Carbon Monoxide Dangers in Ice Rinks

[firedude 985]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQoP2KKjYPs

What can we do to fix this? Curently, there are no laws in New York regulating indor air quality at sporting venues. So, is your department ready to handle a large scale CO incident such as this?

Edited January 2, 2012 by firedude

[fireboyny 61]

I hate to say it but it will either take a severe illness or fatality for this to change.... Its sickening to know that the government will work up a sweat to overprotect the fish, but when it comes to situations like this, the government doesn't do crap....

[newsbuff 286]

I thought they burned propane to "protect" against most of this, much like indoor forklifts...

[fireboyny 61]

I thought they burned propane to "protect" against most of this, much like indoor forklifts...

you would think

[ny10570 745]

They burn much cleaner than liquid fuels. That being said they're still combustion engines and therefore still produce CO. There are ways to reduce it's production, but not eliminate it. Add in the realities of mechanical malfunction and human error and this becomes inevitable.

[SRS131EMTFF 471]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQoP2KKjYPs

What can we do to fix this? Curently, there are no laws in New York regulating indor air quality at sporting venues. So, is your department ready to handle a large scale CO incident such as this?

Public health laws may not quality, but worker exposure protection laws still do. OSHA or in NYS PESH can come in and say to the rink "you need to rectify this problem for your workers health". While it would be solely for the benefit for the worker, it would still flow down to the customers.

One way of doing this is use a battery powered zamboni as opposed to CNG, however the Pb fumes from the recharging process also cause work place exposure issues. Another is adding air exchanges per hour but it a large climate controlled facility like an ice rink that gets expensive quickly.

UVM had an issue with exposure levels in its ice rink and what I mentioned above is how it was informed, identified, and addressed an indoor air quality and worker exposure.

[ny10570 745]

What Pb fumes? I was only aware of hydrogen gas being emitted during charging. Besides, are there any high capacity high performance batteries still using pb? The biggest problem with electric zambonis is their poor performance. I think a properly tuned engine with a catalytic converter should have no problem staying within safe limits without excessive venting of the facility. Monitoring with a high capacity ventilation system should be a simple and relatively cheap retrofit to existing facilities.