CO Detection: There's An App For That

Soon your cell phone may grow a nose that constantly sniffs the air for carbon monoxide and other dangerous airborne chemicals. Not only would this electronic innovation make your phone a personal CO detector, it could also alert civil defense authorities and emergency first responders to chemical events in real time.

Scientists at UC San Diego and Rhevision developed the tiny detectors, which use supermacro lenses to watch silicon chips that change color when exposed to airborne chemicals. Patterns of color on a single chip can signal a wide variety of toxic hazards.

UCSD's Michael Sailor and team are busy working on prototypes for cell phones and firefighter helmets. The project is funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

Thank you, Medgadget, for alerting us to another amazing new technology.

(Photo: Sailor Lab/UCSD)

HCMC Chamber Reprieved By Senate Earmark

Confirmation arrives late that the US Senate's year-end spending bill, a whopping $1 trillion that barely escaped a filibuster Sunday, includes a $400,000 earmark for replacement of Hennepin County Medical Center's aging hyperbaric chamber. We'd like to think our fall coverage played a small part (but know better). Here's wishing HCMC speedy project funding and completion.

HBOT: Homeland Security Against Cyanide Terrorism

One shudders to think of it, but cyanide poison has become an all-too-imaginable weapon of terror in these troubled times. Maybe we're especially troubled, writing to you from Chicago, home of the 1982 Tylenol murders and the subway scare of 2002.

Hyperbaric oxygen may play a small but critical role in our preparedness for cyanide attacks. According to the chemical terrorism update by Coleman O. Martin, MD, in the July 2002 issue of Emergency Medicine:

Hyperbaric oxygen administration is an adjunctive therapy in patients who do not respond to cyanide antidotes. This may be particularly helpful in cases where methemoglobinemia is excessive and the patient cyanotic. Hyperbaric oxygen should also be considered in patients with cyanide toxicity from smoke inhalation because their high levels of carboxyhemoglobin can hinder safe induction of methemoglobinemia.

Of course O2.0 readers will know that HBOT is approved for treating carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning complicated by cyanide poisoning after smoke inhalation. Better homeland security provides all the more reason every fire rescue squad and trauma center in the US should have 24/7 access to emergency-ready hyperbaric oxygen chambers—plenty enough to handle large-scale disasters, whether tragic accidents or unspeakable acts.

Minnesota: HCMC Fights Back

As the mercury falls in Minnesota, so rises the battle cry to save Hennepin County Medical Center from deep budget cuts. Without swift legislative action, before March 2010, the state's only 24/7 emergency-ready hyperbaric chamber is sure to shut down. (See our October 4 story, "Embattled MN Chamber Faces Ax.")

HCMC is fighting back. Making savvy use of online social media and good old-fashioned grassroots politics, the new Will You Lose? campaign underscores the medical center's proud history and modern role in disaster preparedness and statewide emergency healthcare access, especially for the uninsured. It also offers a great way for the hyperbaric medicine community to get involved. Please join O2.0 in signing up and spreading the word.

(Pictured: Jim Harris, CHT, at the HCMC chamber controls. Photo: Jim Gehrz, Star Tribune)

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning: A Public Health Crisis

We bring you yet more deadly stats for the cold and "flue" season. Carbon monoxide poisoning accounts for some 50,000 emergency room visits annually in the US. Every year about 450 Americans die from accidental exposure alone. Death rates peak in December and January. Almost all survivors experience serious immediate and lasting neuropsychological effects.

Carbon Monoxide: Get Your Canary In The Coal Mine

You've got to love a website that touts itself as "the finest public digital expert site available." It's Carbon Monoxide Headquarters and it's a little bit wacky but undeniably chock-full of information. Favorite click-through: The canary button that loads data from a 1912 study comparing birds to mice as an early warning system for coal miners. Another light reminder to purchase and plug in yours.

Where There's Smoke, Where's The Chamber?

Firefighters and fire victims face really tough odds—a mortality rate of 29%—when they suffer both burns and smoke inhalation. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has become a well-accepted and approved treatment for fire-related burns, thermal lung damage, and carbon monoxide and cyanide poisoning.

One major study had to be stopped early because investigators and statisticians decided patients should not be denied the benefits of HBOT.

O2.0 did a quick review of the clinical evidence on hyperbaric oxygen for treating smoke inhalation injury and preventing neurologic complications. There's a disturbingly common theme. Access to HBOT for fire emergency victims has been slowed not by the clinical evidence, not by the health economics, but by the poor availability of facilities.

That's some catch, that catch-22.