Pocatello, ID – It’s colorless, odorless and deadly, and safety officials say carbon monoxide poisoning likely contributed to more drowning deaths over the past decades than imagined.
The hazard is not something people tend to think about when on a boat enjoying the sunshine and great outdoors. But the dangers are real, as evidenced by the boater who recently died from carbon monoxide poisoning on the Utah side of Bear Lake.
It’s a problem people don’t recognize, Edwin Lyngar, a boating safety educator with the Nevada Department of Wildlife. People will start feeling nauseous and think they’re sea sick when they actually have mild carbon monoxide poisoning.
On June 29, Lucas Allyn, 22, of the Salt Lake City area died after boating at Bear Lake in Utah when he was overcome by carbon monoxide.
The Rich County, Utah, Sheriff’s Office received the 911 call about Allyn just after 7 p.m. Allyn’s friends thought he was suffering from heat stroke.
Allyn was on a boat that docked at the Bear Lake State Park Marina on the west side of the lake near Garden City in Rich County.
Friends with Allyn had been conducting CPR on him as the boat made its way to the marina, according to the Rich County sheriff’s report.
In addition to sheriff’s deputies, Rich County Emergency Medical Services, Utah State Parks officers and the Airmed emergency helicopter responded to the scene.
Allyn was removed from the boat after it docked and responders continued emergency care.
EMS personnel continued medical intervention for about one hour before Allyn was pronounced dead, the Rich County Sheriff’s Office reported.
The Utah State Medical Examiner’s Office later determined Allyn’s cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning.
According to the Associated Press, deputies said the watercraft was an older boat without an outboard engine. The Deseret News reported that Allyn spent a good part of the day at the rear of the boat near its exhaust hoisting water skiers and swimmers out of the water.
It happened in the open air. You would think it unbelievable until you think about how the gases recirculate near the back of the boat, said Dr. Robert Baron, a medical adviser for Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah and Arizona.
The Deseret News reported that no other passengers in Allyn’s boat suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning.
On June 30, 12 people were treated in southern Nevada after being sickened while house boating on Lake Mead. Five were flown to a hospital in Las Vegas, four were taken by ambulance and three others were treated at the scene. All have since recovered.
They were running their generator to keep the air conditioning going, said Christie Vanover, spokeswoman for the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. She said another boat parked next to it, causing the exhaust to circulate back into the house boat.
Lyngar said carbon monoxide poisoning while boating is far more common than we thought.
He pointed to the ban on teak surfing, in which people hold onto a swim platform at the back of a boat and are pulled through the water. Platforms are near exhaust systems.
People used to do that for fun, he said. There were several fatalities nationwide. It is now illegal in many states.
Lyngar recalled another incident several years ago on Lake Powell, a reservoir on the Colorado River along the Utah-Arizona line. A girl died after washing her hair using the exhaust port from a generator.
That exhaust is filled with carbon monoxide, but that spout also has warm water, Lyngar said.
Lyngar said a regional group that has studied deaths on the Colorado River concluded that carbon monoxide poisoning was more prevalent than we thought.
Going over the record of old accidents, we think a lot more of these are carbon monoxide-related, he said.
I would say 10, 20 years ago we did not look at this as seriously as we do now, he said. Over the last decade or two, we’ve recognized how serious it can be.
Baron, who has reviewed death and illness reports on Lake Powell for more than 25 years, agreed.
He and others have collected data showing more than 800 incidents of death or illness on U.S. waterways attributed to carbon monoxide since the mid-1990s.
There is absolutely many more than that number, he told The Deseret News. It’s still an under-recognized event.
Lyngar said it’s a good idea for boaters to have carbon monoxide detectors on board and pay attention to them. Also, people should not linger in the back of a boat near exhaust.
Be careful at low speeds, he said, adding invisible gas clouds can form quickly when boats are idling or moving slowly.
Safety tips on avoiding exhaust problems are covered in the agency’s safe boating programs and pamphlets.
We don’t want to make people afraid, Lyngar said. We just want to make people aware.