If you or someone you know has concerns enough about extreme weather events and the electrical failures that too often accompany them to look into buying a portable generator, be sure to take great care to examine the pricey device’s safety features.
Thousands of consumers have been poisoned or killed by carbon monoxide (CO) fumes from emergency household generators, according to ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative site, which joined the Texas Tribune and NBC News in digging into records on the dangers posed by the combustion engines that can provide power in critical moments.
But just as motorists must take care to avoid running their vehicles in closed environs, and consumers should not run fuel-burning heaters in confined, indoor spaces, so too, users of portable generator must safeguard themselves and those in a wide area around them from their units’ powerful but odorless fumes. The generators, costing from $400 to $2,500, should not be run near or inside homes. As ProPublica and its partners found: