have to make air quotes every time you say that. Everybody. By the way, I get it. It's deadly. I don't want to be around it. But exactly how is it deadly? And that is one of the reasons we are here. We're here to explain why it's deadly, because if you look at the chemical makeup of a carbon monoxide molecule, one carbon atom, one oxygen atom. Right, but they are bound really tightly. They have a triple covalent blond, which means that they don't react with stuff very easily, so plants are safe from it. Basically, anything that doesn't breathe has no problems with carbon monoxide. But we breathe, and carbon monoxide tricks our bodies into substituting oxygen for carbon monoxide because it binds to our hemoglobin, which transports oxygen throughout the body and the blood.
Right right.
And one of the reasons why it takes oxygen's places because it's two hundred and ten times more attractive to hemoglobin than oxygen. Iss.
That's right. And just quickly, you and me and Jerry, we have also a triple covalent bond.
That's all right. It just occurred to me and we're very non reactive.
That's right. But what you were saying was hemoglobin is like hubba hubba when it comes to that CEO, and oxygen's like, no, you're supposed to be bonding with me, and hemoglobin says, but I'm so much more attracted to the carbon monoxide. And it's it's just one of those weird things that happens in the body.
It's like that meme where the guy is walking with this girlfriend, but he's turned around looking at another girl. The other girl is carbon monoxide, his girlfriend's oxen. He is hemoglobin.
I've actually seen that one. I'm not the biggest meme guy, but I know exactly what you're talking about.
Good and it's really apt if you ask me. It actually fits a lot of stuff. But one thing that we have to point out, and this is the reason why carbon monoxide is so deadly. It's deadly in very very small amounts because it can so quickly replace the oxygen in your blood stream and your tissues. Your organs they need oxygen. So if instead they're getting carbon monoxide delivered to them, they're they're going to enter hypoxia, and you become oxygen deprived, your organs become oxygen deprived, maybe your heart's going to stop, you might suffer brain damage. If you survive, at the very least, you're probably going to faint, maybe throw up. And again, it's because it's two hundred and ten times more attractive to hemoglobin. So I saw the stat chuck.
Yeah, if there's.
A concentration of ero point zero five percent carbon monoxide in the air you're breathing and nothing nothing, and fifteen percent, fifteen percent of the air is oxygen. When that when the amount of carbon monoxide in your blood like reaches equilibrium, forty one percent of your blood is going to be carbon monoxide from just from that, that's the disparity that takes just that little amount to overwhelm the oxygen in your body, and all of a sudden you're in big trouble.
Yeah, I mean, it depends on who you are and what's going on. If you're one of our senior friends. If you're a little baby friend, you're going to have a bigger trouble with co Obviously, if you're like exercising really heavily and like, you know, breathing a lot more and your heart rates really high, then it's going to be a little more dangerous if it's in the air. But here's some parts per million stats for you. Sixteen thousand parts per million, which is a lot. Yeah, So I mean we're not saying like, and this could happen, you know, just walking around and breathing air.
Yeah, but thousand parts per million, you're basically taking rips off of a tailpipe of a nineteen seventy buick.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's a ton. But you know, as evidence, that will kill you off in like a few minutes, right, So don't do that. PSA, let's cut it down to like four hundred, Like three fifty to four hundred should be fine, right, No, you will die in three to five hours. You're gonna, you know, feel like symptoms coming on. So hopefully it's the kind of thing that you recognize is going on, like bad headaches, you know, probably nausea, dizziness, stuff like that.
Well, that's one of the problems is it's like you could be nauseous or dizzy from anything.
You know.
Most people like carbon monoxide poisoning well.
And they do say like, if I mean there's something this is the acute kind of poisoning, but there's also the uh what's the other kind?
Uh chronic?
Yeah, the chronic kind. They say, if like, if everyone in your house gets sick at the same time, you know, it's not always a cold, like, you might want to check for carbon monoxide in your house.
Right, So the carbon monoxide in your blood mixing with hemoglobin creates a molecule ca carboxy hemoglobin, and it sticks around for four hours and as long as you have a bunch of carbon monoxide streaming through your blood and then your tissues. Yeah, even though you've stepped out into like fresh air, you figured it out. You realize you've listened to this episode. You know that you have carbon monoxide poisoning. You've left your house or breathing fresh air, you still got four hours of working that stuff out. And during that four hours, it's going to be a very it's going to be very dangerous for you. So you want to go to the hospital. When you get to the hospital, they're probably going to stick you in a hyperbaric chamber and start pumping you full of oxygen.
Yeah, at the very least puts you on oxygen in some fashion, just with a mask, even while you're waiting. Probably. Yeah, although this seems like one of those emergency situations to where hopefully it's recognized and they get you in like very quickly.
Sure.
And here's the other thing. If you I mean, eventually when you flush it out, you can be okay, But can you can also relapse like a few weeks later? Right, you can get relap symptoms, and all of a sudden, you've got a brain fog or fatigue or that headache or nausea or dizziness or something coming back on. And you know, you can get permanent damage if it's if it's severe enough.
Yeah, and we talked about chronic poisoning. You can get chronic carbon monoxide poisoning if you're exposed to something as little as nine parts per million for longer than eight hours, which is well below the OSHA standard.
Yeah, fifty per million days in a row.
Yeah, I mean this basically wants to be part of your life. Right. So, and actually, if you go to the hospital and you're like, I've got all these weird, unexplained symptoms, but I'm not fainting or anything like that, there's not you know, I haven't been sucking off a Buick tail pipe or anything. Right, They're gonna start asking you questions about your lifestyle, like where do you live, what do you do? And if it turns out that you like live above a greyhound bus terminal, right, and make those phone calls, obscene phone calls where you're breathing heavily a lot, they might say, I think you have carbon monoxide poisoning of the chronic variety.
We should do one on bus strips.
I thought you could say obscene phone calls.
No, well, we should do that too, Okay. The Jerky Boys.
Yeah, I've been wanting to do one on the history of prank calling. There's actually a pretty rich history there.
Yeah, that'd be fun. Actually, I remember we'll take a break here in a sec, but very quickly. I was one of those guys who got the Jerky Boys from a friend on a cassette like years before it was you know, the internet obviously or any kind of like. They I think they did like a movie even, didn't they, Yes, they did. Yeah, this is when like the cassette was being passed around the school yard kind of thing. Nice and boy, I thought it was a funny thing I ever heard.
It was funny. Even just saying the name makes me laugh.
Yeah. Jerky Boys, Yeah, they didn't laugh.
I laughed inside.
Okay, should we take that break?
Yeah, I think we should.
Jerky Boys.
All right, chuck? So oh, I know, I think you could say the Beverly Hills supper Club fire had some PSA qualities to it, right.
Sure, we were talking about the supper clubs.
All right, we're talking about especially in northern Kentucky.
Chuck, Yeah, yeah, so flammable curtains probably too were inflammable.
But death by fire is not a good way to die. But very few people die from burning to death. You usually are dead long before you really start burning up through smoke inhalation. And although apparently they don't quantify statistics as to this smoke, this type of smoke, or this compound in the smoke killed the person, like carbon monoxide, you can make a pretty safe assumption that carbon monoxide poisoning has killed people in fires pretty frequently. I'm sure.
Sure it's part of that deadly cocktail that you're inhaling.
Exactly.
It's also part of a deadly cocktail you're inhaling. If you're a cigarette smoker, you are willingly ingesting carbon monoxide into your body when you smoke a cigarette. There's a step for you that carboxy hemoglobin we were talking about, which is what happens when hemoglobin binds with the CEO. A typical level if you're just walking around on the street is under one percent. If you smoke a packat a you're living at about three to six percent. Yeah, if you smoke a hookah, especially in the traditional way where you're actually burning the tobacco on coal or charcoal, gonna be a lot more CEO than that, even almost at T two. And incense is another offender that can bring. If you're burning incense in your house a lot, like all day long, you can get up to nine point six parts per million in your home. And I used to burn I used to burn incense in college. I was into it for a little while. Yeah, me too, But now when I smell it, I'm so turned off. It's weird because it's a little bit of a nostalgia hit, like oh yeah, sandal would okay.
I was gonna say, are you talking specifically about nog.
CHOMPA I don't remember, no chump.
It's like the couintessential hippie, not PETULLI like the hippie incense stick would be nog chop.
Was it black or brown?
Brown? Like a light brown?
I usually liked most of the browns. I didn't like the blacks. They were way too pungent for me.
Huh.
But uh then I just you know that was it was a very short phase. It kind of overlapped with my listening to the doors pace, probably, But once I was done with incense, I was done such that if I walk into like some hippie dippy crystal shop and it's got incense going, I got to get out of there. Yeah, I know, to mean, I don't like it.
When I was in college, I got so into incense, so hardcore and incense. I moved past the stick incense and have little brass burns, not even little brass burners, with little charcoal discs that you would put like resin, like frankincense on, and I would sit around and burn that all day long. And when I read this, I was like, oh, it's not good and a lot for sure. Yep, smoking indoors too as well.
You've cleaned up your ac now not a good champ.
Yes, But I also you know, I used to finging a lot for no good reason and throw up on my I saw somenight. Now I understand why.
It's not funny at all?
Is it not? Well, then maybe I'll just retract that statement.
No, I mean, I'm laughing, but I didn't want to laugh at your expense.
Oh I didn't actually faint and throw up on myself? Or are you laughing because I was such a hippie I burned Frankenson.
No, I thought you were serious that you fainted and threw up on yourself.
Oh no, no, no, no I did. I didn't.
I have a friend who faints occasionally, so you know it could be a thing.
Sure, you should ask that friend if they live above a Greyhound bus terminal.
No, he doesn't live over there. So, like I said before, if you're a little baby, or if you're a senior citizen, it's gonna if you have chronic heart disease, even if you have anemia, if you have asthma, like obviously, all of this stuff is going to exacerbate any kind of effects from carbon monoxide getting into your body. But about four hundred Americans die from and this doesn't include fires, This is just accidental coe poisoning every year, which isn't a lot, but about one hundred thousand go to the er because of this and fourteen thousand are hospitalized overnight. So yeah, those are negligible, not.
And I mean four hundred people dying is I mean this is all very preventable too, is We'll see, because when carbon monoxide gets in your house, it's not supposed to be there, there's something wrong with something you're using. Usually some sort of fossil fuel burning appliance is the culprit, and we talked about incomplete combustion. That basically is what's to blame across the board. Yeah, one of the big ones that kills people or at least makes them sick and sends them to the hospital is unvented space heaters, which if you say those words together, you're like, this sounds like a bad idea, And in fact, unvented space heaters are number fifteen on a Consumer Product Safety Commission list of three hundred and fifty of the most dangerous household products.
Yeah, and to be clear, these are natural gas or kerosene burning heaters of electric heaters.
Yeah, but like the kind that's maybe the size of like a old timey suitcase, like an old samsonite that get really bright and that you might have in your house, especially in the South where a lot of people in the South South don't have central heat because it doesn't get that that cold very often, it's not worth the investment, especially back in the day, so they might have an unvented just a portable space heater. Basically that runs on kerosene, and the problem is, if you don't open your windows while you're running that thing, there's a good chance you're going to accidentally poison yourself with carbon monoxide. And that's counterintuitive because people use those because it's cold outside, and you don't usually open your windows when it's cold outside, so it actually does lead to a lot of problems for people.
Yeah, my grandmother Bryant, my dad's mom, Opal, who lived to be one hundred plus, had and these weren't gas fired or anything, but she had called them chill chasers in the wall. Oh do you ever Did you ever see those? And I'm sure they were all over the place, but I saw them a lot in the South in older houses where they're just they're built in space heaters in the wall, like recessed into the wall.
Oh, yeah, I guess I know what you're talking about.
Sure, which is a little timer switch on it. It was super super cool, like in her bathroom and stuff.
Yeah. I love those, like old timey details of old houses like that.
Yeah, Or like a cutout in the hallway for a phone.
Yeah, or like a telephone like a tile toothbrush holder that matches the rest of the tile. It's just he sticks out and holds your toothbrushes and will love that good stuff.
Speaking of those kerosene or natural gas heaters, though, if you get a new one, they almost always now have a sensor on it, an oxygen sensor that will read the air and shut that thing off. But if you've got an older one and it didn't have to be like four years old, you know, I'm not sure when those oxygen sensors came along, but I feel like it's semi recent.
Yeah, twenty twenty two probably.
No, boy, I'm really getting you left.
And right today.
Just this is gullible day for me.
Okay, well that's good to know, noted.
But cooking appliances obviously, furnaces, fireplaces, car exhaust is a big one.
Chok. I got to stop you there, because this is why we're here right now.
Bsa time.
I we have an attached garage that leads right to the kitchen. The door does, and I stopped our car and got out and went inside and just went about my day. But I left the car running with the garage store closed. Just I've never done it before in my life, never even come close. It just happened because, in my defense, it's a hybrid, so it's easy to forget to turn it off because there's really not a lot going on when you turn it on or off when it's in electric mode. And of course like it's like, oh, I better start charging myself, and the gas burning part kicked in and me opened the door and was like, oh my god, the car's running. And so we started researching carbon monoxide and found that it's actually kind of a problem. Luckily we were fine. Oh wow, Mamo was fine.
I'm glad you didn't get suspicious. But what do you mean then, you know, like bring you up on charges.
Like I was trying to poison a lot of us?
Maybe?
Sure, No, she knows me a little better than.
That, Momo. That that's the danger there. I'm glad.
Momo was okay, yes, And that is why we were most freaked out because she's tiny. So if you like, it's a little bit of carbon monoxide can and really screw up somebody with a ten pound frame, you know.
Yeah, why don't those hybrids just say car on, car off?
I don't know, be very easy to do that, yeah, or just keep beeping or something like the car is still on dummy, Mine doesn't get that, or just had just do.
The car on car off and then you could get celebrity reads. You could have like Samuel L. Jackson do it right, or Matthew mcconnie car on babe. That mine would be Sammy Davis Junior.
But do Christopher Walkin doing?
I don't do walk in that?
Does you do.
Car off?
That's pretty good? You could also have passed that off as a shinner.
Yeah, probably so car off? Goodness me. Kevin Pollack, he should have been on. He should have done a very quick little guest to word read for us.
Oh well, it's not too late this this episode hasn't been edited yet.
He probably would, let's find out. Speaking of bad decisions, if you lived in Texas in twenty twenty one, when they had that terrible frozen storm that came through and their power grid failed, a lot of people we're like, hey, let's bring in this weber grill and load it full of charcoal and keep ourselves warm. It sounds like a very not smart thing to do. But not everyone understands this. Not everyone knows that COO would be omitted. I think people get desperate when they're in danger. Of freezing to death maybe and that kind of thing can happened. Eleven people died. About fourteen hundred people went to the emergency room for COO poisoning in Texas that year.
Yeah, like that storm, not just the whole year, I think, And that was almost a year's worth of statistics right there. And it was in like basically a few days. And one of the worst things I saw I read a pro public article about this is that afterward Texas considered and then rejected requiring carbon monoxide detectors and houses. It's like, what are you talking about.
Yeah, and people from all over the world with you know, live fires in their in their homes and their huts, in their small spaces. About a third of the people of the world use open fires. Some of them run on kerosene and stuff. But you know, as we saw in Guatemala, a lot of times these things are just just wood burning fires in your home that they're cooking with, and you know, they ventilate things as well as they can. But it's a big problem. The World Health Organization says that household air pollution and this is everything combined, but a portion of this is obviously going to be due to carbon monoxide, but it killed more than three million people in twenty twenty.
Do you remember we did that thing for Toyota about the Carnegie Mellon invention as sure like dance off. One of the entrants invented a portable basically a ovenvent hood to be used indoors, and remember you could. It was super cheap and easy to use. I mean imagine like that was a heights cold kid too, if I'm not mistaken her, at least a college student. And this is back in like two thousand and eight, So hats off to that person's foresight and insight totally.
Should we take our hats off and take a break to Yes, let's all right, we'll be right back. All right, we're back. We did talk about all the dangers of like home appliances and fires and all that kind of stuff.
There was one more that we didn't talk about, and that happens very frequently after a disaster, like say a hurricane, where people use a portable generator too close to their house and the fuse while the carbon monox it ends up drifting in and killing people.
Yeah, you need to get that thing away from your window.
At least twenty feet.
Yeah, especially if it's open. All right, I love it. Another little psa.
Tidbit psa within a psa chuck.
It's like seconds per second.
Yeah, which I think even physics people were like, yeah, it's through a bonehead term.
Yeah. But like I said, we were talking about all these dangers of things that you can use that will increase the carbon monoxide in your life, but you're also going to experience it just walking around the world. In urban areas, it's going to be higher, usually about ten parts per million. If it's a very heavy trafficked city, it can be as high as fifty parts per million just in the air that you're breathing walking around. And this is from you know, just from humans driving cars mainly or burning fuel of any type. Your old nemesis, the leaf blower, And this is a hard to believe, but Lyvia found this estimate from this one source that said a gas powered leaf blower for half an hour has the same amount of hydrocarbon emissions as a thirty nine hundred mile drive and a F one raptor.
Yeah, we talked about that stat and the noise pollution episode about leaf blowers that they were that also put out that much emissions too.
So all this to say that it doesn't have to be some big gigondo car, right, Like your small two stroke engines are putting a lot of this in the air as.
Well, right, But if you put enough cars together, all the little bits of CEO that they put out are going to combine and be problematic, especially if you live in places like Fairbanks, Alaska, right where there's something called an atmospheric conversion that typically happens there where the warm air gets on top of the coal there and traps that coal there, which is one reason Fairbanks so called them quite sure, but it also traps all that pollution that would normally drift off into the atmosphere in town. And so Fairbanks was legendary for having really bad air quality. I believe still has issues with particular matter, but they kind of tackled the carbon monoxide problem that they had I think back in the seventies.
Yeah, that won't surprise me. You just think of Alaska as this sort of pristine, uncolluted place. But it's just because the way the land is in Fairbanks.
Well, they built a city underneath an atmospheric conversion.
It's kind of the invert.
Yeah, inverters kind of invert.
NASA has something cool that they launched twenty four years ago ish called the Terrace satellite, and it has a sensor on it called the Moppet Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere. So this is measuring way above the earth, about twelve thousand feet above the ground, measuring carbon monoxide. We'd guess other things as well, but this allows you know, NASA to sort of find hot spots all over the world. Obviously when there's like over a big city, it's going to be hotter if there's a big forest fire or something like that, but it will show just hot zones in the world of maybe like hey, something's going on down there, and if your forest isn't on fire, maybe you should look at check it out.
Well, I look into why your whole population is feigning and vohomiting on themselves.
Right, But that numbers, the numbers are going down, which is great news. There they're Moppet map and that's with two t's, which is a little redundant. You don't do the tee.
I find it very satisfying that they did a letter to every single word. Yeah, and it wasn't like a wedge, you know, those wedge acronyms. We dislike. This is the opposite of that.
No, I agree, and mop it's a fun word, sure, But they they have found that the concentration of gases declined since two thousand from point one two five to under zero point one zero five, which.
Is great news. One of the other things they figured out from the Tarra satellite and it's mopet software, and then some other satellites that have been launched since then that do similar things. There are a lot of countries just outright lie, and a lot of companies lie about their emissions. They say that they're much lower than they are. And these satellites can are so sensitive. They can pinpoint like basically a factory's output or at least a city's output and say that country's fudging their numbers about their CO two or CO emissions or whatever kind of emissions. That satellite feels like testing that.
Thing nice, I mean, it's dropped. In America, certainly, the Clean Air Act did a lot in nineteen seventy one to help clean the air, and I think in nineteen seventy one before they or when they enacted at ninety percent of the locations that they were monitoring, the CEO were in violation of what would become those new rules.
Yeah. Sure, there's one other thing about carbon monoxide that's problematic for it being an outdoor pollutant. We said, it's not reactive, It just kind of bounces off of other stuff. But the problem is it indirectly contributes to climate change in that it does hook up with hydroxyl radicals, which are so reactive they'll even react with carbon monoxide. And normally those molecules are running around hooking up with methane and turning it into other stuff besides methane, which actually removes that greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. But when there's a lot of carbon monoxide up there, it keeps the hydroxyl busy and methane is allowed to just accumulate and go on. Who ray, we need to come up with the opposite cheer of.
Hooray right, Uh, let me think on that.
Yeah, this is a very important thing for us.
The catalytic converter was a big deal for reducing COE output in cars. It was invented by a French engineer named Eugene Udri. How would you pronounce that?
I think that was pretty close.
This is nineteen fifty, but leaded gas was still a big thing back then, and leaded gas does not mix well with catalytic converters. So when they finally got rid of leaded gas in the mid seventies and the EPA said, hey, you got to start putting these catalytic converters on your cars, that was a huge deal. It's really interesting. I actually wrote the article on the Old House Stuff Works website on catalytic converters.
Oh neat. They are interesting, they are.
And it was a bit of a because it's not my thing at all, so it was a bit of a slog to get through that article. But it is interesting how they work. They use metals like palladium and platinum and rhodium, like expensive metals, which is why people will cut and steel a catalytic converter out from underneath your car ooo, kind of like they'll steal copper from a house being built or something. Same deal, as those metals are very valuable and they trigger chemical reactions that use free oxygen to turn that co into CO two and H two O.
Yeah, and then also other stuff like nitrogen dioxide and hydrocarbons all those products of incomplete combustion. Catalyated converter says, I got this before that stuff comes out of the tailpipe. Nice, pretty cool. So catalytic converters actually coming along. Eugene Adrie, That's how I'm gonna say it. He kind of saved the world in a lot of ways. Like he really helped get those emissions down. He's basically the reason why the f one to fifty truck driving from Texas to say, Fairbanks puts out less emissions than a leaf blower running for half an hour. That's why. So, I mean we've been taking our hats off here there in this episode. I'm taking it off and leaving it off for your gene.
Taking that beret off, well, good for you. Ye As far as what you can do in your own home, obviously you're gonna want to inspect that furnace. One of the problems that can happen with that inefficient burning is when you don't just something simple like not having your filter changed right. That means it's not your furnace isn't getting the air that it needs. Deadly, It is deadly. So you got to keep that furnace filter clean. You got to have all your exhaust fans for all your appliances. If you have gas appliances, make sure those exhaust fans are working. You could make a switch from gas to electric or to what are those called induction inductions?
Have you ever used one? Less?
Yeah, I'm not a fan, but really, you know, I could get used to it. I guess I love them. You love them? Yeah, I'm a gas guy and I know that they're problematic, but I gotta gotta figure this out.
Well, if you have a gas range and you're using it, or a gas cook top in particular, you should have somebody come out every once in a while and tune it up, like there's a tune up they can do, and they'll test your your combustion, your flame to make sure that it's burning as close to not rich or not lean. But in the middle of the two.
Do you mean the guy just comes out and lights a fart.
Basically, but he has a very expensive little device that he sticks at by it and tests how much like carbon monoxide is in it?
Right, I'd pay for that.
Yeah, you should pay for it. And then one other thing you can do, Chuck, and I know you'll probably go do this, right, after we finish, you get yourself a wire brush and some electrical contact cleaner and you take off all those little plates on the burner on your cook top and scrub them until they're totally free of corrosion and build up.
I will do that.
You should. It'll help a lot. Actually. Okay, yeah, but the guy who puts out to do the tune up, he's actually adjusting like the amount of like gas and air that's going to your stuff. It's not something you can really do because you don't have that expensive device, right, I gotcha.
Okay, you definitely want carbon monoxide detectors in your home, and if you have, I mean, I think most of the new like smoke detectors are also coeo detectors. I haven't looked into it, but I feel like they're kind of all that dual purpose.
Now, yes, yeah, what I can tell.
But if you do have an old school smoke detector, it may not be also a carbon monoxide detector. So check on that.
Yeah, and you can get those pretty easy, pretty cheap. I'm gonna buzz market one. I was doing some research the Kitty. You know they make the fire extinguishers. They're Nighthawk, which is thirty five dollars. It plugs in, has a nine volt battery backup, and it tests the air every fifteen seconds and as a digital readoubt of what your carbon monoxide levels are in the immedia area. Thirty five bucks. It's everything you need right there, and just put one in every single outlet in your house.
Right. Oh, it just plugs right in. Yeah, Oh okay, So it's not something goes in the ceiling.
Nope, it doesn't hard why it has. Like I said, it's a battery, but it's a battery backup, so it's actually really helpful. And one other thing you're probably going to hear if you start to research this is that you should put your carbon monoxide detector either up very high or down low because someone will tell you that it's either heavier or lighter than air. It's actually not true either way. It's almost the same weight as air, so it mixes really well and it goes wherever air goes, so you can put it pretty much anywhere you got air and it'll detect the carbon monoxide because it disperses pretty evenly easily in the air.
So we can close by talking about some of the beneficial uses of carbon monoxide because they do use it for things. Whether or not they should be for all these purposes is debatable. Sometimes sure, I would like to do a short stuff sometime on the fact that carbon monoxide is used to keep meat looking red, not the myth that it is food additive that makes meat look red, right. It supposedly just preserves the red color that's already there. Yeah, and supposedly it is not dangerous. But I started digging in, I was like, oh boy, this is a big rats nest.
So oh, I can't wait.
We're gonna have to punt on that one.
The one that stuck out to me that I thought was so awesome is that it has medical uses. Paradoxically, they figured out that they can use carbon monoxide at like relatively high concentrations, like four hundred parts per million is remember, nine parts per million can give you like chronic poisoning, so four hundreds a lot. But they use it to treat acute respiratory distress syndrome because somehow they found out that carbon monoxide has a protective effect on your lungs that protects it from injury or sepsis. That's just nutty, and I look to see how that happened. I could not find it, like I think that they actually don't quite know yet. It's that that new of a finding.
That groundbreaking.
I love it.
I do too.
That's very bleeding edge technology. Yeah, you got anything else?
I have nothing else other than a listener mail.
We did some good works here, chucked, if I do say so myself.
Yeah, I'm gonna get with them kitty hawks.
You close enough, I think you'll stumble upon it and search that kitty kitty nighthawk.
You're right, okay.
If you want to know more about carbon monoxide and kitty nighthawks, then start looking around the internet and you'll probably find quite a bit about it, because we did. And since I said that it's time for listener mail.
I'm just I'm picturing you and you me now, like the day after your misapp leaving with a cart full of kitty hawks and all sorts of other products in ournefense.
It was two days after.
Okay, you had a day where you just laid around thinking, oh my god.
Are them online? And it took that long for them to show up?
I gotcha? All right, here's a listener mail. This is a very cute one. Hey, guys, my mom and I are longtime listeners and huge fans. I live overseas in Germany, so my mom and I only get see each other about once a year. Your podcast so is a great way for us to share something together despite the distance. We talk on the phone almost every day. Things we've learned on stuff you should know come up off in as talking points. I love this stuff. My great grandma, a German immigrant, used to end phone calls by saying, a cute old grandma boys, well, I don't know anything, which is really great, and she says this is Hannah by the way, says I don't know It kind of meant I don't know anything new or we're talking about, So I guess I'll get.
Off the phone.
Since she died, I've been using that a lot. However, we got Inventive a few months ago and now have incorporated something Josh says every episode into our conversations. Oh now, when I wanted to get off the phone, I will always say, since I said blah blah blah, that means time for listener mail. We both get a kick out of it, and we thought you might too. Keep up the good work, guys, and Jerry best regards. That is Hannah and mom Amber.
Very nice. Thanks Hannah and Amber, thanks for letting us know. It's like your jerky boys makes you laugh every time. I want to be like Hannah and tangentially Amber and get in touch with us to let us know something cute about your family. We would love to hear that. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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