UL Sets Safer Standards for Portable Generators

When misused, today’s portable generators can release enough carbon monoxide to kill in minutes

Kari RedfieldHome (February 15, 2018)

According to CPSC reports, the misuse of portable generators causes an average of 71 deaths per year and poison thousands of others requiring emergency treatment.

Using a generator indoors or nearby a home’s structure and in the path of your home’s intake ventilation, even with the windows or garage door open, can kill in minutes. That’s because the current portable generators, can emit carbon monoxide at a rate of 500 to 4,000 grams per hour. To put that in perspective, cars on average, release 2.4 – 5.4 grams per hour – and as you probably know, running a car inside a garage can result in carbon monoxide poisoning.

“The traditional internal combustion engines used in portable generators are producing a lot of carbon monoxide very, very quickly,” explains Kenneth Boyce, principal engineering director for the Energy & Power Technologies division at UL. “When you’re measuring carbon monoxide concentration they produce in an enclosed space, you see a straight line with a high slope that keeps going up, and up, and up.”

Misuse can happen because people often turn to portable generators after a major disaster and sometimes try to use them in a garage or carport, on a porch, in a basement, etc., because of unfavorable outside weather. Or they may put the generator in partially enclosed places out of fear that the generator will get stolen, Boyce points out. “And that’s how people introduce this horrible carbon monoxide poisoning risk to their families.”

Dangers of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

Continued at:  http://www.safebee.com/home/ul-sets-safer-standards-portable-generators