Six gassed: call for heater ban
Experts are again calling for a ban on gas heaters after a leak sent six people to hospital.
Emergency services were called to the smell of gas in Purcell Place, in Hamilton’s Melville, just before 8am yesterday, Fire & Emergency spokesman Daniel Nicholson said.
When they arrived, they found a gas panel heater leaking.
They also found six people sick, one in a serious condition. A Waikato DHB spokeswoman said three remained in a stable condition in Waikato Hospital yesterday afternoon and three were discharged.
The poisoning has renewed calls for such heaters to be banned.
‘‘Nobody should be using them,’’ public health expert and Associate Professor Nevil Pierse said.
‘‘The only place they should be is outdoors.’’ They are banned in Canada and most of Europe, and Pierse said New Zealand should follow suit.
Such heaters were meant to be serviced every year but that rarely happened, he said.
‘‘I am yet to find a single one in New Zealand [that] is serviced.’’
Pierse, who is also the deputy director of He Kainga Oranga/Housing and Health Research Programme, said the heaters were dangerous for a lot of different reasons but it was unusual to have them leak.
Portable, or unflued, gas heaters do not have fixed, attached vents to the outside, so they release nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide into the air.
The 2018 census showed there are still 90,000 of these types of heaters in New Zealand households, with roughly 11 per cent of rental homes still using them, Pierse said.
‘‘They used to be cheap. They are cheap to buy but not cheap to run; but they are very portable.
‘‘They are pre-paid so you can pay in advance so you don’t get unexpected power bills.
‘‘[But] they are still a really bad idea.’’
A St John spokesman said of the six people taken to Waikato Hospital, three were in a minor condition, two were moderate and one
was serious. In New Zealand there have been multiple deaths caused by gas heaters over the years. In 2015, an elderly Christchurch man died after accidentally inhaling fumes from a gas heater that was not ventilated properly.
Albert Wylie, 90, died of carbon monoxide poisoning at his St Albans home because of a fault in his LPG space heater. It had also not been used within the proper ventilation guidelines.
Coroner Brigitte Windley said in the report there were likely to be a number of LPG heaters still in use in New Zealand households that were supplied prior to the implementation of the current legislative and compliance framework.
It was ‘‘essential’’ people use such heaters as instructed and had them serviced regularly to avoid potential harm, she said.
In 2007, Te Kuiti man Neville Gibb, 67, was found dead in his pensioner flat after he died from gas poisoning.
His family voiced concerns at the time about gas heaters on the market.
‘‘Obviously somebody has died from something that should never have been in our market.
‘‘How many others of these dodgy things are in the market?’’ his daughter, Tracey Gibb, said at the time.
WorkSafe has advice on its website for people who use gas heating and said it must be treated with respect to prevent accidents.
It recommends keeping a window open to help remove heater emissions and to keep the air fresh and reduce condensation and to get the heater checked and serviced every year to confirm it is in a safe condition.