In February 2018, Shana Pezaro was living in a flat in Brighton when her carbon monoxide alarm sounded. Having had her boiler serviced two months prior, she just assumed it was a false alarm but to be on the safe side called the property manager and asked for her boiler to be checked. Within 24 hours a heating engineer had decommissioned the boiler and advised that Shana goes to the doctors to be checked for carbon monoxide poisoning.

Luckily Shana was fine, but she realised that in the weeks leading up to the alarm sounding she was experiencing symptoms relating to mild carbon monoxide poisoning, including fatigue, headaches and sickness. As Shana suffers from Multiple Sclerosis she just assumed that was the cause of her symptoms and didn’t expect it could be anything else. 

Speaking of her experience Shana said; “The symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning are so similar to other things, such as an underlying health condition, like MS, or a common cold. I somewhat naively ignored my symptoms and never would have linked them to carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Had the alarm not sounded, Shana wouldn’t have realised she was suffering from ongoing carbon monoxide poisoning and it could have continued for months or resulted in a fatality.