Carbon monoxide fire brigade clanger

THE London Fire Brigade has confused carbon monoxide with cobalt in its new safety campaign to have people install alarms.

On its now widely distributed advertising for its carbon monoxide safety campaign, it highlights the letters CO with the atomic number 27, which is cobalt, a metal used in phone batteries.  Also, though the chemical formula for carbon monoxide is CO, it is a compound rather than an element, so it does not appear on the Periodic Table and it does not have an atomic number.

New Law

The campaign is to highlight the new law, that from October, home owners will be required by law to install a smoke alarm and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room that contains a solid fuel burning appliance.

There is the possibility that live-aboards could also come under the same law, the boat being their home. In any case, many boaters do have such alarms for their own safety after the deaths in boat fires due to their not being installed.